Patience - Barbara Hofland (red novels txt) 📗
- Author: Barbara Hofland
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every thing elegiac. I said to Sally this morning, (by the way, ‘tis her
birth-day, she’s forty-five, owns to eight-and-thirty, and grows the
colour of a dried marigold, which is just the case with all thin women,)
I said to her;
‘The goose thy riot dooms to bleed to-day,
Had he thy reason, he would fly away.’”
“So will I,” cried Stancliffe, starting up; and casting a significant
glance at Dora, he instantly left the room.
“My dear sister,” said Frank, casting a look full of pity on Dora, “what
will become of you?”
“I know not;” said Dora, with a pathetic sigh.
“So! that is your brother,” interrupted Mrs. Judith. “I remember, now,
my grand-nephew said there was such a person, and that we should be
charming company; and so we shall, for I can tell him all about the
Greek emperors, and the Roman kings, and the knights of chivalry, and
the battles of Alexander the Great, on the Po, and the Danube, and all
the rest of the places—ah! my dear, you will find me excellent company,
and so improving, which is the great thing for young people. Whenever
your sister is engaged, now you will always have me to look to, which to
be sure will be a great matter for you—you are not a child, exactly,
which is the reason I like you; if all children were as big as you when
they were born, it would save a monstrous deal of trouble; or if people
would have them when they grew old, and had nothing to do but play with
them, ‘twould be all very well; but really it is mighty silly to spoil
their best days with them, as many people do; master Frank, don’t you
think so, my dear?”
During this harangue, the speaker had seized on the hands of poor Frank,
who, unable to struggle, and anxious to follow the example of
Stancliffe, feebly appealed to his sister’s aid by the exclamation of
“Oh Dora!”
“At the word,” accoutered for all encounters, Mrs. Judith began again to
harangue.
“Dora you call your sister, my dear boy, that is not the proper
diminutive for Dorothy—no, no, that is Doll, or Dolly; I amused your
brother-in-law, my grand-nephew, that is, Mr. Stancliffe, who is just
gone out, Everton, as I often call him, he being the son of my own
niece; well, I say, I amused him all the way here with telling him how
well we should agree together, and making verses about it; I said in
this way:
‘Judith and Dolly,
Will quickly be jolly.’
then I brought my little dog in, which you know was very proper, because
we are never long parted; and then my verse was longer, it ran thus:
‘Fury, and Judith, and gentle Dolly,
Will never more be melancholy.’
the word gentle, my dear, is what is called an epitaph—epitaph! no,
that’s not the word.”
“Epithet, ma’am, you mean, and proper enough for my sister.”
“True, true, my dear; I knew it was epi something: aye! few people have
read one half so much as me; I have Addison and all the antients off by
heart: now sit down, and I will tell you about the nymph Egeria, and how
she lived in a cave.”
“I know it all, ma’am, indeed I do.”
“And what Augustus said about a man and an elephant.”
“Oh! ma’am, I know it very well.”
“And about the triumvirate, and Oliver Cromwell, and the siege of Troy,
and William Tell, and Robert Bruce, and the massacre of St. Bartholomew,
and the death of Leonidas, and king Charles the martyr, and—why, child!
you shake your head at every thing.”
“I know all those things, indeed, ma’am.”
“Well, but my dear boy, say nothing on the subject; hear what Young
says in the Night Thoughts:
‘Be silent always when you doubt your sense,
And listen unto me with diffidence.’
if it isn’t Young, it’s Milton; who is a monstrous favourite author with
me. I have got every one of Satan’s soliloquies off by heart: poor Sally
Lawrence always called them my devilish speeches. I believe the poor
dear thought them as long as his tail, and as hard as his cloven hoof,
for she was a bit of an ignoramus. I said to her, says I, my dear miss
Sally, if ignorance is bliss, ‘tis folly to be wise, dear miss; for I
always make a rhyme—they will have such a miss of me, I’m sure my
very heart aches to think of it, and I say,
‘Then ages hence, when all my griefs are o’er,
what’s the next line, my dear?”
“‘When this rebellious tongue must speak no more,’”
replied Frank.
“Very true, my dear; then comes in something about singing and bringing,
and sighing and crying; it is all very fine, and what they call
‘immortal verse,’ my dear, which means verse that will last for ever;
you understand master Frank—the proper way to make it, is to do as I
did with your sister’s name, to say Dolly, choly, folly, jolly, and so
on; but after all, if people haven’t a natural genius, they never make
out much. I do honestly believe I was born with just the same genius I
have at this moment—the Evertons had all geniuses—there was my brother
Tom laid out a garden like nobody else; and my aunt Sarah, who lived in
queen Anne’s time, raised a Yorkshire pie like a castle. Dick Everton,
my father’s sister’s eldest son, spent a very handsome fortune in
finding the longitude; and I can assure you, little Stancliffe here, my
grand-nephew, who is just gone out, drew a globe before he was your age,
all over with hieroglyphics, like Sir Isaac Newton’s Copernican
gravitations. In short, genius comes one knows not how, and goes one
knows not where:—‘tis untold the times I have said that to Sally, and
Miss Lawrence too, day after day; but you see comprehension lies in the
brains, and if people can’t comprehend because they happen to have no
understanding, it is not possible to put these things into them—now,
there’s Lavater’s system, have you heard about that?”
