Complete Novels of Maria Edgeworth

by Maria Edgeworth

  “It is all to me now as a dream, long passed, and never told; no, never, except to him who had a right to know it — my husband, and now to you, Helen. From my dream I was awakened by a rude shock — I saw, I thank Heaven I first, and I alone, saw that his heart was gone from me — that his heart had never been mine — that it was unworthy of me. No, I will not say that; I will not think so. Still I trust he had deceived himself, though not so much as he deceived me. I am willing to believe he did not know that what he professed for me was not love, till he was seized by that passion for another, a younger, fairer —— Oh! how much fairer. Beauty is a great gift of Heaven — not for the purposes of female vanity; but a great gift for one who loves, and wishes to be loved. But beauty I had not.”

  “Had not!” interrupted Helen, “I always heard — —”

  “He did not think so, my dear; no matter what others thought, at least so I felt at that time. My identity is so much changed that I can look back upon this now, and tell it all to you calmly.

  “It was at a rehearsal of ancient music; I went there accidentally one morning without my mother, with a certain old duchess and her daughters; the dowager full of some Indian screen which she was going to buy; the daughters, intent, one of them, on a quarrel between two of the singers; the other upon loves and hates of her own. I was the only one of the party who had any real taste for music. I was then particularly fond of it.

  “Well, my dear, I must come to the point,” her voice changing as she spoke.—”After such a lapse of time, during which my mind, my whole self has so changed, I could not have believed before I began to speak on this subject, that these reminiscences could have so moved me; but it is merely this sudden wakening of ideas long dormant, for years not called up, never put into words.

  “I was sitting, wrapt in a silent ecstasy of pleasure, leaning back behind the whispering party, when I saw him come in, and, thinking only of his sharing my delight, I made an effort to catch his attention, but he did not see me — his eye was fixed on another; I followed that eye, and saw that most beautiful creature on which it fixed; I saw him seat himself beside her — one look was enough — it was conviction. A pang went through me; I grew cold, but made no sound nor motion; I gasped for breath, I believe, but I did not faint. None cared for me; I was unnoticed — saved from the abasement of pity. I struggled to retain my self-command, and was enabled to complete the purpose on which I then — even then, resolved. That resolve gave me force.

  “In any great emotion we can speak better to those who do not care for us than to those who feel for us. More calmly than I now speak to you, I turned to the person who then sat beside me, to the dowager whose heart was in the Indian screen, and begged that I might not longer detain her, as I wished that she would carry me home — she readily complied: I had presence of mind enough to move when we could do so without attracting attention. It was well that woman talked as she did all the way home; she never saw, never suspected, the agony of her to whom she spoke. I ran up to my own room, bolted the door, and threw myself into a chair; that is the last thing I remember, till I found myself lying on the floor, wakening from a state of insensibility. I know not what time had elapsed; so as soon as I could I rang for my maid; she had knocked at my door, and, supposing I slept, had not disturbed me — my mother, I found, had not yet returned.

  “I dressed for dinner: HE was to dine with us. It was my custom to see him for a few minutes before the rest of the company arrived. No time ever appeared to me so dreadfully long as the interval between my being dressed that day and his arrival.

  “I heard him coming up stairs: my heart heat so violently that I feared I should not be able to speak with dignity and composure, but the motive was sufficient.

