Patience, Barbara Hofland [readict books TXT] 📗

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