Coelebs In Search of a Wife Part 20

"How little," said she, "is the human heart known except to him who made it! While a fellow creature may admire our apparent devotion, he who appears to be its object, witnesses the wandering of the heart, which seems to be lifted up to him. He sees it roving to the ends of the earth, busied about any thing rather than himself, running after trifles which would not only dishonor Christian, but would disgrace a child. As to my very virtues, if I dare apply such a word to myself, they sometimes lose their character by not keeping their proper place. They become sins by infringing on higher duties. If I mean to perform an act of devotion, some crude plan of charity forces itself on my mind, and what with trying to drive out one, and to establish the other, I rise dissatisfied and unimproved, and resting my sole hope, not on the duty I have been performing, but on the mercy I have been offending."

I a.s.sured her with all the simplicity of truth, and all the sincerity of affection, that this confession only served to raise my opinion of the piety she disclaimed; that such deep consciousness of imperfection, so quick a discernment of the slightest deviation, and such constant vigilance to prevent it, were the truest indications of an humble spirit; and that those who thus carefully guarded themselves against small errors, were in little danger of being betrayed into great ones.

She replied, smiling, that "she should not be so angry with vanity, if it would be contented to keep its proper place among its vices; but her quarrel with it was, that it would mix itself among our virtues, and rob us of their reward."

"Vanity, indeed," replied I, "differs from the other vices in this; _they_ commonly are only opposite to the one contrary virtue, while this vice has a kind of ubiquity, is on the watch to intrude everywhere, and weakens all the virtues which it can not destroy. I believe vanity was the harpy of the ancient poets, which, they tell us, tainted whatever it touched."

"Self-deception is so easy," replied Miss Stanley, "that I am even afraid of highly extolling any good quality, lest I should sit down satisfied with having borne any testimony in its favor, and so rest contented with the praise instead of the practise. Commending a right thing is a cheap subst.i.tute for doing it, with which we are too apt to satisfy ourselves."

"There is no mark," I replied, "which more clearly distinguishes that humility which has the love of G.o.d for its principle, from its counterfeit--a false and superficial politeness--than that while this last flatters, in order to extort in return more praise than its due, humility, like the divine principle from which it springs, seeketh not even its own."

In answer to some further remark of mine, with an air of infinite modesty, she said, "I have been betrayed, sir, into saying too much. It will, I trust, however, have the good effect of preventing you from thinking better of me than I deserve. In general, I hold it indiscreet to speak of the state of one's mind. I have been taught this piece of prudence by my own indiscretion. I once lamented to a lady the fault of which we have now been speaking, and observed how difficult it was to keep the heart right. She so little understood the nature of this inward corruption, that she told in confidence to two or three friends, that they were all much mistaken in Miss Stanley, for though her character stood so fair with all the world, she had secretly confessed to her that she was a great sinner."

I could not forbear repeating though she had chid me for it before, how much I had been struck with several instances of her indifference to the work, and her superiority to its pleasures. "Do you know," continued she, smiling, "that you are more my enemy than the lady of whom I have been speaking? She only defamed my principles, but you are corrupting them. The world, I believe, is not so much a place as a nature. It is possible to be religious in a court, and worldly in a monastery. I find that the thoughts may be engaged too anxiously about so petty a concern as a little family arrangement; that the mind may be drawn off from better pursuits, and engrossed by things too trivial to name, as much as by objects more apparently wrong. The country is certainly favorable to religion, but it would be hard on the millions who are doomed to live in towns if it were exclusively favorable. Nor must we lay more stress on the accidental circ.u.mstance than it deserves. Nay, I almost doubt if it is not too pleasant to be quite safe. An enjoyment which a.s.sumes a sober shape may deceive us by making us believe we are practicing a duty when we are only gratifying a taste."

"But do you not think," said I, "that there may be merit in the taste itself? May not a succession of acts, forming a habit, and that habit a good one, induce so sound a way of thinking that it may become difficult to distinguish the duty from the taste, and to separate the principle from the choice? This I really believe to be the case in minds finely wrought and vigilantly watched."

I observed that however delightful the country might be a great part of the year, yet there were a few winter months when I feared it might be dull, though not in the degree Sir John's Richmond lady found it.

With a smile of compa.s.sion at my want of taste, she said, "she perceived I was no gardener. To me," added she, "the winter has charms of its own.

