CHAPTER XIII.
A PROPOSAL OF MARRIAGE.
What mockeries are our most firm resolves!
To will is ours, but not to execute.
We map our future like some unknown coast,
And say, "Here is an harbour, here a rock—
The one we will attain, the other shun;"
And we do neither. Some chance gale springs up
And bears us far o'er some unfathomed sea.
Our efforts are all vain; at length we yield
To winds and waves, that laugh at man's control.
The next morning there was more restraint than usual at the breakfast table. Norbourne was amazed that, though his mother had refused, on the excuse of a headach, his petition for an interview, she had afterwards received
Lord Norbourne, and their conversation had lasted nearly two hours. That its effect had been a sleepless night, at least, to Mrs. Courtenaye, was obvious from her haggard appearance; and her hand was so unsteady, that it was with difficulty she raised her cup to her lips. There was something, too, in Lord Norbourne's face that expressed anxiety; though his set brow and contracted lip, marked determination. Scarcely did his quiet and restrained manner give outward sign of what was working within. He would have conversed as usual; but his attempts were so ill seconded, that he was fain to take refuge in the letters that lay beside him. Courtenaye himself was lost in thought. What could be the meaning of his mother's restraint and suffering—her reluctance to see himself? What could be the cause of estrangement between a parent and child, hitherto so united? One only cause presented itself. Could there be a second marriage in the case? But the thought was rejected even as it rose; it was like sacrilege: so haughty, so old, so devoted to himself—it was impossible.
But Norbourne's was no temper to remain patient amid so much doubt and annoyance. His unwillingness to urge any point upon which a mother he idolised seemed disinclined to enter, had hitherto kept him silent; but now silence seemed false delicacy, and he owed to himself to investigate the mystery which oppressed his once easy and happy home. He felt, too, that he was acting unjustly by Ethel: he had allowed a fortnight to elapse—he startled when he numbered up the days; it is strange how we allow them to glide imperceptibly away. He resolved no longer to delay the avowal of his engagement. Had his mother permitted it, she would have received his first confidence; as it was, to acknowledge his attachment became a duty to her who was now his first and dearest object.
With these thoughts passing in his mind, it may be supposed how much the cook's feelings would have been hurt, could she have known how the collared eels and raised pies, on which she had expended her utmost skill, were neglected.
Constance was the happiest one of the party: accustomed to have her observations disregarded, her faculty of observation was but little cultivated; equally accustomed to silence, it was more natural in her eyes that people should not talk than that they should. It was enough for her to sit by her cousin's side, to breathe the air that he breathed, to catch his least look and lightest word. At even a little usual civility of the table from him she blushed; and if her eyes met his for a moment, they filled with light, which none who saw them at another time, spiritless and drooping, would have believed their faint azure could possess.
It was a beautiful feeling that which warmed the pale cheek of the youthful Constance. It was love in its gentlest, tenderest, and least earthly essence. It was hopeless; for, in her humility, she had never dreamed of return; it was unalloyed by any meaner motive of vanity or of interest, and surrendered its whole existence in a spirit of the purest and meekest devotion. The young and loving heart needed some object of which it might dream in its many lonely hours, and on which it might lavish its great wealth of fresh and deep affection.
There is nothing to which you so soon become accustomed as to the presence of the beloved one: the gentle chain of habit easily becomes a sweet necessity. Constance had now lived a fortnight in the same house with her cousin, and it already seemed the most natural thing in the world to see him every day. This morning, however, her enjoyment was doomed to be curtailed; for she had scarcely finished her breakfast, before her father gently reminded her of a promise she had given to sort some letters for him.
"I shall make you quite my little secretary in time," said he, with one of his own peculiarly sweet smiles.
To Constance's affectionate temper, her father's kind look or word was more than enough to recompense any sacrifice, and she left even her cousin's side with almost gladness. Norboume's whole attention was riveted on his mother. She all but started from her seat when Lord Norbourne told his daughter to go; and, as Constance left the room, she rose with an intention of following, and then sat down, pale and trembling, as if she equally dreaded to stay or go.
