Tales and Novels Volume III Part 34

"And now you have abused yourself till you are breathless, I may have some chance," said Belinda, "of being heard in your defence. I perfectly agree with you in thinking that a suspicious temper is despicable and intolerable; but there is a vast difference between an acute fit of jealousy, as our friend Dr. X---- would say, and a chronic habit of suspicion. The n.o.blest natures may be worked up to suspicion by designing villany; and then a handkerchief, or a hammercloth, 'trifles as light as air'--"

"Oh, my dear, you are too good. But my folly admits of no excuse, no palliation," interrupted Lady Delacour; "mine was jealousy without love."

"That indeed would admit of no excuse," said Belinda; "therefore you will pardon me if I think it incredible--especially as I have detected you in feeling something like affection for your little daughter, after you had done your best, I mean your worst, to make me believe that you were a monster of a mother."

"That was quite another affair, my dear. I did not know Helena was worth loving. I did not imagine my little daughter could love me. When I found my mistake, I changed my tone. But there is no hope of mistake with my poor husband. Your own sense must show you, that Lord Delacour is not a man to beloved."

"That could not _always_ have been your ladyship's opinion," said Belinda, with an arch smile.

"Lord! my dear," said Lady Delacour, a little embarra.s.sed, "in the highest paroxysm of my madness, I never suspected that you could _love_ Lord Delacour; I surely only hinted that you were in love with his coronet. That was absurd enough in all conscience--don't make me more absurd than I am."

"Is it then the height of absurdity to love a husband?"

"Love! Nonsense!--Impossible!--Hush! here he comes, with his odious creaking shoes. What man can ever expect to be loved who wears creaking shoes?" pursued her ladyship, as Lord Delacour entered the room, his shoes creaking at every step; and a.s.suming an air of levity, she welcomed him as a stranger to her dressing-room. "No speeches, my lord!

no speeches, I beseech you," cried she, as he was beginning to speak to Miss Portman. "Believe me, that explanations always make bad worse. Miss Portman is here, thank Heaven! and her; and Champfort is gone, thank you--or your boots. And now let us sit down to breakfast, and forget as soon as possible every thing that is disagreeable."

When Lady Delacour had a mind to banish painful recollections, it was scarcely possible to resist the magical influence of her conversation and manners; yet her lord's features never relaxed to a smile during this breakfast. He maintained an obstinate silence, and a profound solemnity--till at last, rising from table, he turned to Miss Portman, and said, "Of all the caprices of fine ladies, that which surprises me the most is the whim of keeping their beds without being sick. Now, Miss Portman, you would hardly suppose that my Lady Delacour, who has been so lively this morning, has kept her bed, as I am informed, a fortnight--is not this astonishing?"

"Prodigiously astonishing, that my Lord Delacour, like all the rest of the world, should be liable to be deceived by appearances," cried her ladyship. "Honour me with your attention for a few minutes, my lord, and perhaps I may increase your astonishment."

His lordship, struck by the sudden change of her voice from gaiety to gravity, fixed his eyes upon her and returned to his seat. She paused--then addressing herself to Belinda, "My incomparable friend,"

said she, "I will now give you a convincing proof of the unlimited power you have over my mind. My lord, Miss Portman has persuaded me to the step which I am now going to take. She has prevailed upon me to make a decisive trial of your prudence and kindness. She has determined me to throw myself on your mercy."

"Mercy!" repeated Lord Delacour; and a confused idea, that she was now about to make a confession of the justice of some of his former suspicions, took possession of his mind: he looked aghast.

"I am going, my lord, to confide to you a secret of the utmost importance--a secret which is known to but three people in the world--Miss Portman, Marriott, and a man whose name I cannot reveal to you."

"Stop, Lady Delacour!" cried his lordship, with a degree of emotion and energy which he had never shown till now: "stop, I conjure, I command you, madam! I am not sufficiently master of myself--I once loved you too well to hear such a stroke. Trust me with no such secret--say no more--you have said enough--too much. I forgive you, that is all I can do: but we must part, Lady Delacour!" said he, breaking from her with agony expressed in his countenance.

"The man has a heart, a soul, I protest! You knew him better than I did, Miss Portman. Nay, you are not gone yet, my lord! You really love me, I find."

"No, no, no," cried he, vehemently: "weak as you take me to be, Lady Delacour, I am incapable of loving a woman who has disgraced me, disgraced herself, her family, her station, her high endowments, her--"

His utterance failed.

"Oh, Lady Delacour!" cried Belinda, "how can you trifle in this manner?"

"I meant not," said her ladyship, "to trifle: I am satisfied. My lord, it is time that you should be satisfied. I _can_ give you the most irrefragable proof, that whatever may have been the apparent levity of my conduct, you have had no serious cause for jealousy. But the proof will shock--disgust you. Have you courage to know more?--Then follow me."