If I were not afraid of the light habit of introducing Providence on an occasion not sufficiently important, I would say that he seems to reward those who love the country well enough to live in it the whole year, by making the greater part of the winter the busy season for gardening operations. If I happen to be in town a few days only, every sun that shines, every shower that falls, every breeze that blows, seems wasted, because I do not see their effects upon my plants."

"But surely," said I, "the winter at least suspends your enjoyment.

There is little pleasure in contemplating vegetation in its torpid state, in surveying

The naked shoots, barren as lances,

as Cowper describes the winter-shrubbery."

"The pleasure is in the preparation," replied she. "When all appears dead and torpid to you idle spectators, all is secretly at work; nature is busy in preparing her treasures under ground, and art has a hand in the process. When the blossoms of summer are delighting you mere amateurs, then it is that we professional people," added she, laughing, "are really idle. The silent operations of the winter now produce themselves--the canvas of nature is covered--the great Artist has laid on his colors--then we petty agents lay down our implements, and enjoy our leisure in contemplating _his_ work."

I had never known her so communicative; but my pleased attention, instead of drawing her on, led her to check herself. Ph[oe]be, who had been busily employed in tr.i.m.m.i.n.g a flaunting yellow Azalia, now turned to me and said: "Why it is only the Christmas-month that our labors are suspended, and then we have so much pleasure that we want no business; such in-door festivities and diversions that that dull month is with us the gayest in the year." So saying, she called Lucilla to a.s.sist her in tying up the branch of an orange-tree which the wind had broken.

I was going to offer my services when Mrs. Stanley joined us, before I could obtain an answer to my question about these Christmas diversions.

A stranger, who had seen me pursuing Mrs. Stanley in her walks, might have supposed not the daughter, but the mother, was the object of my attachment. But with Mrs. Stanley I could always talk of Lucilla, with Lucilla I durst not often talk of herself.

The fond mother and I stood looking with delight on the fair gardeners.

When I had admired their alacrity in these innocent pursuits, their fondness for retirement, and their cheerful delight in its pleasures, Mrs. Stanley replied: "Yes, Lucilla is half a nun. She likes the rule, but not the vow. Poor thing! her conscience is so tender that she oftener requires encouragement than restraint. While she was making this plantation, she felt herself so absorbed by it that she came to me one day and said that her gardening work so fascinated her that she found whole hours pa.s.sed unperceived, and she began to be uneasy by observing that all cares and all duties were suspended while she was disposing beds of carnations, or knots of anemones. Even when she tore herself away, and returned to her employments, her flowers still pursued her, and the improvement of her mind gave way to the cultivation of her geraniums.

"'I am afraid,' said the poor girl, 'that I must really give it up.' I would not hear of this. I would not suffer her to deny herself so pure a pleasure. She then suggested the expedient of limiting her time, and hanging up her watch in the conservatory to keep her within her prescribed bounds. She is so observant of this restriction, that when her allotted time is expired, she forces herself to leave off even in the midst of the most interesting operation. By this limitation a treble end is answered. Her time is saved, self-denial is exercised, and the interest which would languish by protracting the work is kept in fresh vigor."

I told Mrs. Stanley that I had observed her watch hanging in a citron-tree the day I came, but little thought it had a moral meaning.

She said it had never been left there since I had been in the house, for fear of causing interrogatories. Here Mrs. Stanley left me to my meditations.

It is wisely ordered that all mortal enjoyments should have some alloy.

I never tasted a pleasure since I had been at the Grove, I never witnessed a grace, I never heard related an excellence of Lucilla, without a sigh that my beloved parents did not share my happiness. "How would they," said I, "delight in her delicacy, rejoice in her piety, love her benevolence, her humility, her usefulness! O how do children feel who wound the peace of _living_ parents by an unworthy choice, when not a little of my comfort springs from the certainty that the departed would rejoice in mine! Even from their blessed abode, my grateful heart seems to hear them say, 'This is the creature we would have chosen for thee! This is the creature with whom we shall rejoice with thee through all eternity!'"

