CHAPTER XXXII.
DIFFERENT OPINIONS.
Doubt, despairing, crime, and craft,
Are upon that honied shaft.
It has made the crowned king
Crouch beneath his suffering;
Made the beauty's cheek more pale
Than the foldings of her veil:
Like a child the soldiers kneel,
Who had mock'd at flame or steel;
Bade the fires of genius turn
On their own breasts; and there burn,
A wound, a blight, a curse, a doom,
Bowing young hearts to the tomb.
Well may storm be on the sky,
And the waters roll on high,
When that passion passes by;
Earth below, and heaven above,
Well may bend to thee, O Love!
While this conversation was going on between Sir Jasper Meredith and Ethel Churchill, one of almost a similar kind was progressing between the very object of his solicitude and Lady Mary Wortley. After a hard day's shopping, they had come home laden with bargains, and the dressing-room was strewed with Indian fans, ivory boxes, and lace. They were going to dine téte-à-téte, as there was a gay ball in perspective, and they needed a little recruiting. Chloe, who had never forgotten his mistress's brilliant suggestion of the pigmies, exhausted his genius in the slight, but exquisite dinner, which he sent up, and which was, at least, duly appreciated by Lady Mary.
"There is something," exclaimed she, "wanting in the composition of one who can be indifferent to the fascination of such an omelet as this."
"I own," replied Henrietta, "I never care what I eat."
"More shame for you!" returned her companion; "it only shows how little you consider your duty to yourself."
"My duty to myself!" cried Lady Marchmont; "why, that would be
'Roots from the earth,
And water from the spring,'
"Moral essays are only a series of mistakes," interrupted her ladyship: "our first duty to ourselves, is to enjoy ourselves as much as possible. Now, to accomplish that, we must cultivate all our bad qualities: I can assure you I am quite alarmed when I discover any good symptoms."
"You are laughing!" replied her listener.
"I laugh at most things," returned the other; "and that is the reason why people in general do not understand me. A person who wishes to be popular, should never laugh at any thing. A jest startles people from that tranquil dulness in which they love to indulge: they do not like it till age has worn off the joke's edge. Moreover, there is no risk in laughing, if a great many laugh before you venture to laugh too,"
"How very true!" exclaimed Henrietta; "there is nothing so little understood as wit."
"People cannot bear," replied her ladyship, "to be expected to understand what, in reality, they do not, and are ashamed to confess: it mortifies their self-love. I am persuaded, if all gay badinage were prefaced by an explanation, it would be infinitely better received."
"Why," said Lady Marchmont, "that would be sending the arrow the wrong way."
"A very common way of doing things in this world," was the answer; "and," she added, "I do not care about being popular: and, indeed, rather like being hated; it gives me an opportunity of using up epigrams which would otherwise be wasted. Our enemies, at least, keep our weapons in play: but for their sake, the sarcasm and the sword would alike rust in the scabbard."
"I care much more for being generally liked than you do," said Henrietta.
"I do not care about it all," replied Lady Mary; "if I did, I should not say the things that I do; but, next to amusing, I like to astonish."
"I would rather interest," replied Lady Marchmont.
"Shades of the grand Cyrus! that voluminous tome I used to read so devotedly,—your empire is utterly departed from me!" exclaimed her ladyship: "I have long since left romance behind—
'Once, and but once, that devil charmed my mind,
To reason deaf, and observation blind:'
now I look upon my lover as I do my dinner, a thing very agreeable and very necessary, but requiring perpetual change."
"What a simile!" cried Henrietta, with uplifted hands and eyes.
"Believe me, my dear," returned the other "love is a mixture of vanity and credulity. Now, these are two qualities that I sedulously cultivate; they conduce to our chief enjoyments."
"My definition of love," said the young countess, with a faint sigh, "would be very different to yours."
"Yes," replied Lady Mary, "you have all sorts of fanciful notions on the subject. I know what you would like;—an old place in the country, half ruins, half flowers, with some most picturesque-looking cavalier, who
'Lived but on the light of those sweet eyes!'"
" Well," interrupted Henrietta, "I see nothing so very appalling in such a prospect. How would our thoughts grow together! how would my mind become the image of his! What a world of poetry and of beauty we might create around us! I can imagine no sacrifice in life that would not cheaply buy the happiness of loving and being loved."
"Very fine, and very tiresome," answered the other, with half a yawn, and half a sneer. "How weary you would be of each other: to see the same face—to hear the same voice; why, my dear child, I give you one single week, and then,—
'Abandoned by joy, and deserted by grace,
You will hang yourselves both in the very same place!'"
"At least," replied Henrietta, "we should carry on our sympathy to the very last. Though I cannot peculiarly admire its coincidence, I should say,
'Take any shape but that.'"
"If it does not take that," cried Lady Mary, "it will take some other just as bad. Believe me, we are all of us false, vain, selfish, inconstant; and the sooner we cease to look for any thing else, the better: we save ourselves a world of unreasonable expectation, and of bitter disappointment!"
"I would not think like you," replied Lady Marchmont, "not for the treasures of the crowned Ind. I devoutly believe in the divinity of affection; and my ideal of love, is affection in its highest state of enthusiasm and devotion. No sacrifice ever appeared to me great, that was made for its sweet sake."
"The Lord have mercy upon such notions!" cried Lady Mary, throwing herself back in her chair.
Sir Jasper would have been tempted to re-echo her ejaculation, and he would have been almost right. To love another, is too often the sad, yet sweet seal, put upon a bond of wretchedness, at least to a woman. How is her earnest, her self-sacrificing, her devoted attachment, repaid?—By neglect, falsehood, and desertion!