CHAPTER XVII.

And ruder words will soon rush in To spread the breach that words begin, And eyes forget the gentle ray They wore in courtship's smiling day, And voices lose the tone that shed A tenderness round all they said; Till, fast declining one by one, The sweetnesses of love are gone.

_Lalla Rookh._

Among other old acquaintances, the Westhopes were established at Brighton; and it was with mixed feelings that Blanche prepared herself to meet the friend of her youth, the person who had most unintentionally assisted to foster her love, by always appearing so impressed with De Molton's attractions. Upon that subject both men and women are more influenced by the estimation in which the object is held by others, than they would willingly allow: they are ashamed to be so easily pleased as to prefer a person whom no one else thinks pleasing, and they are decidedly proud of being preferred by one whom every one else admires.

Mingled with her desire to see her early friend, Blanche experienced a certain dread of the scrutinizing eye of intimacy. She felt she should never be able to echo, with the accent of truth, the romantic sentiments in which they used once to indulge; and she did not wish her friend to discover that the love which she had spoken of as equal to endure any trials, had nearly sunk under the petty and undignified vexations of pecuniary difficulty.

Time, however, had worked some changes in Lady Westhope. She had long conquered her incipient inclination towards Mr. Wroxholme; she had learnt that a well-regulated mind can make itself contented, if not happy, under almost all circumstances; she had quite given up the point of being the youngest and most admired person in her circle; and she had convinced herself that she ought to be grateful for the worldly comforts with which she was surrounded, for the ample means of doing good which were within her reach, and for the circumstance of having a very good-humoured husband, who, whatever might be his faults, was no tyrant.

Lord Westhope, also, was somewhat altered. He was now eight years older than when we began our story, and twenty-two years older than when he began his infidelities. It was, indeed, time he should have sown his wild oats, and accordingly he was become infinitely more domestic. Although love was a feeling which could never again exist between them, there subsisted a considerable regard, and their society was far from disagreeable to each other.

On the morning after the arrival of the De Moltons, when Lady Westhope called upon Blanche, one of the disputes, which were now of too frequent occurrence, had just taken place between her and her husband. Blanche had made a desperate effort to persuade De Molton to take a house which was to be let at a rent, low in proportion to its size, but still higher than he thought he could afford. Blanche shrank from being seen by her former associates in the mean and paltry lodging which, in so expensive a place as Brighton, was the only one he found within his means. He persisted in his usual resolution, never to do anything which might eventually lead to a shabby action, for the sake of avoiding a shabby appearance. He had not long left the room, after a peremptory refusal to accede to his wife's request, when Lady Westhope entered.

After the first greetings were over, and Lady Westhope had admired Blanche's beautiful children, they drew their chairs to the fire, and Lady Westhope exclaimed, "How I envy you those lovely children, Blanche! I think, if I had four such enchanting creatures, I should be quite happy! I should so like to have a large flourishing family growing up around me!"

"Heavens! dear Lady Westhope! and I consider each addition to mine as a visitation which gives me the blue devils for months! When once they are there, and they have made themselves beloved, one would not part with them for worlds; but if you knew what unceasing trouble they give, and how difficult it is to do one's duty by them, you would not wish for a large family."

"Well! perhaps there are advantages, as well as disadvantages, in everything. I have schooled my mind, and brought myself to think everything is for the best. I am a much more contented person, Blanche, than when we used to talk over your love affairs in former days. Now, tell me a little about Captain De Molton. Is he as handsome as ever? and are you as much in love as ever? I certainly never did see such a regular love-match as yours! The longer you were separated, and the more you were thwarted, the more desperately constant you both were!"

"Opposition has always been supposed to have that effect: I believe it has often turned many a passing fancy into a _grande passion_."

"Why, you are not implying such treason against yourself as to say that opposition assisted to foster your _grande passion_?"

"Oh dear, no! I only spoke generally. But do you tell me a little about Lord Westhope," she added, to turn the conversation from her own affairs.

"Oh! he is grown so kind and attentive! I assure you we are settling down into a most domestic comfortable old couple."

The entrance of Mr. Stapleford interrupted the mutual investigation of conjugal felicity which the friends had set on foot. Mr. Stapleford said he had just met De Molton in the street, who had told him where he should find Lady Blanche, and he had lost no time in paying his respects to her. "But, dear Lady Blanche, you are going to remove from this horrid place? In such a situation too! A mile and a half from the sea. I could scarcely believe De Molton, when he pointed out this as your abode; and should have imagined he was playing off a practical joke upon me, if I had not known he was not given to being facetious. But I suppose you are only here till you can procure something in the land of the living."

