CHAPTER XV.
Why, what a history is on the rose!
A history beyond all other flowers;
But never more, in garden or in grove,
Will the white queen reign paramount again.
She must content her with remembered things,
When her pale leaves were badge for knight and earl;
Pledge of a loyalty which was as pure,
As free from stain, as those white depths her leaves
Unfolded to the earliest breath of June.
Mrs. Churchill belonged to a class now completely passed away. The material of the species still remains; but the form under which it exhibits is different. She had the reputation of being learned; and a little learning went a great way in her time. Had she lived now, she would have talked of the last delightful lecture on gas, or the charming new treatise on carbonic acid; she would have studied German, and delighted in the society of "talented people." As it was, she knew some of the Latin names for plants in the herbal. She piqued herself on giving advice, and said very severe things; she also wrote very long letters, and was a warm partisan of the exiled Stuarts. Kind-hearted and well-meaning, she was narrow-minded and rigid, only because she thought it beneath the dignity of a sensible woman to change her mind. Ethel knew that, having once announced her marriage, it would be impossible to alter her grandmother's determination; and it was an awful thing to venture on open opposition to one, whose will had been hitherto blindly obeyed. But Ethel was young and romantic: she resolved to throw herself on the generosity of the coming lover; and felt entirely assured that he must think the heart valueless, that had been, that was but too much still, the property of another. This resolve once taken, she prepared to wait patiently the proper time for carrying it into execution; and was again sad and languid as before.
Mr. Trevanion arrived: he was a tall, slight, and, certainly, a handsome young man, and perfectly aware of whatever advantages he possessed. He had lived chiefly abroad; and if any thing in England satisfied him, it was the satisfaction of abusing every thing. With Mrs. Churchill he soon became a first-rate favourite. His head was quite turned with mysteries, secret correspondences, and plots: he met her on her own weak point. Both delighted to hear themselves talk, and both talking themselves out of all rationality; for words, like wine, get up into the head: they passed hours in conversational conspiracies, till both the old woman and the young man believed that the house of Hanover only waited their impetus to tremble to its downfal.
Ethel found that it was not so easy to make her intended disclosure; for when she attempted to speak to Mr.Trevanion, she was overwhelmed with such a flood of flowery eloquence, that she was dismayed into silence. The time grew terribly near; and courage has oftener despair for its mother than any other parent. She seized an opportunity when he was walking up and down the terrace—in his own mind the very personification of Shakspeare's comet,
"Perplexing monarchs, with the fear of change,"
to walk also, and meet him. Of course, his political meditations were put to flight by her appearance. He requested permission to join her, and was soon eloquent in the description of the last fête that he had witnessed at Versailles.
Mr. Trevanion was one of those talkers, who are too much engrossed with their own subject matter to have much attention to bestow elsewhere; with them silence is attention. Ethel's wandering eye, and lip, tremulous with its effort to speak, would never have attracted his notice. To his utter astonishment, she interrupted a parenthesis, as brilliant as the rocket which it depicted, by saying,—
"Mr. Trevanion, I do not know what you will think of my boldness, but I must speak to you."
"Speak," said the gentleman, with a theatrical air; "and I will ask no other music."
Agitated, blushing, and in a voice scarcely audible at first, she began her confession. Gradually the strong emotion prevailed over the weaker one, and timidity was merged in feelings that grew more powerful as she proceeded.
"I have now told you all; forgive and pity me. I ask of yourself, how could I do otherwise than decline an engagement, when I have no heart to bestow?" The tears filled her dark blue eyes; never had she felt the shame and wretchedness of her position so forcibly before. "May I ask of you," continued she, in faltering tones, "to tell my grandmother, that our engagement is broken off?"
"Well, certainly," exclaimed Mr. Trevanion, "this is the most charming piece of bergerie it has ever been my good fortune to witness."
Ethel looked at him in blank amazement, while he went on.
"Indeed, my sweet Miss Churchill, I cannot be sufficiently grateful. Between ourselves, the country is rather triste, and you have given me positively a sensation; yet my forte is not the Arcadian: however, I will do my petit possible to console you for the loss of le beau Lindor, who was my predecessor."
"Sir," said Ethel, "I do not understand you."
"Very probably not!—charming ignorance!" replied Mr. Trevanion, with a patronising expression. "A few weeks in Paris will soon give you a little knowledge of the world; but the effect of your first simplicity will be delicious. Ah, there is Mrs. Churchill! let us join her. I suppose, as I have been, playing the part of confident, I must not make her laugh over our little romance."
Ethel was silent from surprise: she had prepared herself for anger—even sorrow; but ridicule left her without an answer. What could she say to a hearer, who only smiled, and to whom emotion was only a scene in a pastoral? That night she made an appeal to her grandmother; but in vain. Mrs. Churchill would have thought that she had sacrificed the cause of the Stuarts to a girl's folly, had she for a moment entertained the idea of dissolving an engagement with Mr. Trevanion. What could Ethel do, but submit? It was not as if she had had any hope in the future to enable her to bear up against the present; but hope she had none, and only hope can inspirit resistance.