“Where pride and passion frame the nuptial chain, Time must the gilding from the fetter wear;
Love’s golden links alone unchanged remain,
Hallowed by faith, to be renewed in heaven again.”
“She has not a particle of pride!” Such may be the judgment of the world, which looks not below the surface, but the recording angel may give a very different account. Let us examine a little more closely into the character of the countess, and see if she may fairly be ranked amongst the poor in spirit, of whom is the kingdom of heaven.
Annabella had been an orphan almost from her birth, and had been brought up by a tender grandmother, since deceased, who had made an idol of her little darling, the heiress to all her wealth. As soon as the child had power to frame a sentence, that sentence was law to the household. Annabella, the fairy queen, acquired a habit of ruling, which gave a permanent cast to her mind. Gifted with joyous spirits, a sweet temper, and a strong desire to please, her pride was seldom offensive. Annabella’s subjects were willing, for the sovereign was beloved.
[61]
As the child grew into the woman, her views began to expand; she desired a wider sway. Annabella was not contented to rule merely in a household, to influence only a small circle of friends. Like those who cut their names on a pyramid, she was ambitious of leaving her mark on the world. The only instrument by which it seemed possible to accomplish this object of ambition was the pen. If “the press” is the fourth power in the state, Annabella resolved to have a share in that power. She had a lively fancy, a ready wit, and, to her transporting delight, her first essay was successful. The young lady’s contributions to a monthly periodical were indeed sent under a nom de guerre, but Annabella’s darling hope was to make that adopted title of “Egeria” famous throughout the land.
It was at this point of her history that the Earl of Dashleigh, smarting under the sting of mortified pride, and casually thrown much into the charming society of Annabella, made her the offer of his hand. The eye of the young heiress had not, like that of her cousin Ida, been fixed upon objects so high that the glare of earthly grandeur died away before it like the sparkles of fireworks below. Annabella was completely dazzled by the idea of such a brilliant alliance. Her imagination immediately invested the young earl with every great and glorious quality. Love threw a halo around him, and the maiden fancied that she saw realized in her noble suitor every[62] poetical dream of her girlhood. Nor was love the only chord that vibrated to rapture in the heart of Dashleigh’s young bride. Did not this elevation to rank and dignity offer at once a wider sphere to her eager ambition? From the rapidity of her conquest, Annabella deemed that her power over the earl would be unbounded, little imagining how much that conquest was owing to the effect of his pride and pique.
Marriage soon undeceived Annabella. She found herself united to a man at least as proud as herself, though his pride took a different form. As long as the bride was contented simply to please, there was domestic harmony; Annabella was happy in her husband, and he thought that no companion could be so agreeable as his witty and lively wife. But the moment that the countess attempted to rule, the elements of discord began to work. The earl, who never lost consciousness of high birth and distinguished rank, was aware that he had married one who, though of good family, was yet considerably below himself in social position. This, however, would have mattered little, had Annabella readily accommodated herself to the new circumstances in which she was placed. The nobleman, in the famous old tale, had deigned to wed even the humble Griselda; he had had no reason to regret his choice, but then there was a difference, wide as north from south, between Griselda and Annabella! As soon as the[63] young countess became aware that her husband felt that he had stooped a little when he raised her to share his rank, all her pride at once rose in arms. She was more determined than ever to assert the independence which she regarded as the right of her sex.
The bond which pride had first helped to form was ill fitted to bear the daily strain which was now put upon it. Annabella, all the romance of courtship over, saw her idol without its gilding, the halo of fancy faded away, and he over whom its lustre had been thrown, appeared but as an ordinary mortal. In a thousand little ways, scarcely apparent to any but the parties immediately concerned, the habits and wishes of the ill-assorted couple jarred painfully on each other. Pride revelled in his work of mischief as he glided from the one to the other.