Blanche did not wish Mr. Stapleford to perceive she was not perfectly contented with her fate, and she replied that she did not like being within hearing of the sea,--the constant monotonous breaking of the waves upon the shore made her melancholy.

"There is no accounting for tastes," he replied, with a polite bow, and a glance which quickly ran over the shabby furniture, the once smart trellised paper, (a sort of paper peculiarly in vogue at sea-bathing places, where real flowers and real green leaves are rare,) the little round convex mirror surmounted by an eagle with a chain in its bill, and the other lodging-house elegancies which adorned the room, especially the bell-ropes, which were as fine, and much more dirty, than those at Mrs. Jones's, which, four years before, had excited such strong feelings of horror in Blanche's mind. She saw the excursive glance of his eye, and she saw the affectation of politeness with which he then let it fall on the ground, while a slight smile just played about the corners of his mouth. She always disliked him; and she now most devoutly wished he had not fancied the sea-air bracing, and the society of Brighton agreeable.

"You will be at Mrs. L.'s this evening, shall you not?" inquired Stapleford.

"No!" replied Lady Blanche; "I am not acquainted with her."

"Ah! by the bye, she has come into fashion since your time. How long is it since we lost sight of you?"

"I have been married five years."

"Married! Ah! marriage is a holy rite, synonymous with honourable sepulture. You have, from that day, been dead to all your friends! By the bye, I was with the Wentnors a month ago. You know your old friend Glenrith is become Lord Wentnor now. He, however, seems determined not to be buried alive. He is giving balls and fêtes of all descriptions; or rather _she_ is, for he is such a doting husband, that every fancy of hers is a law to him. It is quite pretty to see such love-making after eight years of marriage, especially as the result of this Arcadian conjugality generally is a splendid entertainment by which half England profits."

Stapleford's instinct for saying the disagreeable thing had not deserted him; and he left Blanche to ponder on the fate she had rejected, and to compare it with that she had persisted in choosing. Lady Westhope, too, was happy! She rejoiced that such should be the case; but certainly the reflections she made during the rest of that day were not unworldly ones.

De Molton had again met Stapleford in his morning walk, who, after complimenting him upon the unimpaired beauty of his wife, attacked him most unmercifully for having kept her so long in seclusion, and for now burying her in such an out-of-the-way place, and implied (what he had no right to know, but what he had guessed from the expressive countenance of Blanche, in which her feelings might always be read as in a mirror,) that she was an unwilling denizen in that remote suburb.

De Molton returned home somewhat displeased at having been, as he imagined, spoken of as a tyrant and a miser. The tête-à-tête in the evening did not promise to be agreeable.

"Mr. Stapleford called this morning," Blanche began.

"So he told me," replied De Molton.

"And Lady Westhope has been here."

"Did they tell you any news?

"Mr. Stapleford told me he had been staying at Wentnor Castle; and he gives such a description of their happiness! They seem to be giving splendid fêtes and beautiful entertainments, all to please her; for, he says, that every wish of Lady Wentnor's is a law to her husband."

De Molton felt this last sentence as an implied cut at him. "It is very fortunate for Glenrith that he has money to throw away in gratifying every foolish whim of a fantastical woman."

Blanche felt that this was a hit at her; and forgetting that by applying to herself what her husband said, she gave him a right to conclude she meant to be personal in her account of Lord Wentnor as a husband, she followed her impulse, and replied:--

"I cannot see that there is anything fantastical in wishing not to be laughed at by all one's acquaintance, and in disliking a house one's friends can hardly bring themselves to enter."

"Blanche, when you married me, you knew you married a poor man: if you wished for riches and splendour, why did you not marry Glenrith?"

"I am sure, if I wished for kindness and for good-humour I had better have married Lord Glenrith. I do not know what foolish, girlish infatuation came over me."

"It is, indeed, unfortunate, that in consequence of this _foolish, girlish infatuation_, which are the terms by which you designate your attachment to your husband, you should have thrown away a situation in which you would have been so much happier. I have but to regret that I should have marred your fortunes--so unwittingly marred them,--for neither Glenrith nor yourself can accuse me of having, by any arts or underhand practices, attempted to win your affections from him."

