Marriage Part 52

"I really can't tell what your Ladyship means," said the Doctor impatiently.

"I mean, for example, the love one may feel towards a turtle, such as we had lately."

"That's quite a different thing," interrupted the Doctor.

"Pardon me, but whatever the consequence may be, the effects in both cases were very similar, as exemplified in yourself. Pray, what difference did it make to your friends, who were deprived of your society, whether you spent your time in walking with 'even step, and musing gait,' before your Dulcinea's window or the turtle's cistern?--whether you were engrossed in composing a sonnet to your mistress's eyebrow, or in contriving a new method of heightening the enjoyments of _calipash?_ --whether you expatiated with greater rapture on the charms of a white skin or green fat?--whether you were most devoted to a languishing or a lively beauty?--whether----"

"'Pon my honour, Lady Emily, I really--I--I can't conceive what it is you mean. There's a time for everything; and I'm sure n.o.body but yourself would ever have thought of bringing in a turtle to a conversation upon marriage."

"On the contrary, Doctor, I thought it had been upon love; and I was endeavouring to convince you that even the wisest of men may be susceptible of certain tender emotions towards a beloved object."

"You'll never convince me that any but a fool can be in love," cried the Doctor, his visage a.s.suming a darker purple as the argument advanced.

"Then you must rank Lord Glenallan, with his five and twenty thousand a year, amongst the number, for he is desperately in love, I a.s.sure you."

"As to that, Lord Glenallan, or any man with his fortune, may be whatever he chooses. He has a right to be in love. He can afford to be in love."

"I have heard much of the torments of love," said Lady Emily; "but I never heard it rated as a luxury before. I hope there is no chance of your being made Premier, otherwise I fear we should have a tax upon love-marriages immediately."

"It would be greatly for the advantage of the nation, as well as the comfort of individuals, if there was," returned the Doctor. "Many a pleasant fellow has been lost to society by what you call a love-marriage. I speak from experience. I was obliged to drop the oldest friend I had upon his making one of your love-marriages."

"What! you were afraid of the effects of evil example?" asked Lady Emily.

"No--it was not for that; but he asked me to take a family dinner with him one day, and I, without knowing anything of the character of the woman he had married, was weak enough to go. I found a very so-so tablecloth and a shoulder of mutton, which ended our acquaintance. I never entered his door after it. In fact, no man's happiness is proof against dirty tablecloths and bad dinners; and you may take my word for it, Lady Emily, these are the invariable accompaniments of your love-marriages."

"Pshaw! that is only amongst the _bourgeois,"_ said Lady Emily affectedly; "that is not the sort of _menage_ I mean to have.

Here is to be the style of my domestic establishment;" and she repeated Shenstone's beautiful pastoral--

"My banks they are furnished with bees," etc.,

till she came to--

"I have found out a gift for my fair, I have found where the wood-pigeons breed."

"There's some sense in that," cried the Doctor, who had been listening with great weariness." You may have a good pigeon-pie, or _un saute de pigeons au sang,_ which is still better when well dressed."

"Shocking!" exclaimed Lady Emily; "to mention pigeon-pies in the same breath with nightingales and roses!"

"I'll tell you what, Lady Emily, it's just these sort of nonsensical descriptions that do all the mischief amongst you young ladies. It's these confounded poets that turn all your heads, and make you think you have nothing to do after you are married but sit beside fountains and grottoes, and divert yourself with birds and flowers, instead of looking after your servants, and paying your butcher's bills; and, after all, what is the substance of that trash you have just been reading, but to say that the man was a substantial farmer and grazier, and had bees; though I never heard of any man in his senses going to sleep amongst his beehives before. 'Pon my soul! if I had my will I would burn every line of poetry that ever was written. A good recipe for a pudding is worth all that your Shenstones and the whole set of them ever wrote; and there's more good sense and useful information in this book"--rapping his knuckles against a volume he held in his hand--"than in all your poets, ancient and modern."

Lady Emily took it out of his hand and opened it.

