Читать книгу A Simple Story - Mrs. Inchbald - Страница 19

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There are few things so mortifying to a proud spirit as to suffer by immediate comparison—men can hardly bear it, but to women the punishment is intolerable; and Miss Milner now laboured under this humiliation to a degree which gave her no small inquietude.

Miss Fenton, young, of exquisite beauty, elegant manners, gentle disposition, and discreet conduct, was introduced to Miss Milner's acquaintance by her guardian, and frequently, sometimes inadvertently, held up by him as a pattern for her to follow—for when he did not say this in direct terms, it was insinuated by the warmth of his panegyric on those virtues in which Miss Fenton excelled, and in which his ward was obviously deficient. Conscious of her own inferiority in these subjects of her guardian's praise, Miss Milner, instead of being inspired to emulation, was provoked to envy.

Not to admire Miss Fenton was impossible—to find one fault with her person or sentiments was equally impossible—and yet to love her was unlikely.

That serenity of mind which kept her features in a continual placid form, though enchanting at the first glance, upon a second or third, fatigued the sight for want of variety; and to have seen her distorted with rage, convulsed with mirth, or in deep dejection, had been to her advantage. But her superior soul appeared above those emotions, and there was more inducement to worship her as a saint than to love her as a woman. Yet Dorriforth, whose heart was not formed (at least not educated) for love, regarding her in the light of friendship only, beheld her as the most perfect model for her sex. Lord Frederick on first seeing her was struck with her beauty, and Miss Milner apprehended she had introduced a rival; but he had not seen her three times, before he called her "The most insufferable of Heaven's creatures," and vowed there was more charming variation in the plain features of Miss Woodley.

Miss Milner had a heart affectionate to her own sex, even where she saw them in possession of superior charms; but whether from the spirit of contradiction, from feeling herself more than ordinarily offended by her guardian's praise of this lady, or that there was a reserve in Miss Fenton that did not accord with her own frank and ingenuous disposition, so as to engage her esteem, certain it is that she took infinite satisfaction in hearing her beauty and virtues depreciated or turned into ridicule, particularly if Mr. Dorriforth was present. This was painful to him upon many accounts; perhaps an anxiety for his ward's conduct was not among the least; and whenever the circumstance occurred, he could with difficulty restrain his anger. Miss Fenton was not only a person whose amiable qualities he admired, but she was soon to be allied to him by her marriage with his nearest relation, Lord Elmwood, a young nobleman whom he sincerely loved.

Lord Elmwood had discovered all that beauty in Miss Fenton which every common observer could not but see. The charms of her mind and of her fortune had been pointed out by his tutor; and the utility of the marriage, in perfect submission to his precepts, he never permitted himself to question.

This preceptor held with a magisterial power the government of his pupil's passions; nay, governed them so entirely, that no one could perceive (nor did the young Lord himself know) that he had any.

This rigid monitor and friend was a Mr. Sandford, bred a Jesuit in the same college at which Dorriforth had since been educated, but before his time the order was compelled to take another name. Sandford had been the tutor of Dorriforth as well as of his cousin, Lord Elmwood, and by this double tie seemed now entailed upon the family. As a Jesuit, he was consequently a man of learning; possessed of steadiness to accomplish the end of any design once meditated, and of sagacity to direct the conduct of men more powerful, but less ingenious, than himself. The young Earl, accustomed in his infancy to fear him as his master, in his youthful manhood received every new indulgence with gratitude, and at length loved him as a father—nor had Dorriforth as yet shaken off similar sensations.

Mr. Sandford perfectly knew how to influence the sentiments and sensations of all human kind, but yet he had the forbearance not to "draw all hearts towards him." There were some whose hatred he thought not unworthy of his pious labours; and in that pursuit he was more rapid in his success than even in procuring esteem. It was an enterprise in which he succeeded with Miss Milner even beyond his most sanguine wish.

She had been educated at an English boarding school, and had no idea of the superior and subordinate state of characters in a foreign seminary—besides, as a woman, she was privileged to say any thing she pleased; and as a beautiful woman, she had a right to expect that whatever she pleased to say, should be admired.

Sandford knew the hearts of women, as well as those of men, though he had passed little of his time in their society—he saw Miss Milner's heart at the first view of her person; and beholding in that little circumference a weight of folly that he wished to eradicate, he began to toil in the vineyard, eagerly courting her detestation of him, in the hope he could also make her abominate herself. In the mortifications of slight he was expert; and being a man of talents, whom all companies, especially her friends, respected, he did not begin by wasting that reverence so highly valued upon ineffectual remonstrances, of which he could foresee the reception, but wakened her attention by his neglect of her. He spoke of her in her presence as of an indifferent person, sometimes forgetting even to name her when the subject required it; then would ask her pardon, and say that he "Really did not recollect her," with such seeming sorrow for his fault, that she could not think the offence intended, and of course felt the affront more acutely.

While, with every other person she was the principle, the cause upon whom a whole party depended for conversation, cards, musick, or dancing, with Mr. Sandford she found that she was of no importance. Sometimes she tried to consider this disregard of her as merely the effect of ill-breeding; but he was not an ill-bred man: he was a gentleman by birth, and one who had kept the best company—a man of sense and learning. "And such a man slights me without knowing it," she said—for she had not dived so deeply into the powers of simulation, as to suspect that such careless manners were the result of art.

This behaviour of Mr. Sandford had its desired effect—it humbled her in her own opinion more than a thousand sermons would have done preached on the vanity of youth and beauty. She felt an inward shame at the insignificance of these qualities that she never knew before, and would have been cured of all her pride, had she not possessed a degree of spirit beyond the generality of her sex—such a degree as even Mr. Sandford, with all his penetration, did not expect. She determined to resent his treatment; and, entering the lists as his declared enemy, give to the world a reason why he did not acknowledge her sovereignty, as well as the rest of her devoted subjects.

She now commenced hostilities against all his arguments, his learning, and his favourite axioms; and by a happy talent of ridicule, in want of other weapons for this warfare, she threw in the way of the holy Father as great trials of his patience, as any that his order could have substituted in penance. Many things he bore like a martyr—at others, his fortitude would forsake him, and he would call on her guardian, his former pupil, to interpose with his authority: she would then declare that she only had acted thus "to try the good man's temper, and that if he had combated with his fretfulness a few moments longer, she would have acknowledged his claim to canonization; but that having yielded to the sallies of his anger, he must now go through numerous other probations."

If Miss Fenton was admired by Dorriforth, by Sandford she was adored—and, instead of placing her as an example to Miss Milner, he spoke of her as of one endowed beyond Miss Milner's power of imitation. Often, with a shake of his head and a sigh, would he say,

"No; I am not so hard upon you as your guardian: I only desire you to love Miss Fenton; to resemble her, I believe, is above your ability."

This was too much to bear composedly—and poor Miss Woodley, who was generally a witness of these controversies, felt a degree of sorrow at every sentence which like the foregoing chagrined and distressed her friend. Yet as she suffered too for Mr. Sandford, the joy of her friend's reply was abated by the uneasiness it gave to him. But Mrs. Horton felt for none but the right reverend priest; and often did she feel so violently interested in his cause, that she could not refrain giving an answer herself in his behalf—thus doing the duty of an adversary with all the zeal of an advocate.