  “What I said I know not; I am certain only that it was without one word of reproach. What I had at one glance foreboded was true — he acknowledged it. I released him from all engagement to me. I saw he was evidently relieved by the determined tone of my refusal — at what expense to my heart lie was set free, he saw not — never knew — never suspected. But after that first involuntary expression of the pleasure of relief, I saw in his countenance surprise, a sort of mortified astonishment at my self-possession. I own my woman’s pride enjoyed this; it was something better than pride — the sense of the preservation of my dignity. I felt that in this shipwreck of my happiness I made no cowardly exposure of my feelings, but he did not understand me. Our minds, as I now found, moved in different orbits. We could not comprehend each other. Instead of feeling, as the instinct of generosity would have taught him to feel, that I was sacrificing my happiness to his, he told me that he now believed I had never loved him. My eyes were opened — I saw him at once as he really was. The ungenerous look upon self-devotion as madness, folly, or art: he could not think me a fool, he did not think me mad, artful I believe he did suspect me to be; he concluded that I made the discovery of his inconstancy an excuse for my own; he thought me, perhaps, worse than capricious, interested — for, our engagement being unknown, a lover of higher rank had, in the interval, presented himself. My perception of this base suspicion was useful to me at the moment, as it roused my spirit, and I went through the better, and without relapse of tenderness, with that which I had undertaken. One condition only I made; I insisted that this explanation should rest between us two; that, in fact, and in manner, the breaking off the match should be left entirely to me. And to this part of the business I now look back with satisfaction, and I have honest pride in telling you, who will feel the same for me, that I practised in the whole conduct of the affair no deceit of any kind, not one falsehood was told. The world knew nothing; there my mother had been prudent. She was the only person to whom I was bound to explain — to speak, I mean, for I did not feel myself bound to explain. Perfect confidence only can command perfect confidence in whatever relation of life. I told her all that she had a right to know. I announced to her that the intended marriage could never be — that I objected to it; that both our minds were changed; that we were both satisfied in having released each other from our mutual engagement. I had, as I foresaw, to endure my mother’s anger, her entreaties, her endless surprise, her bitter disappointment; but she exhausted all these, and her mind turned sooner than I had expected to that hope of higher establishment which amused her during the rest of the season in London. Two months of it were still to be passed — to me the two most painful months of my existence. The daily, nightly, effort of appearing in public, while I was thus wretched, in the full gala of life in the midst of the young, the gay, the happy — broken-hearted as I felt — it was an effort beyond my strength. That summer was, I remember, intolerably hot. Whenever my mother observed that I looked pale, and that my spirits were not so good as formerly, I exerted myself more and more; accepted every invitation because I dared not refuse; I danced at this ball, and the next, and the next; urged on, I finished to the dregs the dissipation of the season.

  “My mother certainly made me do dreadfully too much. But I blame others, as we usually do when we are ourselves the most to blame — I had attempted that which could not be done. By suppressing all outward sign of suffering, allowing no vent for sorrow in words or tears — by actual force of compression — I thought at once to extinguish my feelings. Little did I know of the human heart when I thought this! The weak are wise in yielding to the first shock. They cannot be struck to the earth who sink prostrate; sorrow has little power where there is no resistance.—’The flesh will follow where the pincers tear.’ Mine was a presumptuous — it had nearly been a fatal struggle. That London season at last over, we got into the country; I expected rest, but found none. The pressing necessity for exertion over, the stimulus ceasing, I sunk — sunk into a state of apathy. Time enough had elapsed between the breaking off of my marriage and the appearance of this illness, to prevent any ideas on my mother’s part of cause and effect, ideas indeed which were never much looked for, or well joined in her mind. The world knew nothing of the matter. My illness we
nt under the convenient head ‘nervous.’ I heard all the opinions pronounced on my case, and knew they were all mistaken, but I swallowed whatever they pleased. No physician, I repeated to myself, can ‘minister to a mind diseased.’

  “I tried to call religion to my aid; but my religious sentiments were, at that time, tinctured with the enthusiasm of my early character. Had I been a Catholic, I should have escaped from my friends and thrown myself into a cloister; as it was, I had formed a strong wish to retire from that world which was no longer anything to me: the spring of passion, which I then thought the spring of life, being broken, I meditated my resolution secretly and perpetually as I lay on my bed. They used to read to me, and, among other things, some papers of ‘The Rambler,’ which I liked not at all; its tripod sentences tired my ear, but I let them go on — as well one sound as another.

  “It chanced that one night, as I was going to sleep, an eastern story in ‘The Rambler,’ was read to me, about some man, a-weary of the world, who took to the peaceful hermitage. There was a regular moral tagged to the end of it, a thing I hate, the words were, ‘No life pleasing to God that is not useful to man.’ When I wakened in the middle of that night, this sentence was before my eyes, and the words seemed to repeat themselves over and over again to my ears when I was sinking to sleep. The impression remained in my mind, and though I never voluntarily recurred to it, came out long afterwards, perfectly fresh, and became a motive of action.