This implied, according to Blanche's interpretation of his words, that she had allowed them to be gained before he had made any attempt to do so; and, as angry people usually do, answering to the sense she chose to attribute to his speech, rather than to its plain and obvious meaning, she replied,--

"If it was only pity for the unfortunate passion which you supposed me to entertain for you, which induced you to profess love at Cransley, it is indeed unfortunate that you allowed your pity so far to overcome your prudence. If I had imagined such to have been the case, I should most assuredly never have broken off my engagement with Lord Wentnor."

"I can only again lament that I should have been the cause of your doing what you so much regret."

"If this is my reward for having rejected, for your sake, the best _parti_ in England, a good man, too, and one who loved me; for having disappointed and angered my parents; for having preserved an undeviating constancy for three years to a person who now laments that I did not marry his rival, and confesses he only married me out of pity, I am indeed the most unfortunate woman in the world!" She burst into a flood of tears of anger and vexation.

"Blanche, you wilfully pervert the meaning of all I say. When did I imply that I married you for anything but love? But these reproaches, this petulance, are not the right method to preserve a husband's affection."

"If nothing but a slave,--a patient, meek Griselda,--a Mrs. Jones,--can preserve your affection, I am afraid I have no chance of preserving it! I do not know what I can do more than I already do. I work for my children; I go without all the comforts I have been used to; I have no maid; and I must refuse going to Lady Westhope's to-morrow night, because the nursery-maid cannot dress my hair, and because I have no gown fit to appear in."

"I am very, very sorry I have not the means of providing you with the luxuries you regret, and I am very sorry you refuse yourself the pleasures and amusements that so naturally fall in your way. I had hoped that at Brighton, where people may join in society without much expense, and where it is not necessary to keep a carriage, you might have mixed with your friends. I should have thought the art of hair-dressing was not so very difficult to acquire, when one sees every attorney's daughter, every milliner's apprentice, every shop-girl, with hair which puts to shame all the exertions of M. Hippolite."

"I am not a shop-girl or a milliner's apprentice," answered Lady Blanche, while all the blood of the Falkinghams mounted to her cheek, and all the spirit of an ancient race flashed from her eye.

"But you are the wife of a poor man, although of one as nobly born as yourself!" and all the pride of the De Moltons rendered the brow of her husband absolutely awful.

"I know full well that I am the wife of a poor man; there is no need to remind me so often of that truth," replied Lady Blanche, with some bitterness in her tone; "and therefore I shall stay at home, and not expose my poverty to the eyes of the pitying world, or to the sneers of a Mr. Stapleford."

"You will do as is most agreeable to yourself. I shall certainly go to Lady Westhope's, as I shall feel sincere pleasure in seeing my old friends again."

To Lady Westhope's went De Molton; and Blanche stayed at home. She had originally intended, for the sake of enjoying agreeable society, to brave the slight mortification of not finding herself, as was once the case, the best dressed woman in the room; but the conversation of the preceding evening had left her so unhappy, so discontented, and so indignant, that she found a certain pleasure in martyrdom. It was, however, only in the eyes of her husband that she wished to enact the martyr; from the world she would fain conceal that she had so misjudged the strength of her own attachment: she meant to persuade others that it was from choice, from bad health, or from any motive rather than the true one, that she persisted in leading a retired life.

But with her candid disposition, and her speaking eyes, it did not require the malicious tact of a Stapleford to read the true state of her feelings. With Lady Westhope, especially, she could not always be on her guard; and to her it was soon only too evident that the love for which she had given up everything else did not repay her for the sacrifices she had made. Lady Westhope began indeed to doubt whether this much-vaunted love had not, when tried in the balance against privations of every sort, been found utterly wanting.

It may be asked, should then Blanche have married Lord Glenrith? No, certainly; for she was not in love with him. More especially no, for she was at the time in love with another. But we would urge that if affluence without love is insufficient to wedded happiness, so is the most romantic love without those habitual luxuries, and that dispensation from sordid details, which, to persons in a certain situation, may almost be termed the necessaries of life.

Let not those who, valuing the good things of this world, are dazzled into forming an interested marriage, anticipate the delights of sentimental affection, nor be disappointed if one whose situation was the attraction prove destitute of those qualities which were not sought; and let those who are "all for love and the world well lost," keep in mind the latter half of the sentence, and not expect to find both that which they prize, and that which they profess to contemn. Above all, let not those who have an opportunity of uniting in their choice true affection with the enjoyments of those comforts to which they have been accustomed, be induced, by any temptation of rank, wealth, or power, to give up virtuous happiness for heartless splendour.