give uneasiness. There was no rudeness intended, though there was most entire indifference; and what right had a rusty college tutor to expect anything else? To be sure as her husband's friend, her husband's guest, and in her husband's house, which house was only hers through him, she might have shown me a little more attention; but as she showed none at all to her husband, and all her friends followed her example, of what could I complain? "In short, instead of a guest, I turned myself into a philosophic spectator of what was exhibiting, and in truth, it let me into a secret, or rather, confirmed me in a secret I had long suspected, that poor Bostock, the wharfinger's son, had reaped no happiness from his marriage with an earl's daughter." OF THE ADVICE CHAPTER XXIV. GIVEN BY MR. FOTHERGILL TO MR. BOSTOCK, AND HOW IT WAS RELISHED. Yet do I fear thy nature; It is too full o' the milk of human kindness SHAKSPEARE.-Macbeth. "The evening," continued Fothergill's memoir, "now drew to a conclusion. The total absorption of his guests by Lady Cherubina, or by one another, to his own utter exclusion, was not less disgusting than remarkable. On one or two occasions he advanced from his sofa to the favoured circle, but soon returned, for nobody spoke to him, or if he spoke himself, nobody listened. He had no key to their mystifications; he had not, as La Bruyere says, "leurs usages, leur jargon, et leurs mots de rire." They seemed to be engaged in the mysteries of the Bona Dea, and when he approached, looked upon him as profane. Once, when he only spoke to propose to the young lord, Lord Gayhurst's son, to show him a particular beat the next day, where the game promised to be plentiful, he was cut short by the youthful aristocrat's coldly thanking him, but begging he would not trouble himself, as he had himself already settled it all with the keepers. "Bostock returned to his couch evidently hurt; and as I was shocked with this insolence, it was a relief to me, as well as to him, when we all retired for the night. "It is inconceivable how I felt for him under these mortifications. I thought of them all night, indignant at his wife for allowing, if she did not promote them, and at himself for submitting to them as he did. I wished, nay thought, to expostulate with him; but not only I feared the thing was gone too far to be remedied, but I had no right to meddle, and I dreaded the character of a meddler. "The next day, however, without incurring this reproach, he of his own motion opened the whole subject, and gave me ample opportunity to tell him what I had observed, and what I thought; for he very frankly asked my advice upon his case. I saw after breakfast that he endeavoured to get me alone; a thing by no means difficult, with the disposition which all his guests seemed to have to indulge us; so when he proposed to show me a temple he had built at the end of a long shrubbery walk, no one interposed to prevent our being a tete a tete. "In our way, Bostock fairly confessed the uneasiness of his situation, which he feared was too obvious to have escaped me. He said this in a low tone, interrupted every minute by examining whether any one was within ear-shot: but having now entered the temple and locked the door, he grew bolder, looking, however, again up and down the walk which the window commanded, to see that the coast was clear. He then began his meditated confidence pretty nearly as follows: I "Yes, my good friend, you must have seen, without any confession of mine, that I am in the happy state of not being master of my own house. As for the company by whom I am inundated and devoured, they are out of the question; am scarcely recognized by them as more, if so much, as Lady Cherubina's major domo; and as to being her husband, it seems out of their thoughts, as well it may, since it never seems to be in those of Lady Cherubina herself. These guests, then, (often twenty in number), being first, second, or third cousins, or very intimate and dear friends of my lady, think they do me honor enough in passing the shooting season, or riding my horses for me after the hounds; for which they do allow me to sit at the head of my own table, though they scarcely think me worth speaking to when there. Yet while they eat my veuison and drink my claret, they wonder that Lady Cherubina, with her fortune (her fortune, mind you), should not have a more regular supply of turtle, such as Sir John Pamper always has in Leicestershire. "All this time to address me as master of the house, or to suppose we have any common topics of conversation, never seems to enter their contemplation. "So much for my guests," continued he," which I should not much mind, but that their example contaminates even my servants, none of whom, except the helpers in the stables, and what they call the odd men in the yards, condescend to take orders from me. It was but yesterday that I told the butler I would not allow claret in the steward's room, and the fellow, instead of obeying, had the impudence to say, "Very well Sir, I will consult Lady Cherubina about it." As to my lady's maid, and a housekeeper she brought with her from Brandon, before them I dare not say my soul's my own." "All this astonishes me," said I, "particularly this last; for whatever thraldom you may be in, with