He followed her.--Belinda heard the boudoir door unlocked.--In a few minutes they returned.--Grief, and horror, and pity, were painted in Lord Delacour's countenance, as he pa.s.sed hastily through the room.

"My dearest friend, I have taken your advice: would to Heaven I had taken it sooner!" said Lady Delacour to Miss Portman. "I have revealed to Lord Delacour my real situation. Poor man! he was shocked beyond expression. He behaved incomparably well. I am convinced that he would, as he said, let his hand be cut off to save my life. The moment his foolish jealousy was extinguished, his love for me revived in full force. Would you believe it? he has promised me to break with odious Mrs. Luttridge. Upon my charging him to keep my secret from her, he instantly, in the handsomest manner in the world, declared he would never see her more, rather than give me a moment's uneasiness. How I reproach myself for having been for years the torment of this man's life!"

"You may do better than reproach yourself, my dear Lady Delacour," said Belinda; "you may yet live for years to be the blessing and pride of his life. I am persuaded that nothing but your despair of obtaining domestic happiness has so long enslaved you to dissipation; and now that you find a friend in your husband, now that you know the affectionate temper of your little Helena, you will have fresh views and fresh hopes; you will have the courage to live for yourself, and not for what is called the world."

"The world!" cried Lady Delacour, with a tone of disdain: "how long has that word enslaved a soul formed for higher purposes!" She paused, and looked up towards heaven with an expression of fervent devotion, which Belinda had once, and but once, before seen in her countenance. Then, as if forgetful even that Belinda was present, she threw herself upon a sofa, and fell, or seemed to fall, into a profound reverie. She was roused by the entrance of Marriott, who came into the room to ask whether she would now take her laudanum. "I thought I had taken it,"

said she in a feeble voice; and as she raised her eyes and saw Belinda, she added, with a faint smile, "Miss Portman, I believe, has been laudanum to me this morning: but even that will not do long, you see; nothing will do for me now but _this_," and she stretched out her hand for the laudanum. "Is not it shocking to think," continued she, after she had swallowed it, "that in laudanum alone I find the means of supporting existence?"

She put her hand to her head, as if partly conscious of the confusion of her own ideas: and ashamed that Belinda should witness it, she desired Marriott to a.s.sist her to rise, and to support her to her bedchamber.

She made a sign to Miss Portman not to follow her. "Do not take it unkindly, but I am quite exhausted, and wish to be alone; for I am grown fond of being alone some hours in the day, and perhaps I shall sleep."

Marriott came out of her lady's room about a quarter of an hour afterward, and said that her lady seemed disposed to sleep, but that she desired to have her hook left by her bedside. Marriott searched among several which lay upon the table, for one in which a mark was put.

Belinda looked over them along with Marriott, and she was surprised to find that they had almost all methodistical t.i.tles. Lady Delacour's mark was in the middle of Wesley's Admonitions. Several pages in other books of the same description Miss Portman found marked in pencil, with reiterated lines, which she knew to be her ladyship's customary mode of distinguishing pa.s.sages that she particularly liked. Some were highly oratorical, but most of them were of a mystical cast, and appeared to Belinda scarcely intelligible. She had reason to be astonished at meeting with such books in the dressing-room of a woman of Lady Delacour's character. During the solitude of her illness, her ladyship had first begun to think seriously on religious subjects, and the early impressions that had been made on her mind in her childhood, by a methodistical mother, recurred. Her understanding, weakened perhaps by disease, and never accustomed to reason, was incapable of distinguishing between truth and error; and her temper, naturally enthusiastic, hurried her from one extreme to the other--from thoughtless scepticism to visionary credulity. Her devotion was by no means steady or permanent; it came on by fits usually at the time when the effect of opium was exhausted, or before a fresh dose began to operate. In these intervals she was low-spirited--bitter reflections on the manner in which she had thrown away her talents and her life obtruded themselves; the idea of the untimely death of Colonel Lawless, of which she reproached herself as the cause, returned; and her mind, from being a prey to remorse, began to sink in these desponding moments under the most dreadful superst.i.tious terrors--terrors the more powerful as they were secret.

Whilst the stimulus of laudanum lasted, the train of her ideas always changed, and she was amazed at the weak fears and strange notions by which she had been disturbed; yet it was not in her power entirely to chase away these visions of the night, and they gained gradually a dominion over her, of which she was heartily ashamed. She resolved to conceal this _weakness_, as in her gayer moments she thought it, from Belinda, from whose superior strength of understanding she dreaded ridicule or contempt. Her experience of Miss Portman's gentleness and friendship might reasonably have prevented or dispelled such apprehensions; but Lady Delacour was governed by pride, by sentiment, by whim, by enthusiasm, by pa.s.sion--by any thing but reason.