“Your wife,” he would whisper to the earl, “with all her talents, and all her charms, is ill fitted for the station which she holds. She has not the dignity, the stateliness of mien which would beseem the lady of Dashleigh Hall. She has vulgar tastes, vulgar friends, vulgar amusements. Her very dress is not such as becomes the wife of a peer of the realm. She is giddy, fantastic, and vain, and altogether devoid of a due sense of your condescension in placing her at the head of your splendid establishment. Your choice has been a mistake.”
Then the spirit of mischief would breathe out his[64] treason to Annabella: “Your husband, if superior to you in descent, you have now discovered to be so in no single other point. He has neither your wit nor your spirit. He is rather a weak, though an obstinate man, and thinks much more than common-sense warrants of what has been called ‘the accident of birth.’ Have you not much more reason to exult in belonging to the aristocracy of talent, than that of mere rank like him? Do you glory in the name of Countess as you do in that of ‘Egeria,’ by which alone you are known to reading thousands?”
Having thus given my readers a glimpse of “the skeleton in the house” where all appears outwardly so full of enjoyment, I will take up my thread where I laid it down, and return to the drawing-room of Dashleigh Hall.
Dr. Bardon, as we have seen, had been restored to good humour by the tact and attentions of the countess, and Cecilia exhausted all her superlatives in admiration of everything that she saw. The conversation flowed pleasantly between Annabella and the doctor, for Bardon was a well read and intelligent man, and literature was the countess’s passion. Cecilia, however, found the discourse assuming too much of the character of a tête-a-tête, and not being content to remain exclusively a listener, watched eagerly for an opportunity to drop in her little contribution to “the feast of reason and the flow of soul.”
“Yes, the world is much like a library,” said[65] Annabella, in reply to an observation from the doctor, “but most persons enter it rather to give a superficial glance at the binding of the books, than to make themselves masters of the contents.”
“They are satisfied if the gilding lie thick enough on the backs of the tomes,” said the doctor.
“But what a deep, what a curious study would every character be, if we could read it through from beginning to end (skipping the preface, of course, for school-boys and school-girls are objects of natural aversion). What romances would some lives disclose—while others would offer the most forcible sermons that ever were written. What exquisite beauty, what touching poetry we might find in the daily course of some whom now we regard with little attention!”
“Your lovely Cousin Ida, for instance,” chimed in Cecilia, trying to catch the tone of the conversation, “I always think of her as a living poem!”
“If Ida be a poem,” said Annabella rather coldly, “she is certainly one in blank verse,—a new version of ‘Young’s Night Thoughts,’ exceedingly admirable and sublime!”
The countess had always professed herself attached to her cousin, with whom she had from childhood interchanged a thousand little tokens of affection. She would have done much to promote the happiness of Ida, or to avert from her any real sorrow, and yet—strange contradiction—Annabella never liked to[66] hear warm praise of her friend. It almost appeared as though the countess considered the admiration accorded to her beautiful cousin as so much subtracted from herself. When just commendation of another excites an uneasy sensation in our minds, we need no supernatural power to recognise in it the fretting jar of the jealous chain which pride has fixed on our souls.
Annabella was also at this time a little displeased with her cousin. Ida Aumerle, from motives of delicacy which the reader will understand though the countess could not, had declined repeated invitations to pay a long visit to Dashleigh Hall. Annabella, who was eager to show her new possessions to the friend of her youth, was hurt at what appeared to her to be coldness, if not unkindness. To be easily offended is one of the most indubitable marks of pride, and from this Annabella was certainly not free.
While the preceding conversation was proceeding in the drawing-room, a horseman, attended by a groom, rode up to the entrance of Dashleigh Hall. He was a man who had scarcely yet reached the meridian of life. His figure was graceful, though affording small promise of physical strength; his features well-formed, and of almost feminine delicacy, though the prevailing expression which sat upon them was one of conscious superiority,—now softening into condescension, now, at any real or imagined affront, rising into that of offended dignity.