a wife whom your love alone might make you unwilling to oppose, to be afraid of those menials-your own menials too-is beyond my comprehension." "Perhaps so,' replied he, but be assured in their opinion I am a mere upstart. Their talk is all of Brandon Hall, and the nobility who lived there for ages, before canals, and wharfs, and barges were known. My lord, his lordship, and my lady and her ladyship, are never off their tongues; not from any particular respect for them, but from very great respect for themselves, since every time they give them their titles they elevate their own dignity. It was but the other day, having occasion to look at something in the housekeeper's-room, the lady president there, with fury on her brow, began to talk at me; telling me in terms, that neither Lord Brandon, nor his father before him, demeaned himself so as to come into her apartment." "Why did you not discharge her instantly?" asked I. "Alas!' said he, "you know not what it is to be married not merely to a person whom you love, but to one who, being so much superior to you in rank and family, feels both her superior consequence, and how much she has let herself down in joining her fate to yours. To discharge therefore an old, though insolent servant, attached to her family before she was born, would baffle even your resolution to accomplish, and is, in fact, impossible." "I see not why,' said I, if the case required it.' "It would occasion a breach,' returned he,' and expose me to open reproaches, and perpetual innuendoes, the last more difficult to bear than the first, though both most annoying to my peace.' "You have then experienced these innuendoes?' My dear friend,' said he, 'there is no disguising the truth; indeed, to reveal it, and ask your counsel upon it, was one of my great objects in begging you to come to see me. It was pretty obvious to me, when I married Lady Cherubina, that I was taken upon sufferance, at least by her family; and though I believe I possessed her affection at first, and she seemed grateful for the absolute dominion I gave her over myself and fortune, I soon found that her consciousness of her cloth of gold was incompatible with any respect for my cloth of frieze. But alas! this is by no means the worst.' "He then, in increased agitation, with deep sighs, and even tears, after much hesitation, whispered in my ear, though no one was near us "You will scarcely believe it, but she will not now allow me to enter her boudoir.' ، "Good Heavens!' exclaimed I, for what reason?' "Why, she had observed, she said, that nothing deadened the pleasure which married people take in one another's company so much as too frequent and too long interviews, in the power of either to command at pleasure; that it was the height of vulgarity, to be always running after one another, and allow no place to be sacred from mutual intrusion; and that, from girlhood, she had always been accustomed to have an apartment so entirely her own, that her father, when alive, and afterwards her brother, had always refrained from breaking in upon her retirement. She hoped, therefore, I would not be offended if she requested to be allowed the same privilege, notwithstanding our nearer connection. It leaves my mind,' she said, 'a power of expanding itself with a freedom upon whatever engages me, for which I am always the better; and then you know,' she added, our meetings after these little absences in solitude are always the pleasanter.' 66 6 Though I own I did not much relish this proposal, and thought it was not exactly the custom of married people, or that there was any vulgarity in a husband and wife wishing to be together, yet she talked of the matter so prettily, and made the proposal with so much sentiment and delicacy, that I could not help admiring her.' "You assented, of course?' said I. 66 6 Why what could I do? I did not like to be held up to her aristocratic relations as a vulgar husband, and they, as well as she, assured me that what was proposed was always the custom in very high families; that the higher the parties, the more their independence of one another, and that nothing so much denoted superior quality and fashion as this domestic rule. I trust, therefore, you do not blame me?' "I assured him I pitied more than blamed him, and hoped for better things. "He said he hoped so too, but found he had been doing so for twelve months in vain; in short, 'She treats me,' said he, like a vassal. She has already become indifferent to my wishes and plans of domestic comfort, in the enjoyment of her society upon a more retired scale than suits her taste. She is, as you see, of a very superior mould, and commanding though cold temperament; which, added to an internal contempt for my mean origin, leads her perpetuaily abroad, dispeusing with me as a companion; or if, and whenever, at home, she requires to be surrounded by her whole clan, who all look up to her, and down upon me, though fond enough of the good quarters they always find provided for them.' "Neither my fortune nor my sense of independence will stand this, and yet I am so wanting in true spirit that I know not how to break from under it. Alas! every way your caution as to unequal marriages is now brought home to me. Lady Cherubina herself is not the wife I thought she would 18* VOL. I. |