When she began to revive after her fit of languor, and had been refreshed by opium and sleep, she rang for Marriott, and inquired for Belinda. She was much provoked when Marriott, by way of proving to her that Miss Portman could not have been tired of being left alone, told her that she had been in the dressing-room _rummaging over the books_.

"What books?" cried Lady Delacour. "I forgot that _they_ were left there. Miss Portman is not reading them still, I suppose? Go for them, and let them be locked up in my own bookcase, and bring me the key."

Her ladyship appeared in good spirits when she saw Belinda again. She rallied her upon the serious studies she had chosen for her morning's amus.e.m.e.nts. "Those methodistical books, with their strange quaint t.i.tles," said she, "are, however, diverting enough to those who, like myself, can find diversion in the height of human absurdity."

Deceived by the levity of her manner, Belinda concluded that the marks of approbation in these books were ironical, and she thought no more of the matter; for Lady Delacour suddenly gave a new turn to the conversation by exclaiming, "Now we talk of the height of human absurdity, what are we to think of Clarence Hervey?"

"Why should we think of him at all?" said Belinda.

"For two excellent reasons, my dear: because we cannot help it, and because he deserves it. Yes, he deserves it, believe me, if it were only for having written these charming letters," said Lady Delacour, opening a cabinet, and taking out a small packet of letters, which she put into Belinda's hands. "Pray, read them; you will find them amazingly edifying, as well as entertaining. I protest I am only puzzled to know whether I shall bind them up with Sterne's Sentimental Journey or Fordyce's Sermons for Young Women. Here, my love, if you like description," continued her ladyship, opening one of the letters, "here is a Radcliffean tour along the picturesque coasts of Dorset and Devonshire. Why he went this tour, unless for the pleasure and glory of describing it, Heaven knows! Clouds and darkness rest over the tourist's private history: but this, of course, renders his letters more _piquant_ and interesting. All who have a just taste either for literature or for gallantry, know how much we are indebted to the obscure for the sublime; and orators and lovers feel what felicity there is in the use of the fine figure of suspension."

"Very good description, indeed!" said Belinda, without raising her eyes from the letter, or seeming to pay any attention to the latter part of Lady Delacour's speech; "very good description, certainly!"

"Well, my dear; but here is something better than _pure description_--here is sense for you: and pray mark the politeness of addressing sense to a woman--to a woman of sense, I mean--and which of us is not? Then here is sentiment for you," continued her ladyship, spreading another letter before Belinda; "a story of a Dorsetshire lady, who had the misfortune to be married to a man as _unlike_ Mr. Percival, and as like Lord Delacour, as possible; and yet, oh, wonderful! they make as happy a couple as one's heart could wish. Now, I am truly candid and good-natured to admire this letter; for every word of it is a lesson to me, and evidently was so intended. But I take it all in good part, because, to do Clarence justice, he describes the joys of domestic Paradise in such elegant language, that he does not make me sick. In short, my dear Belinda, to finish my panegyric, as it has been said of some other epistles, if ever there were letters calculated to make you fall in love with the writer of them, these are they."

"Then," said Miss Portman, folding up the letter which she was just going to read, "I will not run the hazard of reading them."

"Why, my dear," said Lady Delacour, with a look of mingled concern, reproach, and raillery, "have you actually given up my poor Clarence, merely on account of this mistress in the wood, this Virginia St.

Pierre? Nonsense! Begging your pardon, my dear, the man loves you. Some entanglement, some punctilio, some doubt, some delicacy, some folly, prevents him from being just at this moment, where, I confess, he ought to be--at your feet; and you, out of patience, which a young lady ought never to be if she can help it, will go and marry--I know you will--some stick of a rival, purely to provoke him."

"If ever I marry," said Belinda, with a look of proud humility, "I shall certainly marry to please myself, and not to provoke any body else; and, at all events, I hope I shall never marry _a stick_."

"Pardon me that word," said Lady Delacour. "I am convinced you never will--but one is apt to judge of others by one's self. I am willing to believe that Mr. Vincent----"

"Mr. Vincent! How did you know----" exclaimed Belinda.

"How did I know? Why, my dear, do you think I am so little interested about you, that I have not found out some of your secrets? And do you think that Marriott could refrain from telling me, in her most triumphant tone, that 'Miss Portman has not gone to Oakly-park for nothing; that she has made a conquest of a Mr. Vincent, a West Indian, a ward, or lately a ward, of Mr. Percival's, the handsomest man that ever was seen, and the richest, &c. &c. &c.?' Now simple I rejoiced at the news; for I took it for granted you would never seriously think of marrying the man."