Yet such was my inconsistency, that charmed as I was that so young and lovely a woman could be so cheaply pleased, and delighted with that simplicity of taste which made her resemble my favorite heroine of Milton in her amus.e.m.e.nts, as well as in her domestic pursuits; yet I longed to know what these Christmas diversions, so slightly hinted at, could be, diversions which could reconcile these girls to their absence not only from their green-house, but from London. I could hardly fear indeed to find at Stanley Grove what the newspapers pertly call _Private Theatricals_. Still I suspected it might be some gay dissipation not quite suited to their general character, nor congenial to their usual amus.e.m.e.nts. My mother's favorite rule of _consistency_ strongly forced itself on my mind, though I tried to repel the suggestion as unjust and ungenerous.

Of what meannesses will not love be guilty: it drove me to have recourse to my friend Mrs. Comfit to dissipate my doubts. From her I learned that that cold and comfortless season was mitigated at Stanley Grove by several feasts for the poor of different cla.s.ses and ages. "Then, sir,"

continued she, "if you could see the blazing fires, and the abundant provisions! The roasting, and the boiling, and the baking! The house is all alive! On those days the drawers and shelves of Miss Lucilla's store-room are completely emptied. 'Tis the most delightful bustle, sir, to see our young ladies tying on the good women's warm cloaks, fitting their caps and ap.r.o.ns, and sending home blankets to the infirm who can not come themselves. The very little ones kneeling down on the ground to try on the poor girls' shoes--even little Miss Celia, and she is so tender--to fit them exactly and not hurt them! Last feast-day, not finding a pair small enough for a poor little girl, she privately slipped off her own and put on the child. It was some time before it was discovered that she herself was without shoes. We are all alive, sir.

Parlor, and hall, and kitchen, all is in motion! Books, and business, and walks, and gardening, all are forgot for these few happy days."

How I hated myself for my suspicion! And how I loved the charming creatures who could find in these humble but exhilarating duties an equivalent for the pleasures of the metropolis! "Surely," said I to myself, "my mother would call _this_ consistency, when the amus.e.m.e.nts of a religious family smack of the same flavor with its business and its duties." My heart was more than easy; it was dilated, while I congratulated myself in the thought that there _were_ young ladies to be found who could spend a winter not only unrepiningly but cheerfully and delightedly in the country.

I am aware that were I to repeat my conversations with Lucilla, I should subject myself to ridicule by recording such cold and spiritless discourse on my own part. But I had not yet declared my attachment. I made it a point of duty not to violate my engagement with Mr. Stanley. I was not addressing declarations, but studying the character of her on whom the happiness of my life was to depend. I had resolved not to show my attachment by any overt act. I confined the expression of my affection to that _series of small, quiet attentions_, which an accurate judge of the human heart has p.r.o.nounced to be the surest avenue to a delicate mind. I had, in the mean time, the inexpressible felicity to observe a constant union of feeling, as well as a general consonance of opinion between us. Every sentiment seemed a reciprocation of sympathy, and every look, of intelligence. This unstudied correspondence enchanted me the more as I had always considered that a conformity of tastes was nearly as necessary to conjugal happiness as a conformity of principles.

CHAPTER x.x.xIII.

One morning I took a ride alone to breakfast at Lady Aston's; Mr.

Stanley having expressed a particular desire that I should cultivate the acquaintance of her son. "Sir George is not quite twenty," said he, "and your being a few years older, will make him consider your friendship as an honor to him; I am sure it will be an advantage."

In her own little family circle, I had the pleasure of seeing Lady Aston appear to more advantage than I had yet done. Her understanding is good, and her affections are strong. She had received a too favorable impression of my character from Mr. Stanley, and treated me with as much openness as if I had been his son.

The gentle girls, animated by the spirit of their brother, seemed to derive both happiness and importance from his presence: while the amiable young baronet himself won my affection by his engaging manners, and my esteem by his good sense and his considerable acquirements in every thing which becomes a gentleman.

This visit exemplified a remark I had sometimes made, that shy characters, who from natural timidity are reserved in general society, open themselves with peculiar warmth and frankness to a few select friends, or to an individual of whom they think kindly. A distant manner is not always, as is suspected, the result of a cold heart, or a dull head; nor is gayety necessarily connected with feeling. High animal spirits, though they often evaporate in mere talk, yet by their warmth and quickness of motion obtain the credit of strong sensibility: a sensibility, however, of which the heart is not always the fountain.

While in the timid, that silence which is construed into pride, indifference, or want of capacity, is often the effect of keen feelings.

Friendship is the genial climate in which such hearts disclose themselves; they flourish in the shade, and kindness alone makes them expand. A keen discerner will often detect, in such characters, qualities which are not always connected with

the rattling tongue Of saucy and audacious eloquence.