"And some very poetical description, too, Doctor; although you affect to despise it so much. Here is an eulogium on the partridge. I doubt much if St. Preux ever made a finer on his adorable Julie;" and she read as follows:--

"La Perdrix tient Ie premier rang apres la Beca.s.se, dans la cathegorie des gibiers a plumes. C'est, lorsqu'elle est rouge, l'un des plus honorables et desmeilleurs rotis qui puissent etre etales sur une table gourmande. Sa forme appetissante, sa taille elegante et svelte, quoiqu'

arrondie, son embonpoint modere, ses jambes d'ecarlate; enfin, son fumet divin et ses qualites restaurantes, tout concourt a la faire rechercher des vrais amateurs. D'autres gibiers sont plus rares, plus chers, mieux accueillis par la vanite, le prejuge, et la mode; la Perdrix rouge, belle de sa propre beaute, dont les qualites sont independantes de la fantaisie, qui reunit en sa personne tout ce qui peut charmer les yeux, delecter Ie palais, stimuler l'appet.i.t, et ranimer les forces, plaira dans-tous les temps, et concourra a l'honneur de tous les festins, sous quelque forme qu'elle y paroisse." [1]

[1] "Manuel des Amphitryons."

The Doctor sighed: "That's nothing to what he says of the woodc.o.c.k:" and with trembling hand she turned over the leaves, till he found the place. "Here it is," said he, "page 88, chap. xvi. Just be so good as read that, Lady Emily, and say whether it is not infamous that Monsieur Grillade has never even attempted to make it."

With an air of melancholy enthusiasm she read--"Dans les pays ou les Beca.s.ses sont communes, on obtient, de leurs carca.s.ses pilees dans un mortier, une puree sur laquelle on dresse diverses entrees, telles que de pet.i.tes cotelettes de mouton, etc. Cotte puree est l'une des plus delicieuses choses qui puisse etre introduite dans Ie palais d'un gourmand, et l'on peut a.s.surer que quiconque n'en a point mange n'a point connu les joies du paradis terrestre. Une puree de Beca.s.se, bien faite, est Ie _ne plus ultra_ des jouissances humaines. II faut mourir apres l'avoir goutee, car toutes les autres alors ne paroitront plus qu'insipides."

"And these _beca.s.ses,_ these woodc.o.c.ks, perfectly swarm on the Glenallan estate in the season," cried the Doctor; "and to think that such a man should have been refused. But Miss Mary will repent this the longest day she lives. I had a cook in my eye for them, too--one who is quite up to the making of this _puree. _'Pon my soul! she deserve to live upon sheep's head and haggis for the rest of her life; and if I was Lady Juliana I would try the effect of bread and water."

"She certainly does not aspire to such joys as are here portrayed in this _your_ book of life," said Lady Emily; "for I suspect she could endure existence even upon roast mutton with the man she loves."

"That's nothing to the purpose, unless the man she loves, as you call it, loves to live upon roast mutton too. Take my word for it, unless she gives her husband good dinners he'll not care twopence for her in a week's time. I look upon bad dinners to be the source of much of the misery we hear of in the married life. Women are much mistaken if they think it's by dressing themselves they are to please their husbands."

"Pardon me, Doctor, we must be the best judges there, and I have the authority of all ages and sages in my favour: the beauty and the charms of women have been the favourite theme, time immemorial; now no one ever heard of a fair one being celebrated for her skill in cookery."

"There I beg leave to differ from you," said the Doctor, with an air of exultation, again referring to his _text-book_--"here is the great Madame Pompadour, celebrated for a single dish: 'Les tendrons d'agneau au soleil et a la Pompadour, sont sortis de l'imagination de cette dame celebre, pour entrer dans la bouche d'un roi."

"But it was Love that inspired her--it was Love that kindled the fire in her imagination. In short, you must acknowledge that

"Love rules the court, the camp, the grove."

"I'll acknowledge no such thing," cried the Doctor, with indignation.

"Love rule the camp, indeed! A very likely story! Don't I know that all our first generals carry off the best cooks--that there's no such living anywhere as in camp--that their aides-de-camp are quite ruined by it--that in time of war they live at the rate of twenty thousand a year, and when they come home they can't get a dinner they can eat? As for the court, I don't pretend to know much about it; but I suspect there's more cooks than Cupids to be seen about it. And for the groves, I shall only say I never heard of any of your _fetes champetre_, or picnics, where all the pleasure didn't seem to consist in the eating and drinking."

"Ah, Doctor, I perceive you have taken all your ideas on that subject from Werter, who certainly was a sort of a sentimental _gourmand,_ he seems to have enjoyed so much drinking his coffee under the shade of the lime-trees, and going to the kitchen to take his own pease-soup; and then he breaks out into such raptures at the idea of the ill.u.s.trious lovers of Penelope killing and dressing their own meat! Butchers and cooks in one! only conceive them with their great knives and blue ap.r.o.ns, or their spits and white nightcaps! Poor Penelope! no wonder she preferred spinning to marrying one of these creatures! Faugh! I must have an ounce of civet to sweeten my imagination." And she flew of, leaving the Doctor to con over the "Manuel des Amphitryons," and sigh at the mention of joys, sweet, yet mournful, to his soul.

