Читать книгу Patronage - Maria Edgeworth - Страница 11

“My dear father, I have made all possible inquiries about Buckhurst Falconer. He stayed at Cheltenham till about a month ago with the Hautons, and I hear attended Miss Hauton every where: but I do not think there is any reason to believe the report of his paying his addresses to her. The public attention he showed her was, in my opinion, designed only to pique Caroline, whom, I’m persuaded, he thinks (between the fits of half-a-dozen other fancies) the first of women—as he always calls her. Rosamond need not waste much pity on him. He is an out-of-sight-out-of-mind man. The pleasure of the present moment is all in all with him.—He has many good points in his disposition; but Caroline had penetration enough to see that his character would never suit hers; and I rejoice that she gave him a decided refusal.

“Since he came to town, he has, by his convivial powers, his good stories, good songs, and knack of mimicry, made himself so famous, that he has more invitations to dinner than he can accept. He has wit and talents fit for more than being the buffoon or mocking-bird of a good dinner and a pleasant party; but he seems so well contented with this réputation de salon, that I am afraid his ambition will not rise to any thing higher. After leading this idle life, and enjoying this cheap-earned praise, he will never submit to the seclusion and application necessary for the attainment of the great prizes of professional excellence. I doubt whether he will even persevere so far as to be called to the bar; though the other day when I met him in Bond-street, he assured me, and bid me assure you, that he is getting on famously, and eating his terms with a prodigious appetite. He seemed heartily glad to see me, and expressed warm gratitude for your having saved his conscience, and having prevented his father from forcing him, as he said, to be a disgrace to the church.

“Rosamond asks what sort of girls the Miss Falconers are, and whether the Falconers have been civil to me since I settled in town?—Yes; pretty well. The girls are mere show girls—like a myriad of others—sing, play, dance, dress, flirt, and all that. Georgiana is beautiful sometimes; Arabella, ugly always. I don’t like either of them, and they don’t like me, for I am not an eldest son. The mother was prodigiously pleased with me at first, because she mistook me for Godfrey, or rather she mistook me for the heir of our branch of the Percys. I hear that Mrs. Falconer has infinite address, both as a political and hymeneal intrigante: but I have not time to study her. Altogether, the family, though they live in constant gaiety, do not give me the idea of being happy among one another. I have no particular reason for saying this. I judge only from the tact on this subject which I have acquired from my own happy experience.

“Love to Rosamond—I am afraid she will think I have been too severe upon Buckhurst Falconer. I know he is a favourite, at least a protégé of hers and of Godfrey. Bid her remember I have acknowledged that he has talents and generosity; but that which interests Rosamond in his favour inclines ill-natured me against him—his being one of Caroline’s suitors. I think he has great assurance to continue, in spite of all repulse, to hope, especially as he does nothing to render himself more worthy of encouragement. Thank Caroline for her letter; and assure Rosamond, that, though I have never noticed it, I was grateful for her entertaining account of M. de Tourville’s vis: I confess, I am rather late with my acknowledgments; but the fire at Percy-hall, and many events which rapidly succeeded, put that whole affair out of my head. Moreover, the story of Euphrosyne and Count Albert was so squeezed under the seal, that I must beg notes of explanation in her next. Who the deuce is Euphrosyne? and what does the letter P—for the rest of the word was torn out—stand for? and is Count Albert a hero in a novel, or a real live man?

“I saw a live man yesterday, whom I did not at all like to see—Sharpe, walking with our good cousin, Sir Robert Percy, in close conversation. This conjunction, I fear, bodes us no good.—Pray, do pray make another search for the deed.

“Your affectionate son,

“ALFRED PERCY.”

Soon after this letter had been received, and while the picture of his life, and the portraits of his worthy companions were yet fresh in her view, Buckhurst Falconer took the unhappy moment to write to renew his declaration of passionate attachment to Caroline, and to beg to be permitted to wait upon her once more.

From the indignant blush which mounted in Caroline’s face on reading his letter, Rosamond saw how unlikely it was that this request should be granted. It came, indeed, at an unlucky time. Rosamond could not refrain from a few words of apology, and looks of commiseration for Buckhurst; yet she entirely approved of Caroline’s answer to his letter, and the steady repetition of her refusal, and even of the strengthened terms in which it was now expressed. Rosamond was always prudent for her friends, when it came to any serious point where their interests or happiness were concerned. Her affection for her friends, and her fear of doing wrong on such occasions, awakened her judgment, and so controlled her imagination, that she then proved herself uncommonly judicious and discreet.—Prudence had not, it is true, been a part of Rosamond’s character in childhood; but, in the course of her education, a considerable portion of it had been infused by a very careful and skilful hand. Perhaps it had never completely assimilated with the original composition: sometimes the prudence fell to the bottom, sometimes was shaken to the top, according to the agitation or tranquillity of her mind; sometimes it was so faintly visible, that its existence might be doubted by the hasty observer; but when put to a proper test, it never failed to reappear in full force.—After any effort of discretion in conduct, Rosamond, however, often relieved and amused herself by talking in favour of the imprudent side of the question.

“You have decided prudently, my dear Caroline, I acknowledge,” said she. “But now your letter is fairly gone; now that it is all over, and that we are safe, I begin to think you are a little too prudent for your age.—Bless me, Caroline, if you are so prudent at eighteen, what will you be at thirty? Beware!—and in the mean time you will never be a heroine—what a stupid uninteresting heroine you will make! You will never get into any entanglements, never have any adventures; or if kind fate should, propitious to my prayer, bring you into some charming difficulties, even then we could not tremble for you, or enjoy all the luxury of pity, because we should always know that you would be so well able to extricate yourself—so certain to conquer, or—not die—but endure.—Recollect that Doctor Johnson, when his learned sock was off, confessed that he could never be thoroughly interested for Clarissa, because he knew that her prudence would always be equal to every occasion.”

Mrs. Percy began to question whether Johnson had ever expressed this sentiment seriously: she reprobated the cruelty of friendly biographers, who publish every light expression that escapes from celebrated lips in private conversation; she was going to have added a word or two about the injury done to the public, to young people especially, by the spreading such rash dogmas under the sanction of a great name.

But Rosamond did not give her mother time to enforce this moral; she went on rapidly with her own thoughts.

“Caroline, my dear,” continued she, “you shall not be my heroine; you are too well proportioned for a heroine—in mind, I mean: a heroine may—must have a finely-proportioned person, but never a well-proportioned mind. All her virtues must be larger than the life; all her passions those of a tragedy queen. Produce—only dare to produce—one of your reasonable wives, mothers, daughters, or sisters on the theatre, and you would see them hissed off the stage. Good people are acknowledged to be the bane of the drama and the novel—I never wish to see a reasonable woman on the stage, or an unreasonable woman off it. I have the greatest sympathy and admiration for your true heroine in a book; but I grant you, that in real life, in a private room, the tragedy queen would be too much for me; and the novel heroine would be the most useless, troublesome, affected, haranguing, egotistical, insufferable being imaginable! So, my dear Caroline, I am content, that you are my sister, and my friend, though I give you up as a heroine.”