When people who have seen little of each other are thrown together, nothing brings on free communication so quickly or so pleasantly, as their being both intimate with a third person, for whom all parties entertain one common sentiment. Mr. Stanley seemed always a point of union between his neighbors and me.

After various topics had been discussed, Lady Aston remarked, that she could now trace the goodness of Providence in having so ordered events, as to make those things which she had so much dreaded at the time, work out advantages which could not have been otherwise obtained for her.

"I had a singular aversion," added she, "to the thoughts of removing to this place, and quitting Sir George's estate in Warwickshire, where I had spent the happiest years of my life. When I had the misfortune to lose him" (here a tear quietly strayed down her cheek), "I resolved never to remove from the place where he died. I had fully persuaded myself that it was a duty to do all I could to cherish grief. I obliged myself as a law, to spend whole hours in walking round the place where he was buried. These melancholy visits, the intervals of which were filled with tears, prayers, and reading a few good, but not well chosen books, made up the whole round of my sad existence. I had nearly forgotten that I had any duties to perform, any mercies left. Almost all the effect which the sight of my children produced in me was, by their resemblance to their father, to put me in mind of what I had lost.

"I was not sufficiently aware how much more truly I should have honored his memory by training his living representatives in such a manner as he, had he been living, would have approved. My dear George," added she, smiling at her son through her tears, "was glad to get away to school, and my poor girls, when they lost the company of their brother, lost all the little cheerfulness which my recluse habits had left them. We sunk into total inaction, and our lives became as comfortless as they were unprofitable."

"My dear madam," said Sir George, in the most affectionate tone and manner, "I can only forgive myself from the consideration of my being then too young and thoughtless to know the value of the mother whose sorrows ought to have endeared my home to me, instead of driving me from it."

"They are _my_ faults, my dear George, and not yours, that I am relating. Few mothers would have acted like me; few sons differently from you. Your affectionate heart deserved a warmer return than my broken spirits were capable of making you. But I was telling you, sir,"

said she, again addressing herself to me, "that the event of my coming to this place, not only became the source of my present peace, and of the comfort of my children, but that its result enables me to look forward with a cheerful hope to that state where there is neither sin, sorrow, nor separation. The thoughts of death, which used to render me useless, now make me only serious. The reflection that 'the night cometh' which used to extinguish my activity, now kindles it.

"Forgive me, sir," added she, wiping her eyes; "these are not such tears as I then shed. These are tears of grat.i.tude, I had almost said of joy.

In the family at the Grove, Providence had been providing for me friends, for whom I doubt not I shall bless him in eternity.

"I had long been convinced of the importance of religion. I had always felt the insufficiency of the world to bestow happiness; but I had never before beheld religion in such a form. I had never been furnished with a proper subst.i.tute for the worldly pleasures which I yet despised. I did right in giving up diversions, but I did wrong in giving up employment, and in neglecting duties. I knew something of religion as a principle of fear, but I had no conception of it as a motive to the love of G.o.d, and of active duty; nor did I consider it as a source of inward peace. Books had not been of any great service to me, for I had no one to guide me in the choice, or to a.s.sist me in the perusal. I went to my daily task of devotion with a heavy heart, and returned from it with no other sense of comfort but that I had not omitted it.

"My former friends and acquaintance had been decent and regular; but they had adopted religion as a form, and not as a principle. It was compliance and not conviction. It was conformity to custom, and not the persuasion of the heart. Judge then how I must have been affected, in a state when sorrow and disappointment had made my mind peculiarly impressible, with the conversation and example of Mr. and Mrs. Stanley!

I saw in them that religion was not a formal profession, but a powerful principle. It ran through their whole life and character. All the Christian graces were brought into action in a way, with a uniformity, and a beauty, which nothing but Christian motives could have effected.

"The change which took place in my own mind, however, was progressive.

The strict consonance which I observed between their sentiments and actions, and those of Dr. Barlow and Mr. Jackson, strengthened and confirmed mine. This similarity in all points, was a fresh confirmation that they were all right. The light of religion gradually grew stronger, and the way more smooth. It was literally a 'lamp to my feet,' for I walked more safely as I saw more clearly. My difficulties insensibly lessened, and my doubts disappeared. I still indeed continue hourly to feel much cause to be humbled, but none to be unhappy."