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Page 48
It is painful to observe what bitterness will creep into the heart
and manner of really kind girls where a lover is in the case, or even
where a common-place dangling sort of flirtation is going forward;
this depreciating ill nature, one of the other, is not confined by any
means to the fair sex. Young men pick each other to pieces with even
more fierceness, but less ingenuity; they deal in a cut-and-hack sort
of sarcasm, and do not hesitate to use terms and insinuations of the
harshest kind, when a lady is in the case. Mary (to distinguish her
from her high-bred cousin, she was generally called Mary Charles) was
certainly disappointed when her wedding was postponed in consequence
of her uncle's death; but a much more painful feeling followed, when
she saw the admiration her lover, Edwin Lechmere, bestowed upon her
beautiful cousin. Mary Charles was herself a beauty--fair, open-eyed,
warm-hearted--_the_ beauty of Repton; but though feature by feature,
inch by inch, she was as handsome as Mary, yet in her cousin was the
grace and spirit given only by good society; the manners elevated by a
higher mind, and toned down by sorrow; a gentle softness, which a keen
observer of human nature told me once no woman ever possessed unless
she had deeply loved, and suffered from disappointed affection;
in short, she was far more refined, far more fascinating, than her
country cousin: besides, she was unfortunate, and that at once gave
her a hold upon the sympathies of the young curate: it did no more:
but Mary Charles did not understand these nice distinctions, and
nothing could exceed the change of manner she evinced when her cousin
and her betrothed were together.
Mary thought her cousin rude and petulant; but the true cause of the
change never occurred to her. Accustomed to the high-toned courtesy
of well-bred men, which is so little practised in the middle class of
English society, it never suggested itself, that placing her chair,
or opening the door for her to go out, or rising courteously when she
came into a room, was more than, as a lady, she had a right to expect;
in truth, she did not notice it at all; but she did notice and feel
deeply her cousin's alternate coldness and snappishness of manner. "I
would not," thought Mary, "have behaved so to her if she had been left
desolate; but in a little time, when my mother is more content, I will
leave Repton, and become independent by my talents." Never did she
think of the power delegated to her by, the Almighty without feeling
herself raised--ay, higher than she had ever been in the days of her
splendour--in the scale of moral usefulness; as every one must feel
whose mind is rightly framed. She had not yet known what it was to
have her abilities trampled on or insulted; she had never experienced
the bitterness consequent upon having the acquirements--which in the
days of her prosperity commanded silence and admiration--sneered at
or openly ridiculed.--She had yet to learn that the Solons, the
law-givers of English society, lavish their attentions and praise upon
those who learn, not upon those who teach.
Mary had not been six months fatherless, when she was astonished,
first by a letter, and then by a visit, from her former lover; he came
to renew his engagement, and to wed her even then if she would have
him; but Mary's high principle was stronger than he imagined. "No,"
she said, "you are not independent of your father, and whatever I
feel, I have no right to draw _you_ down into poverty. You may fancy
now that you could bear it; but a time would come--if not to you,
to me--when the utter selfishness of such conduct would goad me to
a death of early misery." The young man appealed to her uncle,
who thought her feelings overstrained, but respected her for it
nevertheless; and in the warmth of his admiration, he communicated the
circumstance to his wife and daughter.
"Refuse her old lover under present circumstances," repeated her
cousin to herself as she left the room; "there must be some other
reason than that; she could not be so foolish as to reject such an
offer at such a time." Unfortunately, she saw Edwin Lechmere walking
by Mary's side, under the shadow of some trees. She watched them until
the foliage screened them from her sight, and then she shut herself
into her own room, and yielded to a long and violent burst of tears.
"It is not enough," she exclaimed, in the bitterness of her feelings,
"that the comforts of my parents' declining years should be abridged
by the overwhelming burden to their exertions--another family added
to their own; it is not enough that an uncomfortable feeling has grown
between my father and mother on this account, and that cold looks and
sharp words have come where they never came before, but my peace of
mind must be destroyed. Gladly would I have taken a smaller portion,
if I could have kept the affections which I see but too plainly
my cousin has stolen from me. And my thoughtless aunt to say, only
yesterday, that 'at all events her husband was no man's enemy but his
own.' Has not his want of prudent forethought been the ruin of his own
children? and will my parents ever recover the anxiety, the pain, the
sacrifices, brought on by one man's culpable neglect? Oh, uncle! if
you could look from your grave upon the misery you have caused!"--and
then, exhausted by her own emotion, the affectionate but jealous girl
began to question herself as to what she should do. After what she
considered mature deliberation, she made up her mind to upbraid her
cousin with treachery, and she put her design into execution that same
evening.
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