“Pardon me, ma’am, if I insist on sending my brother to bed, he looks
very pale, and every degree of excitement is so bad for him that I am
really obliged to be positive,” said Dora.
Frank escaped like a bird from the fowler, and Mrs. Judith herself
protested that it was bed time, and after taking the toast and negus,
which constituted her supper, retired with the maid appointed to attend
her. As her motions were necessarily slow, Dora heard her voice all the
way up-stairs, pursuing its customary task; and it was not till after
her chamber door had closed, and the sound ceased, that she could
venture to congratulate herself on the relief her jaded spirits had long
earnestly desired.
If, when the wearisome hour was past, Dora could have beckoned her
husband from his hiding-place, such was the sweetness of her temper, and
such the submission to circumstances she had acquired, that she would
immediately have dismissed her chagrin, and even found herself rewarded
by his presence; but to her grief and alarm, many wearisome hours
followed before Stancliffe made his appearance; and when he came, it was
evident that he had not spent a sober evening in the house of an
acquaintance. He spoke as one half intoxicated, and whilst he inveighed
with bitterness against Mrs. Judith, he yet expressed no compassion for
the wife to whom he had assigned her as a companion, and whose
avocations, spirits, and situation, every way ought to have exempted
from a task which those only were calculated to endure who had been by
degrees habituated to the evil, and held her conversation in the same
light as the loud clicking of a clock to which they had ceased to
attend.
Alas! the history of one night was that of many; and Dora, again bereft
of her husband’s society, had the farther mortification of finding that
his evenings were spent generally in a manner which incapacitated him
for exertion in the day, and that he became, though less violent in his
temper than when under the immediate promptings of a wicked and artful
woman, yet morose, stubborn, and to her unfeeling, as to others rude.
She was aware that his spirits were oppressed by various causes,
especially the demands made by Mr. Masterman for increased advances for
his hitherto unprofitable concern; but he again ceased to make her the
confidant of his affairs, although she was the necessary partaker of
his troubles. Cold in his manners, severe in his house-retrenchments,
and daily assuming the sternness of age, whilst he allowed himself all
the licence of youthful pleasure, it would have been impossible for Dora
to have borne up against the complicated difficulties by which she was
surrounded, and have preserved that equanimity which distinguished her,
if her mind had not had one subject on which her heart could dwell, and
to which it could have recourse for temporary comfort. This was the
expected return of her first and only friend, who had now been absent
the full term she proposed, and in all her late letters had spoken of
her health as re-established. Yet this hope was rather the refuge of a
distressed heart, that like the wandering dove sought for any
resting-place, however slippery and untenable, than the hope of
happiness beyond the pleasure of welcoming one dearly and justly
beloved. Dora could not bear the idea of Mrs. Aylmer seeing Stancliffe
her still beloved, though erring husband, in his present state of
conduct; and she was well aware that his circumstances could not be
concealed from her; yet from the pain, and the shame attending both
discoveries, she ardently desired to save both herself and her friend,
conscious as she was that a few more years of toil and privation, would
place her in ease and even affluence. On the other hand, she flattered
herself, that the great respectability of Mrs. Aylmer’s character, the
superiority of her mind, the maternal rights she undoubtedly had in
her, and even the expectations which she blushed to remember her
husband often hinted at, might altogether influence him so far as to
suspend his present habits; and she hoped, that as he had been restored
to her when held by a stronger spell, she might reclaim him more
effectually from a weaker:—she hoped—what will not woman hope for him
to whom her heart still clings, worthless as he may be? and as the green
tendril imparts its own freshness to the withered spray round which it
winds, so does she impart to him a portion of her virtues, hiding the
deformity she cannot cure, and delaying the destruction she seeks to
avert.
At length a letter in the well-known long-loved hand, with a Dover
post-mark, was received, announcing Mrs. Alymer’s return to England, and
her intention of visiting Liverpool before her settlement at Crickhowel
or any other place, but lamenting that there would be a necessity for
her to stop some weeks in London. Dora shewed this letter to Stancliffe,
not only with the pleasure awakened by good news, but with that
enquiring gaze which sought to read how far it was agreeable to him, and
with the desire to found upon it a request for the money necessary to
provide various little accommodations in which her house was at this
time deficient. Stancliffe, like the deaf adder, refused to hear, even
the voice of a wise charmer:—the usual answer to every petition of this
nature, had long been either an exclamation of astonishment at what she
could
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