[67]
Reginald, Earl of Dashleigh—for this was he—seemed, figuratively speaking, never to be out of the cumbersome robes in which, on state occasions, he appeared as a peer of the realm. Whether he mingled in society, or conversed alone with his wife, proffered hospitality, or received it, he appeared to feel the weight of a coronet always encircling his brow. The question which he asked himself before entering upon any line of action, was less whether it were right or wrong, prudent or foolish, as whether it were worthy of Reginald, twelfth Earl of Dashleigh. Pride had kept the young nobleman from many of the vices and follies of his age; pride had prevented him from doing anything that might injure his character in the eyes of the world, and had led him to do many things which gained for him popular applause; but pride, at the best, is but a miserable substitute for a higher principle of action; its fruits may appear fair to the eye, but are dust and corruption within.
The earl was not a remarkably skilful rider. Nature had not gifted him with either muscular strength or iron nerve. At the moment that he reached his own door his horsemanship was put to unpleasant proof. An incident, ludicrous as that which Cowper has celebrated in his humorous poem, proved that the same mishaps may overtake a peer of the realm, and “a citizen of credit and renown.” The sudden, prolonged bray of a donkey—most unwonted[68] sound in that lordly place—startled the steed which was ridden by the earl. Its sudden plunge unseated its rider, and the illustrious aristocrat measured his length upon the road! The accident was of no serious nature; the nobleman was in an instant again on his feet, shaking the dust from his garments; nothing had suffered from the fall but Reginald’s dignity, and, consequently, his temper. The accident appeared absurd from its cause, and Dashleigh was more provoked at the occurrence than he might have been had some grave evil befallen him.
“How came that brute there?” he exclaimed to the servants, who officiously crowded around him with proffers of assistance, which were impatiently rejected by their master. “How came that brute there?” he angrily repeated, looking indignantly at the animal which had drawn Dr. Bardon’s humble conveyance, and which was now quietly feeding in the luxuriant pasture of the park.
“Please you, my lord, visitors to see her ladyship came in that chaise,” replied a footman, scarcely able to suppress a smile.
“Visitors!” said the earl sharply; “the milliner or the dressmaker, I suppose. Tell Mills at the lodge never again to suffer such a thing to enter the gate;” and without troubling himself with further investigation, the nobleman entered into his house. As he did so, he turned to his butler—“Let covers[69] be laid for three,” he said, in a tone of command; “and give the housekeeper notice that the Duke of Montleroy is likely to be here at luncheon.”
“Covers are laid already for four, by her ladyship’s order,” said the butler.
“Indeed! what guests are expected?” asked the earl.
“The lady and gentleman, my lord, who came in the chaise, and who are now in the drawing-room,” was the reply.
The earl stalked into the library in a state, not only of high irritation and annoyance, but also of considerable perplexity. Annabella had never before appeared to him so utterly regardless of his wishes and feelings, so completely destitute of a sense of what was due to her position. To invite low people—for such, he thought, that her guests assuredly must be—to share her meal, to be introduced to her husband, it was an offence scarcely to be forgiven! And what was to be done on the present occasion? Dashleigh had, on that morning, casually met and invited a duke! It would be impossible to insult a man of his quality by making him sit at the same table with such canaille! The idea of such a breach of etiquette was abhorrent to the feelings of the aristocrat, and yet, how was the reality to be avoided? Annabella had invited her own friends, and the earl was too much of a gentleman to be willing to commit any decided breach of[70] courtesy towards his wife’s guests, even though they might have come in a donkey conveyance.
We talk of the petty miseries of pride; to Dashleigh the misery was not petty. It was with feelings of serious annoyance that he rang his library bell, and bade the servant who answered it request his lady to speak with the earl directly.
The message was carried to Annabella while she was pursuing with the doctor a playful argument on some literary question.
“Is the earl aware that I am engaged with guests?” asked the incautious countess.
“His lordship knows who is here,” replied the servant.
Annabella instantly perceived her mistake, for she saw the blood mount to the cheek of the sensitive old Doctor. His pride was evidently on the qui vive; and it served to awaken hers. The countess felt somewhat disposed to return to her liege lord such an answer as Horatio received from his widow. She had no inclination to play Griselda in the presence of her early friends. She contented herself, however, with showing that she was in no haste to obey the summons of her titled husband, and finished her discussion before (after apologizing to the Bardons for a brief absence) she proceeded to the library, where her indignant lord was impatiently awaiting her.