  “Strange, mysterious connection between mind and body; in mere animal nature we see the same. The bird wakened from his sleep to be taught a tune sung to him in the dark, and left to sleep again, — the impression rests buried within him, and weeks afterward he comes out with the tune perfect. But these are only phenomena of memory — mine was more extraordinary. I am not sure that I can explain it to you. In my weak state, my understanding enfeebled as much as my body — my reason weaker than my memory, I could not help allowing myself to think that the constant repetition of that sentence was a warning sent to me from above. As I grew stronger, the superstition died away, but the sense of the thing still remained with me. It led me to examine and reflect. It did more than all my mother’s entreaties could effect. I had refused to see any human creature, but I now consented to admit a few. The charm was broken. I gave up my longing for solitude, my plan of retreat from the world; suffered myself to be carried where they pleased — to Brighton it was — to my mother’s satisfaction. I was ready to appear in the ranks of fashion at the opening of the next London campaign. Automatically I ‘ran my female exercises o’er’ with as good grace as ever. I had followers and proposals; but my mother was again thrown into despair by what she called the short work I made with my admirers, scarcely allowing decent time for their turning into lovers before I warned them not to think of me. I have heard that women who have suffered from man’s inconstancy are disposed afterwards to revenge themselves by inflicting pain such as they have themselves endured, and delight in all the cruelty of coquetry. It was not so with me. Mine was too deep a wound — skinned over — not callous, and all danger of its opening again I dreaded. I had lovers the more, perhaps, because I cared not for them; till amongst them there came one who, as I saw, appreciated my character, and, as I perceived, was becoming seriously attached. To prevent danger to his happiness, as he would take no other warning, I revealed to him the state of my mind. However humiliating the confession, I thought it due to him. I told him that I had no heart to give — that I had received none in return for that with which I had parted, and that love was over with me.

  “‘As a passion, it may be so, not as an affection,’ was his reply.

  “The words opened to me a view of his character. I saw, too, by his love increasing with his esteem, the solidity of his understanding, and the nobleness of his nature. He went deeper and deeper into my mind, till he came to a spring of gratitude, which rose and overflowed, vivifying and fertilising the seemingly barren waste. I believe it to be true that, after the first great misfortune, persons never return to be the same that they were before, but this I know — and this it is important you should be convinced of, my dear Helen — that the mind, though sorely smitten, can recover its powers. A mind, I mean, sustained by good principles, and by them made capable of persevering efforts for its own recovery. It may be sure of regaining, in time — observe, I say in time — its healthful tone.

  “Time was given to me by that kind, that noble being, who devoted himself to me with a passion which I could not return — but, with such affection as I could give, and which he assured me would make his happiness, I determined to devote to him the whole of my future existence. Happiness for me, I thought, was gone, except in so far as I could make him happy.

  “I married Lord Davenant — much against my mother’s wish, for he was then the younger of three brothers, and with a younger brother’s very small portion. Had it been a more splendid match, I do not think I could have been prevailed on to give my consent. I could not have been sure of my own motives, or rather my pride would not have been clear as to the opinion which others might form. This was a weakness, for in acting we ought to depend upon ourselves, and not to look for the praise or blame of others; but I let you see me as I am, or as I was: I do not insist, like Queen Elizabeth, in having my portrait without shade.”

  CHAPTER VIII.

  “I am proud to tell you, that at the time I married we were so poor, that I was obliged to give up many of those luxuries to which I was entitled, and to which I had been so accustomed, that the doing without them had till then hardly come within my idea of possibility. Our whole establishment was on the most humble scale.

  “I look back to this period of my life with the greatest satisfaction. I had exquisite pleasure, like all young people of sanguine temperament and generous disposition, in the consciousness of the capability of making sacrifices. This notion was my idol, the idol of the inmost sanctuary of my mind, and I worshipped it with all the energies of body and soul.