CHAPTER XXVI.

"The ample proposition that hope makes In all designs begun on earth below, Fails in the promised largeness."

SHAKESPEARE.

THERE is no saying whether the Doctor's system might not have been resorted to had not Lady Juliana's wrath been for the present suspended by an invitation to Altamont House. True, nothing could be colder than the terms in which it was couched; but to that her Ladyship was insensible, and would have been equally indifferent had she known that, such as it was, she owed it more to the obstinacy of her son-in-law than the affection of her daughter. The Duke of Altamont was one of those who attach great ideas of dignity to always carrying their point; and though he might sometimes be obliged to suspend his plans, he never had been known to relinquish them. Had he settled in his own mind to tie his neckcloth in a particular way, not all the eloquence of Cicero or the tears of O'Neil would have induced him to alter it; and Adelaide, the haughty, self-willed Adelaide, soon found that, of all yokes, the most insupportable is the yoke of an obstinate fool. In the thousand trifling occurances of domestic life (for his Grace was interested in all the minutiae of his establishment), where good sense and good humour on either side would have gracefully yielded to the other, there was a perpetual contest for dominion, which invariably ended in Adelaide's defeat. The Duke, indeed, never disputed, or reasoned, or even replied; but the thing was done; till, at the end of six weeks, the d.u.c.h.ess of Altamont most heartily hated and despised the man she had so lately vowed to love and obey. On the present occasion his Grace certainly appeared in the most amiable light in wishing to have Lady Juliana invited to his house; but in fact it proceeded entirely from his besetting sin, obstinacy. He had propose her accompanying her daughter at the time of her marriage, and been overruled; but with all the pertinacity of a little mind he had kept fast hold of the idea, merely because it was his own, and he was now determined to have it put in execution. In a postscript to the letter, and in the same cordial style, the d.u.c.h.ess said something of a hope, that _if_ her mother did come to town, Mary should accompany her; but this her Ladyship, to Mary's great relief, declared should not be, although she certainly was very much at a loss how to dispose of her. Mary timidly expressed her wish to be permitted to return to Lochmarlie, and mentioned that her uncle and aunt had repeatedly offered to come to Bath for her, if she might be allowed to accompany them home; but to this her mother also gave a decided negative, adding that she never should see Lochmarlie again, if she could help it. In short, she must remain where she was till something could be fixed as to her future destination. "It was most excessively tiresome to be clogged with a great unmarried daughter," her Ladyship observed, as she sprang into the carriage with a train of dogs, and drove off to dear delightful London.

But, alas! the insecurity of even the best-laid schemes of human foresight! Lady Juliana was in the midst of arrangements for endless pleasures, when she received accounts of the death of her now almost forgotten husband! He had died from the gradual effects of the climate, and that was all that remained to be told of the unfortunate Henry Douglas! If his heartless wife shed some natural tears, she wiped them soon; but the wounds of disappointment and vanity were not so speedily effaced, as she contrasted the brilliant court-dress with the unbecoming widow's cap. Oh, she so detested black things--it was so hateful to wear mourning--she never could feel happy or comfortable in black! and, at such a time, how particularly unfortunate! Poor Douglas! she was very sorry! And so ended the holiest and most indissoluble of human ties!

The d.u.c.h.ess did not think it inc.u.mbent upon her to be affected by the death of a person she had never seen; but she put on mourning; put off her presentation at Court for a week, and stayed away one night from the opera.

On Mary's warm and unpolluted heart the tidings of her father's death produced a very different effect. Though she had never known, in their fullest extent, those feelings of filial affection, whose source begins with our being, and over which memory loves to linger, as at the hallowed fount of the purest of earthly joys, she had _yet_ been taught to cherish a fond remembrance of him to whom she owed her being. She had been brought up in the land of his birth--his image was a.s.sociated in her mind with many of the scenes most dear to her--his name and his memory were familiar to those amongst whom she dwelt, and thus her feelings of natural affection had been preserved in all their genuine warmth and tenderness. Many a letter, and many a little token of her love, she had, from her earliest years, been accustomed to send him; and she had ever fondly cherished the hope of her father's return, and that she would yet know the happiness of being blest in a parent's love. But now all these hopes were extinguished; and, while she wept over them in bitterness of heart, she yet bowed with pious resignation to the decree of heaven.

CHAPTER XXVII

"Shall we grieve their hovering shades, Which wait the revolution in our hearts?

Shall we disdain their silent, soft address; Their posthumous advice and pious prayer?"

YOUNG.