Dr. Bardon walked up to the window with his hands behind him, and waited for a space in silence.[71] Cecilia saw by the motion of his feet that a storm was brewing in the air. Presently he turned suddenly round with the question: “Do you suppose that this earl means to make his appearance?”
“Ye-e-es,” replied Cecilia timidly.
“No!” exclaimed the doctor fiercely. The two words, and the manner of pronouncing them, were characteristic of father and daughter, and might almost have been adopted as mottoes by the twain. “Yes” was very often on Cecilia’s lips, but she appeared to feel the affirmation too short to answer the full purpose of politeness, and always managed to drawl out the monosyllable to the length of three. Bardon’s “No,” on the contrary, came out short and sharp, like a bark. He seemed to concentrate into it his haughty spirit of perpetual dissent from the opinions of the rest of the world.
“I should not wonder if the poor girl has got into a scrape for inviting us,” was the doctor’s next observation.
“Oh! dear papa!” exclaimed Cecilia, in an expostulatory tone, though the same thought had just been passing through her own mind.
“I’m not going to wait here like a lackey in a lobby!” said the doctor, moving towards the door. Cecilia was in a tremour of apprehension.
“Papa, papa! we can’t slip away without bidding the countess good-bye,—without seeing the earl,—it would look so odd, so rude.”
[72]
“What’s odd and rude is their leaving us here, without paying us common civility! I’ll stand it no longer!” cried the irascible man; and opening the door, he proceeded along the corridor which led to the hall, followed by his expostulating daughter.
Unfortunately, their course lay past the library; and more unfortunately still, the library door happened to be very slightly ajar.
“Can’t you manage some way of getting rid of these miserable Bardons?” were the words, pronounced in an irritated tone, which struck like a pistol-shot on the ears of the countess’s guests.
It was as though that pistol-shot had exploded a mine of gunpowder! To the earl’s amazement the library door was suddenly flung wide open, and, quivering with irrepressible rage, the fiery old doctor stood before him.
“Manage!” exclaimed Bardon, in a voice of thunder; “there is little management required in dismissing those who, had they known the despicable pride which inhabits here, would never have stooped,—never have stooped,” he repeated, “to degrade themselves by crossing your threshold! You have dared to apply to us the epithet of miserable,” continued Bardon, bringing out the word as with a convulsive effort, and fixing his fierce eye upon the disconcerted peer; “I retort back the opprobrious term! Who is miserable but the miserable slave of pride,—the worshipper of rank, the gilded puppet[73] of society, who claims from his ancestors’ name the importance which attaches to nothing of his own? This is the first time, sir, that I have visited you, and it shall be the last,—the last time that you shall have the opportunity of insulting, under your own roof, a gentleman whose pretensions to respect are, at least, as well grounded as yours, and who would not exchange his independence of spirit for all the pomp and pageantry which can never give dignity to their possessor, nor avert from him merited contempt!” With the last words on his lips, Bardon turned and departed; his loud, tramping step echoing along the hall, before the earl had time to recover his breath.
Annabella, agitated and excited, appeared about to hurry after her guests, but with an imperious gesture Dashleigh prevented his wife from doing so. Bitterly mortified at what had occurred, irritated, wounded, and offended, the countess burst into a flood of passionate tears.
Pride reigned triumphant that day in the Hall. He had worked out his evil will. He had steeped hearts in bitter gall; he had loosened the bond between husband and wife; he had brought envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness, to rush in at the breach which he had insidiously made.
The countess spent the rest of the day in her own apartment. She would not appear at her husband’s table, nor entertain her husband’s guest. She had[74] not learned to bear or to forbear; least of all was she prepared to submit her will to that of her imperious lord. Even when the breach between them appeared to be healed, it left its visible scar behind; the wound was ready to break out afresh, for the soft balm of meekness and love had not been poured upon it, and what else can effectually cure the hurt caused by the envenomed shaft of pride?