  “In the course of a few years, my husband’s two elder brothers died. If you have any curiosity to know how, I will tell you, though indeed it is as little to the purpose as half the things people tell in their histories. The eldest, a homebred lordling, who, from the moment he slipped his mother’s apron-strings, had fallen into folly, and then, to show himself manly, run into vice, lost his life in a duel about some lady’s crooked thumb, or more crooked mind.

  “The second brother distinguished himself in the navy; he died the death of honour; he fell gloriously, and was by his country honoured — by his country mourned.

  “After the death of this young man, the inheritance came to my husband. Fortune soon after poured in upon us a tide of wealth, swelled by collateral streams.

  “You will wish to know what effect this change of circumstances produced upon my mind, and you shall, as far as I know it myself. I fancied that it would have made none, because I had been before accustomed to all the trappings of wealth; yet it did make a greater change in my feelings than you could have imagined, or I could have conceived. The possibility of producing a great effect in society, of playing a distinguished part, and attaining an eminence which pleased my fancy, had never till now been within my reach. The incense of fame had been wafted near me, but not to me — near my husband I mean, yet not to him; I had heard his brother’s name from the trumpet of fame, I longed to hear his own. I knew, what to the world was then unknown, his great talents for civil business, which, if urged into action, might make him distinguished as a statesman even beyond his hero brother, but I knew that in him ambition, if it ever awoke, must be awakened by love. Conscious of my influence, I determined to use it to the utmost.

  “Lord Davenant had not at that time taken any part in politics, but from his connections he could ask and obtain; and there was one in the world for whom I desired to obtain a favour of importance. It chanced that he, whom I have mentioned to you as my inconstant lover, now married to my lovely rival, was at this time in some diff
iculty about a command abroad. His connections, though of very high rank were not now in power. He had failed in some military exploit which had formerly been intrusted to him. He was anxious to retrieve his character; his credit, his whole fate in life, depended on his obtaining this appointment, which, at my request, was secured to him by Lord Davenant. The day it was obtained was, I think, the proudest of my life. I was proud of returning good for evil; that was a Christian pride, if pride can be Christian. I was proud of showing that in me there was none of the fury of a woman scorned — no sense of the injury of charms despised.

  “But it was not yet the fulness of success; it had pained me in the midst of my internal triumph, that my husband had been obliged to use intermediate powers to obtain that which I should have desired should have been obtained by his own. Why should not he be in that first place of rule? He could hold the balance with a hand as firm, an eye as just. That he should be in the House of Peers was little satisfaction to me, unless distinguished among his peers. It was this distinction that I burned to see obtained by Lord Davenant; I urged him forward then by all the motives which make ambition virtue. He was averse from public life, partly from indolence of temper, partly from sound philosophy: power was low in the scale in his estimate of human happiness; he saw how little can be effected of real good in public by any individual; he felt it scarcely worth his while to stir from his easy chair of domestic happiness. However, love urged him on, and inspired him, if not with ambition, at least with what looked like it in public. He entered the lists, and in the political tournament tilted successfully. Many were astonished, for, till they came against him in the joust, they had no notion of his weight, or of his skill in arms; and many seriously inclined to believe that Lord Davenant was only Lady Davenant in disguise, and all he said, wrote, and did, was attributed to me. Envy gratifies herself continually by thus shifting the merit from one person to another; in hopes that the actual quantity may be diminished, she tries to make out that it is never the real person, but somebody else who does that which is good. This silly, base propensity might have cost me dear, would have cost me my husband’s affections, had he not been a man, as there are few, above all jealousy of female influence or female talent; in short, he knew his own superiority, and needed not to measure himself to prove his height. He is quite content, rather glad, that every body should set him down as a common-place character. Far from being jealous of his wife’s ruling him, he was amused by the notion: it flattered his pride, and it was convenient to his indolence; it fell in, too, with his peculiar humour. The more I retired, the more I was put forward, he, laughing behind me, prompted and forbade me to look back.