Collected Works of Frances Trollope

by Frances Milton Trollope

She wanted, however, no right-minded confessor to tell her, that in her bold longing for death, she had sinned against the benign law of nature, which teaches us, till reason itself is shaken, that the consciousness of existence is a blessing, and that it is the will of our Creator that it should be so.

  This truth soon rushed back upon her heart, and brought repentance with it; and then she set herself to think deliberately of her position, and patiently endeavoured, as far as her agitated spirits would permit her to do so, to discover, amidst a choice of evils, what line of conduct she could pursue which would be the most likely to reconcile herself to her own conscience, and most contribute to the happiness of her father.

  It had so happened that on that evening, at a ball given by one of the magnates of the Paris season, Rupert had for more than one dance become the partner of one of the loveliest girls in the room. It had happened, too, that he had not once asked her to dance; a liberty which had become almost a usage, once in the course of every evening that they met in a ball-room.

  This omission on his part was by no means accidental, having been occasioned by his over-hearing a royal duke declare, that he must contrive to get one waltz with the beautiful Baroness de Schwanberg, as there was no Frenchwoman who could compete with her in her national dance.

  On hearing this, the discreet Rupert determined that his modest claim should not be made till this dance with the noble duke had been performed; but some accident or other prevented its ever being performed at all; and the consequence of this was, that the ball began, and ended, without poor Gertrude’s having received the anxiously-looked-for invitation from her father’s modest secretary, to take the accustomed “tour de waltz”—” What great events from little causes spring!”

  The bitterness of Gertrude’s disappointment certainly bore no reasonable proportion to its importance; but it may be said in her defence, that she had long been kept in a state of very torturing uncertainty, and her mind harassed; and her spirits weakened by this, had left her unable to judge fairly either of his conduct, or her own.

  She retired to her room that night in the full persuasion that she was not only an object of perfect indifference to him, but that he had seen — or suspected — what her feelings were for him; and that his neglect of her throughout the evening proceeded from a friendly and honourable wish to cure her of a folly which he did not share, and which could only be productive of misery to her.

  Yet, in the midst of the agony produced by this persuasion, she did him justice; nay, she did him more than justice; for she not only gave him credit for the honourable discretion which had dictated the cautious reserve with which he always treated her; but for the absence of all such weakness on his part as might have led him to wish that they had been differently situated.

  That night, or, at least, all that was left of it, was passed by the unhappy girl in very earnest and very praiseworthy efforts to take such a review of her own position, and the duties which it reasonably imposed on her, as might enable her so to act, as in some degree to reconcile her to herself.

  Nor was this truly conscientious effort made in vain — such efforts rarely are; and just as the sun began to peep through the crevices of her window shutters, she fell into a peaceful sleep, which lasted till Teresa thought “it would be quite nonsense to let it last any longer.”

  CHAPTER XXV.

  THE results of that night’s meditation were more enduring than the sweet sleep which followed it. Gertrude’s first sensation on awaking was, that she had undergone some violent change; nor were the more deliberate thoughts which followed, at all calculated to remove this impression. If she had herself described this change, it is probable that she might have said: “I had lost my senses before it, but now I have recovered them.”

  Were I to attempt giving a detailed description of the state of Gertrude’s mental condition, as it had been when she awoke on the previous day, and as she felt it to be now, the discrepancy would appear too strong to be rationally accounted for; but those who have studied the strange varieties of human character, know that what might be truly termed unnatural in one, may, with equal justice, be pronounced essentially natural in another.

  There was so much of the earnestness of truth in the character of Gertrude, that, whatever she felt, she felt deeply; and whatever she purposed to do, she purposed firmly. Nor, on the present occasion, were reasons wanting to justify the change which she resolved to achieve, not only in her future conduct, but her future feelings., “The madness has lasted long enough,” she murmured. “Young as I am, I have already spent whole years of life in doting upon one who doted not on me; and, more sinful still, I have been hardening my heart during the whole of this ill-spent time against my own father. Alas! alas! Of how much finer a quality is the love of his heart than the love of mine! And yet, have I ever for a moment ceased to consider myself as his superior in all intellectual, ay, and in all moral qualities? ‘Take physic, vanity,’ clear your vision a little before you repose on your own view of the case, with such perfect satisfaction.”

  It would be difficult to imagine any state of things more favourable for the gracious reception Count Hernwold’s proposals than was thus produced.

  Gertrude had breakfasted in her own dressing-room — an arrangement by no means uncommon with her since her abode in Paris — as her own hours of rising had become later, while those of her father had remained unchanged. Madame Odenthal had been her companion at breakfast, but had left the room when her father entered it. She perceived, the moment he entered the room, that some great event had happened, and was not left long in doubt as to the nature of it. The “Almanack de Gotha” was in his hand, and he flourished it triumphantly over his head as he approached her.

  Gertrude was very pale when the door opened upon her, but before the baron and his Almanack had reached her table, she was red enough.

