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My uncle was charmed with the arrangement. The beauty was a peculiar favourite of his, and, in fact, he was sometimes pleased to hint that he had private reasons for love towards her mother’s daughter. Of the truth of this insinuation I am, however, more than somewhat suspicious, and believe it was only a little ruse of the good knight, in order to excuse the vent of those kindly affections with which (while the heartless tone of the company his youth had frequented made him ashamed to own it) his breast overflowed. There was in Lady Hasselton’s familiarity—her ease of manner—a certain good-nature mingled with her affectation, and a gayety of spirit, which never flagged,—something greatly calculated to win favour with a man of my uncle’s temper.
An old gentleman who filled in her family the office of “the chevalier” in a French one; namely, who told stories; not too long, and did not challenge you for interrupting them; who had a good air, and unexceptionable pedigree,—a turn for wit, literature, note-writing, and the management of lap-dogs; who could attend Madame to auctions, plays, courts, and the puppet-show; who had a right to the best company, but would, on a signal, give up his seat to any one the pretty capricieuse whom he served might select from the worst,—in short a very useful, charming personage, “vastly” liked by all, and “prodigiously” respected by none,—this gentleman, I say, by name Mr. Lovell, had attended her ladyship in her excursion to Devereux Court. Besides him there came also a widow lady, a distant relation, with one eye and a sharp tongue,—the Lady Needleham, whom the beauty carried about with her as a sort of gouvernante or duenna. These excellent persons made my compagnons de voyage, and filled the remaining complements of the coach. To say truth, and to say nothing of my tendresse for the Lady Hasselton, I was very anxious to escape the ridicule of crawling up to the town like a green beetle, in my uncle’s verdant chariot, with the four Flanders mares trained not to exceed two miles an hour. And my Lady Hasselton’s private raileries—for she was really well bred, and made no jest of my uncle’s antiquities of taste, in his presence, at least—had considerably heightened my intuitive dislike to that mode of transporting myself to the metropolis. The day before my departure, Gerald, for the first time, spoke of it.
Glancing towards the mirror, which gave in full contrast the magnificent beauty of his person, and the smaller proportions and plainer features of my own, he said with a sneer, “Your appearance must create a wonderful sensation in town.”
“No doubt of it,” said I, taking his words literally, and arraying my laced cravat with the air of a petit-maitre.
“What a wit the Count has!” whispered the Duchess of Lackland, who had not yet given up all hope of the elder brother.
“Wit!” said the Lady Hasselton; “poor child, he is a perfect simpleton!”
CHAPTER XV
I TOOK the first opportunity to escape from the good company who were so divided in opinion as to my mental accomplishments, and repaired to my mother; for whom, despite of her evenness of disposition, verging towards insensibility, I felt a powerful and ineffaceable affection. Indeed, if purity of life, rectitude of intentions, and fervour of piety can win love, none ever deserved it more than she. It was a pity that, with such admirable qualities, she had not more diligently cultivated her affections. The seed was not wanting; but it had been neglected. Originally intended for the veil, she had been taught, early in life, that much feeling was synonymous with much sin; and she had so long and so carefully repressed in her heart every attempt of the forbidden fruit to put forth a single blossom, that the soil seemed at last to have become incapable of bearing it. If, in one corner of this barren but sacred spot, some green and tender verdure of affection did exist, it was, with a partial and petty reserve for my twin-brother, kept exclusive, and consecrated to Aubrey. His congenial habits of pious silence and rigid devotion; his softness of temper; his utter freedom from all boyish excesses, joined to his almost angelic beauty,—a quality which, in no female heart, is ever without its value,—were exactly calculated to attract her sympathy, and work themselves into her love. Gerald was also regular in his habits, attentive to devotion, and had, from an early period, been high in the favour of her spiritual director. Gerald, too, if he had not the delicate and dream-like beauty of Aubrey, possessed attractions of a more masculine and decided order; and for Gerald, therefore, the Countess gave the little of love that she could spare from Aubrey. To me she manifested the most utter indifference. My difficult and fastidious temper; my sarcastic turn of mind; my violent and headstrong passions; my daring, reckless and, when roused, almost ferocious nature,—all, especially, revolted the even and polished and quiescent character of my maternal parent. The little extravagances of my childhood seemed to her pure and inexperienced mind the crimes of a heart naturally distorted and evil; my jesting vein, which, though it never, even in the wantonness of youth, attacked the substances of good, seldom respected its semblances and its forms, she considered as the effusions of malignity; and even the bursts of love, kindness, and benevolence, which were by no means unfrequent in my wild and motley character, were so foreign to her stillness of temperament that they only revolted her by their violence, instead of affecting her by their warmth.
Nor did she like me the better for the mutual understanding between my uncle and myself. On the contrary, shocked by the idle and gay turn of the knight’s conversation, the frivolities of his mind, and his heretical disregard for the forms of the religious sect which she so zealously espoused, she was utterly insensible to the points which redeemed and ennobled his sterling and generous character; utterly obtuse to his warmth of heart,—his overflowing kindness of disposition,—his charity,—his high honour,—his justice of principle, that nothing save benevolence could warp,—and the shrewd, penetrating sense, which, though often clouded by foibles and humorous eccentricity, still made the stratum of his intellectual composition. Nevertheless, despite her prepossessions against us both, there was in her temper something so gentle, meek, and unupbraiding, that even the sense of injustice lost its sting, and one could not help loving the softness of her character, while one was most chilled by its frigidity. Anger, hope, fear, the faintest breath or sign of passion, never seemed to stir the breezeless languor of her feelings; and quiet was so inseparable from her image that I have almost thought, like that people described by Herodotus, her very sleep could never be disturbed by dreams.
Yes! how fondly, how tenderly I loved her! What tears, secret but deep, bitter but unreproaching, have I retired to shed, when I caught her cold and unaffectionate glance! How (unnoticed and uncared for) have I watched and prayed and wept without her door when a transitory sickness or suffering detained her within; and how, when stretched myself upon the feverish bed to which my early weakness of frame often condemned me,—how have I counted the moments to her punctilious and brief visit, and started as I caught her footstep, and felt my heart leap within me as she approached! and then, as I heard her cold tone and looked upon her unmoved face, how bitterly have I turned away with all that repressed and crushed affection which was construed into sullenness or disrespect! O mighty and enduring force of early associations, that almost seems, in its unconquerable strength, to partake of an innate prepossession, that binds the son to the mother who concealed him in her womb and purchased life for him with the travail of death?—fountain of filial love, which coldness cannot freeze, nor injustice embitter, nor pride divert into fresh channels, nor time, and the hot suns of our toiling manhood, exhaust,—even at this moment, how livingly do you gush upon my heart, and water with your divine waves the memories that yet flourish amidst the sterility of years?
I approached the apartments appropriated to my mother: I knocked at her door; one of her women admitted me. The Countess was sitting on a high-backed chair, curiously adorned with tapestry. Her feet, which were remarkable for their beauty, were upon a velvet cushion; three hand-maids stood round her, and she herself was busily employed in a piece of delicate embroidery, an art in which she eminently excelled.
“The Count, Madam!” said the woman who had admitted me, placing a chair beside my mother, and then retiring to join her sister maidens.
“Good day to you, my son,” said the Countess,