"Then why did your ladyship rejoice?"

"Why? Oh, you novice at Cupid's chess-board! do not you see the next move? Check with your new knight, and the game is your own. Now, if your aunt Stanhope saw your look at this instant, she would give you up for ever--if she have not done that already. In plain, unmetaphorical prose, then, cannot you comprehend, my straight-forward Belinda, that if you make Clarence Hervey heartily jealous, let the impediments to your union be what they may, he will acknowledge himself to be heartily in love with you? I should make no scruple of frightening him within an inch of his life, for his good. Sir Philip Baddely was not the man to frighten him; but this Mr. Vincent, by all accounts, is just the thing."

"And do you imagine that I could use Mr. Vincent so ill?-And can you think me capable of such double dealing?"

"Oh! in love and war, you know, all stratagems are allowable. But you take the matter so seriously, and you redden with such virtuous indignation, that I dare not say a word more--only--may I ask--are you absolutely engaged to Mr. Vincent?"

"No. We have had the prudence to avoid all promises, all engagements."

"There's my good girl!" cried Lady Delacour, kissing her: "all may yet turn out well. Read those letters--take them to your room, read them, read them; and depend upon it, my dearest Belinda! you are not the sort of woman that will, that can be happy, if you make a mere match of convenience. Forgive me--I love you too well not to speak the truth, though it may offend for a moment."

"You do not offend, but you misunderstand me," said Belinda. "Have patience with me, and you shall find that I am incapable of making a mere match of convenience."

Then Miss Portman gave Lady Delacour a simple but full account of all that had pa.s.sed at Oakly-park relative to Mr. Vincent. She repeated the arguments by which Lady Anne Percival had first prevailed upon her to admit of Mr. Vincent's addresses. She said, that she had been convinced by Mr. Percival, that the omnipotence of a _first love_ was an idea founded in error, and realized only in romance; and that to believe that none could be happy in marriage, except with the first object of their fancy or their affections, would be an error pernicious to individuals and to society. When she detailed the arguments used by Mr. Percival on this subject, Lady Delacour sighed, and observed that Mr. Percival was certainly right, judging from _his own experience_, to declaim against the folly of _first loves_; "and for the same reason," added she, "perhaps I may be pardoned if I retain some prejudice in their favour."

She turned aside her head to hide a starting tear, and here the conversation dropped. Belinda, recollecting the circ.u.mstances of her ladyship's early history, reproached herself for having touched on this tender subject, yet at the same time she felt with increased force, at this moment, the justice of Mr. Percival's observations; for, evidently, the hold which this prejudice had kept in Lady Delacour's mind had materially injured her happiness, by making her neglect, after her marriage, all the means of content that were in her reach. Her incessant comparisons between her _first love_ and her husband excited perpetual contempt and disgust in her mind for her wedded lord, and for many years precluded all perception of his good qualities, all desire to live with him upon good terms, and all idea of securing that share of domestic happiness that was actually in her power. Belinda resolved at some future moment, whenever she could, with propriety and with effect, to suggest these reflections to Lady Delacour, and in the mean time she was determined to turn them to her own advantage. She perceived that she should have need of all her steadiness to preserve her judgment unbia.s.sed by her ladyship's wit and persuasive eloquence on the one hand, and on the other by her own high opinion of Lady Anne Percival's judgment, and the anxious desire she felt to secure her approbation. The letters from Clarence Hervey she read at night, when she retired to her own room; and they certainly raised not only Belinda's opinion of his talents, but her esteem for his character. She saw that he had, with great address, made use of the influence he possessed over Lady Delacour, to turn her mind to every thing that could make her amiable, estimable, and happy--she saw that Clarence, so far from attempting, for the sake of his own vanity, to retain his pre-eminence in her ladyship's imagination, used on the contrary "his utmost skill" to turn the tide of her affections toward her husband and her daughter. In one of his letters, and but in one, he mentioned Belinda. He expressed great regret in hearing from Lady Delacour that her friend, Miss Portman, was no longer with her. He expatiated on the inestimable advantages and happiness of having such a friend--but this referred to Lady Delacour, not to himself. There was an air of much respect and some embarra.s.sment in all he said of Belinda, but nothing like love. A few words at the end of this paragraph were cautiously obliterated, however; and, without any obvious link of connexion, the writer began a new sentence with a general reflection upon the folly and imprudence of forming romantic projects. Then he enumerated some of the various schemes he had formed in his early youth, and humorously recounted how they had failed, or how they had been abandoned. Afterward, changing his tone from playful wit to serious philosophy, he observed the changes which these experiments had made in his own character.