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Page 57
"Then I am ashamed of you. The dear old rector! He married father and
mother; he christened and confirmed you; you might be sure, that if you
could not ask him to marry you, you had no business to marry at all."
"You said her face was like an angel's, and that you would love her,
Charlotte."
"Oh, indeed! But I did not think the angel was an Italian angel and a
Roman-Catholic angel. Circumstances alter cases. You, who have been
brought up a good Church-of-England gentleman, to go over to the Pope of
Rome!"
"I have not gone over to the Pope of Rome."
"All the same, Harry; all the same. And you know how father feels about
that. Father would fight for the Church quicker than he would fight for
his own house and land. Why! the Sandals got all of their Millom Estate
for being good Protestants; for standing by the Hanoverian line instead
of those popish Stuarts. Father will think you have committed an act of
treason against both church and state, and he will be ashamed to show
his face among the Dale squires. It is too bad! too bad for any thing!"
and she covered her face, and cried bitterly.
"She is so lovely, so good"--
"Nonsense! Were there no lovely English girls? no good English girls?
Emily is ten times lovelier."
"You know what you said."
"I said it to please you."
"Charlotte!"
"Yes, I did,--at least, in a great measure. It is easy enough to call a
pretty girl an angel; and as for my promise to love your wife, of course
I expected you would choose a wife suitable to your religion and your
birth. Suppose you selected some outlandish dress,--an Italian
brigand's, for instance,--what would the neighboring gentlemen think of
you? It would be an insult to their national costume, and they would do
right to resent it. Well, being who and what you are, you have no right
to bring an Italian woman into Seat-Sandal. It is an insult to every
woman in the county, and they will make you feel it."
"I shall not give them the opportunity. Beatrice cannot live in this
beastly climate."
"The climate is wrong also? Naturally. It would follow the religion and
the woman. Harry Sandal, I wish I had died, ere my ears had heard such a
shame and sorrow for my father and mother! Where are you going to live,
then?"
"In Florence. It is the birthplace of Beatrice the city associated with
all her triumphs."
"God have mercy, Harry! Her triumphs! Is she, then, an actress?"
"She is a singer,--a wonderful singer; one to whom the world has
listened with breathless delight."
"A singing woman! And you have married her? It is an outrage on your
ancestors, and on your parents and sisters."
"I will not hear you speak in that way, Charlotte. Of course I married
her. Did you wish me to ruin and debase her? _That_, I suppose, you
could have forgiven. My sin against the Sandals and society is, that I
married her."
"No, sir; you know better. Your sin is in having any thing whatever to
do with her. There is not a soul in Sandal that would have hesitated
between ruin and marriage. If it had to be one or the other, then father
and mother both, then I, then all your friends, would have said without
hesitation, 'Marry the woman.'"
"I expected and hoped this would be your view of the situation. I could
not give up Beatrice, and I could not be a scoundrel to her."
"You might have thought of another woman besides Beatrice. Is a sin
against a mother a less sin than one against a strange woman? A mother
is something sacred. To wound her heart is to throw a stone at her. You
have committed a sort of sacrilege. And you are married. No entreaties
can prevent, and no repentance can avail. Oh, what a sorrow to darken
all the rest of father's and mother's days! What right have you to spoil
their lives, in order to give yourself a little pleasure? O Harry! I
never knew that you were selfish before."
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