  “You were inspired, Gertrude! My noble-hearted Gertrude, you were, you must have been inspired, when the admirable idea occurred to you of consulting this precious volume as a preservative against every wish of contaminating the purity of your race, by uniting yourself with any whose ancestors or connections are not found to have their names enrolled in this invaluable volume!”

  These words were quite enough to enlighten her upon the nature of the errand which had brought her father to visit her, instead of his waiting for her to make a visit to him, as was her daily usage. —

  Her feelings would have been vastly different had a similar circumstance occurred to her on the preceding day. The sight of her father and his Almanack then, would have roused within her a spirit of resistance which might have led to very painful domestic results; but now the case was very different. For one short moment, for half a moment perhaps, she again felt her wicked wish to die.... But in the next, she positively breathed a silent, desperate exclamation, which, if it had been expressed in words, must have been rendered, “Thank God!”

  Her noble father, however, was much too full of the business which brought him there, to have any speculation to bestow upon her manner of receiving it. The fact that the high-born, wealthy, and illustrious Count Hernwold had asked for the honour and happiness of her hand in marriage, was uttered once, twice, thrice, before he dreamed of pausing to ascertain what her answer might be.

  But was he not justified in this? Did he not carry his justification in his hand? So, no less than three different pages did his well-taught fingers turn, and on each did the name and title of Count Hernwold meet his search.

  “We have not waited for nothing, have we, my Gertrude?

  These alliances are all but royal, and nowhere, I will be bold to say, could a man so allied have made a better choice.”

  While this happy rhapsody was pronounced again, again, and again, with but little variation either in words or tone, the bride-elect was occupied in recalling her meditations of the preceding night, and again she inwardly breathed, “Thank God!”

  Nor was she far wrong in thinking that such a terminat
ion would be better than the continuation of the lamentable state in which she had already passed what ought to be the brightest, if not the happiest years of life. To love, and love, and love in vain, with the additional misery of knowing that her love was both sinful, as an act of disobedience to her father’s will, and contemptible in her own eyes, from the thought that it had been never solicited, was surely more dreadful still.

  It was not many hours since she had arrived at the full conviction that this last crowning misery of Rupert’s indifference had been proved beyond the reach of hope to contradict it; and if it had been her habit, as it was that of her father, to persuade herself that everything which befell her was in consequence of a deviation from the laws of nature, permitted for her particular gratification and advantage, she would assuredly have believed that this opportune proposal of marriage from a person whose name was to be found in the “Almanack de Gotha,” was the result of a special dispensation of Providence.

  Her manner of receiving the intelligence thus brought, was, therefore, not exactly triumphant; but, though she again became, for a few moments, extremely pale, she displayed no indication of repugnance.

  “Was it not a blessed dispensation that brought us here, Gertrude?” he said, clasping Ins hands together, in an attitude of devotion. “Our thanks must be rendered in our own chapel, Gertrude; and Father Alaric must be instructed to select proper services for the occasion. And now tell me, my dear love,” he continued, “in what apartment you would wish to receive my Lord Count, when he waits upon you to offer his personal homage? Will you admit him here, Gertrude?”

  The wretched girl half rose from her chair; but, fortunately, she did not raise her eyes from the floor; if she had, not even the baron’s seven-fold shield of dulness could have prevented him from seeing something there which would have startled him.

  In that short moment, however, Gertrude found time to resolve that all she had already suffered, should not have been suffered in vain, and that the fate she had decided upon for herself should not be rendered more lingering, and more bitter still, by any wavering feebleness in her manner of meeting it.

  She instantly reseated herself, and replied, in a tone which had perhaps a touch of haughtiness in its dignity: “No, Sir, if you please; not here. In my estimation, there would be greatly too much familiarity in receiving such a visit here. Let him find me in the great drawing-room, if you please.”

  The baron clasped his hands, raised his eyes to Heaven, and whispered, quite audibly, his fervent thanks to the Virgin Mary, for having inspired the heart of his child with such noble feelings!

  There are, probably, many causes, none of them very strictly philosophical, which may enable a woman — and even a young one — to assume an aspect of composure, when her pulses may not be making very healthful movements. Some such must have been at work at the heart of Gertrude during this tremendous visit from Count Hernwold; for it would have been difficult for any young lady to have displayed more perfect self-possession.

  The interview, however, did not last long; but when, exactly at the moment when everything desirable upon the occasion had been uttered, Gertrude rose to leave the room, the Count, as he handed her to the door, declared, with no faltering accent, that he considered himself at that moment to be, beyond any possible reach of comparison, the happiest man upon the surface of the globe called earth.

  CHAPTER XXVI.

  As Rupert Odenthal had lived for several years of his life without being at all certain what his own feelings were with respect to the Baroness Gertrude von Schwanberg, it would be hardly fair to expect that the faithful chronicler who has undertaken to relate his adventures, should venture to state any positive opinion on the subject at this very particularly perplexed period of his existence.

  Let it suffice to say, that whatever his feelings were, on hearing that the young lady was about to be married immediately to the Count Hernwold, he never uttered a single word expressive of them, to any one.