"You are ill, my dearest mother!" exclaimed Norbourne, springing to her side.
Lord Norbourne rose also; and his movement seemed to recall Mrs. Courtenaye to herself. She rose calmly; and, saying to her son,—"I shall expect you in half an hour; I wish to have some conversation with you;" she, also, quitted the apartment.
Courtenaye thought the intermediate space a good opportunity of telling his uncle that his affections were irrevocably engaged. He had surmised, once or twice lately, that Lord Norbourne was not so careless of Constance as he seemed to be, and that the report of their marriage was not without his sanction. However painful the subject might be, the sooner any such idea was put an end to the better, for the sake of all parties.
"My mother has of late," said he, "been as inaccessible as a minister of state, and I want to talk to her about my marriage."
"You are thinking, then, of the holy and blessed state, as it is called, of matrimony?—I guessed as much," replied his uncle. "I have observed lately that you do not hear above half that is said to you; and the next thing that a young man loses, after his heart, is his hearing."
"There have been cases, I believe," returned Courtenaye, with a forced smile, "when a man has wished that the last-mentioned loss would continue."
"By the saffron robe of Hymen," cried Lord Norbourne, "but that would be a blessing! I own that I am no great friend to marriage in general; in nine cases out of ten, the opinion of the French poet, Marivaux, is mine also:—
'I would advise a man to pause
Before he takes a wife;
Indeed, I own, I see no cause
He should not pause for life.'
If a young man has his way to make in the world, a wife is a dead weight upon his hands. Indeed, I have looked upon the fable of Sisyphus as an allegory, and that his wife was the stone which so perpetually rolled back upon his hands, effectually retarding his weary progress up-hill.
Norbourne smiled, and remained silent, for nothing repels confidence so much as raillery: how can you be confiding, when your hearer is only witty? Lord Norbourne, however, continued speaking, and now more seriously.
"Situated as you are, my dear Courtenaye, the case is quite different; an heir is indispensable to an illustrious family, and your name entails upon you the necessity of a worthy alliance."
"My choice," interrupted Norbourne, "would do credit to any house."
"It is not for me to contradict you," said his uncle, with a politer bow than the occasion seemed to require.
"I am so glad of your approbation," exclaimed Courtenaye.
"You need never have doubted it," was the courteous reply; "Constance"
"Constance!" ejaculated Norbourne, "I"
"Ah! I see," interrupted Lord Norbourne, "that you think me even more ambitious than I am. I know that my heiress might look to the highest honours of the peerage, but I prefer yourself to the first duke in the land."
"But, my dear uncle," interrupted Norbourne,—
"No modesty, and no raptures," cried Lord Norbourne, as he turned to the door; "the pastoral and the heroic age are alike past away with me. Besides, your mother expects you; and I do not think that a lady ought to be kept waiting, unless it be at an assignation, and then it is a useful moral lesson."
The door closed after him, and his nephew felt that he had been completely outgeneraled. He now saw, what he had only suspected before, that his uncle wished him to marry Constance.
"Why put such nonsense into her head?" But, even while he spoke, he reproached himself: his very love for Ethel made him sensible how dreadful was the existence to which love came not.
"But," continued he, "she is young, gentle,—nay, sometimes almost pretty; she may yet find an unoccupied heart."
To this he might have added, that she was one of the first heiresses in England; but Norbourne was too young, and too enthusiastic, to balance interest and affection for one moment in the scales together. I believe all the good that is sometimes said of human nature when I remember the feelings of youth; and it is this principle explains why men, whose "hearts are dry as summer's dust," often delight in the society of the very young. The sympathy is awakened by memory.
Wallenstein exclaims of Max Piccolomini:
"For, oh! he stood beside me like my youth."
The stern and worldly general saw in the young and ardent all that he had himself once been—generous, confiding, impatient of evil, confident of good, devoted and affectionate: all these must have passed away from one whose career had been in courts and camps, where he had learned the falsehood of the one, and the indifference of the other. He saw himself in his youthful officer: such was he no longer; still it was pleasant to think that he had had in him so much of good.