  His mother once touched upon the subject, upon finding herself tête-à-tête with him, shortly after the important news had been announced throughout the family, but the conversation was cut short very abruptly by his starting up and leaving the room; but ere he passed through the door, he turned to her, and said, ‘‘For mercy’s sake, my dearest mother, do not begin haranguing me on this subject! I hear of it from every soul in the house, and out of it till I am positively sick of the pompous old fool’s name! Just; fancy what it must be for me to have my lord, the baron, rehearsing the titles and alliances of his strutting son-in-law from morning to night! Don’t you begin on the same theme, or I really shall be tempted to run away.”

  His mother smiled, and nodded very good-humouredly, fairly confessing, as she said, that they were likely to hear enough of my Lord the Count, without entertaining each other on the subject.

  And so they parted, and Madame Odenthal kept her promise, and did not trouble her son with any further observations on the subject.

  But she did not promise that she would not herself, when in silence and in solitude, dwell upon this subject with the most heartfelt satisfaction.

  Though far, very far, from knowing, or even suspecting the whole truth as to the feelings of Gertrude or of Rupert for each other, she had, nevertheless, often spent anxious hours, both by night and by day, lest these two young people, so perilously thrown together, might learn at last to love each other too well.

  To have become a spy upon both, or either of them, would have been repugnant to her nature; and her disposition in this respect had, doubtless, kept her ignorant of much that might have been very obviously evident to one of a different temper. However, there was much that was very puzzling and contradictory in the conduct of both; so that what she half made up her mind to believe one day, she rejected as perfectly untenable the next.

  But, for all that, she could not be said to be at all easy in her mind upon the subject, and most assuredly it was a great relief to her to hear that her beautiful Gertrude was about to become Countess of Hernwold.

  But the silence of Madame Odenthal on the subject, or the silence of her son either, mattered little, and was noticed less; for so many, both in the house and out of it, appeared to talk of nothing else, that their voices on the subject could scarcely have been heard, and were certainly not missed.

  It is not my fault, if my readers are not already aware, that the Baron von Schwanberg was a very pompous gentleman; and with so very splendid a marriage in prospect for his daughter, they need scarcely be told now that his preparations for it were made to ring, not only through his own abode, and those of all his numerous fine friends and acquaintance, but that the most fashionable tradesmen in Paris soon became aware, that if they knew their own interest, they would speedily set every available agent at work, in order to secure a share of the golden harvest which this union of wealth with wealth, seemed to promise them.

  But though the Count Hernwold was a very pompous man, on some points perhaps almost as pompous as his magnificent intended father-in-law, he had the discretion to give vent to his own overwhelming consciousness of superiority, less in words than in actions.

  He had informed this delighted father-in-law, that he conceived it would be absolutely necessary for sustaining properly the position of himself and his noble bride, that, in addition to their various country residences, they should have a permanent hôtel in the most distinguished quarter of Paris.

  Now if, instead of concluding this dignified announcement by the word PARIS, Count Hernwold had named PERU, the baron would scarcely have had sufficient presence of mind to testify, or even to feel astonishment; for the Baron von Schwanberg knew that there might be some few who were superior on some points. Groat as he was, he was not, for instance, one of the Heaven-elected few, destined to wear a regal crown; and he could hardly be said to have ever expressed any positive discontent at this dispensation of Providence. He knew perfectly well that the earth contained but very few crowned heads; and it was, d
oubtless, this consideration which had enabled him to reconcile himself with so little difficulty to not being one of the number.

  But, this class set aside, he certainly had a most comfortable conviction, that he had an exceedingly good right to compete with all the rest of the human race, without running any great risk of finding a superior, or even an equal, among them.

  Yet, greatly as he gloried in his noble pedigree and his large possessions, he was quite aware that he could not hold the superior station assigned him by Providence, had he no other claim to pre-eminence.

  He knew that there were pedigrees as ancient, and races as pure as his own, and that there were sundry estates as large, or larger. But he had, certainly, never yet made up his mind to believe that, take him for all in all, there could be found another individual equal to himself in all respects.

  He probably never had asked himself whether he thought that any other man living could stand as upright, or balance himself as securely upon his legs, as he could do; but, on the other hand, it is pretty certain, that if he had asked himself such a question, he would have answered, to the best of his knowledge and belief, No.

  On one point, and one point ONLY, had he as yet brought himself to believe that he might meet a superior; and it so happened that the Count Hernwold was one of the distinguished personages to whom he was willing to accord this superiority.

  In short, the Baron von Schwanberg felt that Ins destined son-in-law was more a man of the world, that is to say, of the fashionable world, than himself. This superiority was, of course, the more readily accorded by the baron, from the obvious fact, that no man can be in two places at once; and therefore it was impossible that he could, while passing his days in the stately dignity of his own castle, be enabled to become a well-known and distinguished member of the fashionable world in Paris.

  Had his daughter been a son, it is likely enough that he would have preferred a continuation of the same remote dignity for him, to every other; but since his arrival at Paris, he seemed somehow or other to have become aware that there was more fuss made about a well-born woman of fashion, than even about a stiff-backed old baron, of sixteen quarters.