CHAPTER IV.

_Much ado about nothing_.

Damon was inexpressibly afflicted at the success of his uncle's emba.s.sy.

When Mr. Moreland related to him the particulars of his visit, Damon recollected the opposite tempers of the two gentlemen, and blamed himself for not having foreseen the event. Mr. Hartley was infinitely exasperated at the cavalierness with which he had been treated. He now discovered the true cause of his daughter's pertinacity, and proceeded with more vigour than ever.

"And so," cried he, "you have dared to engage your affections without my privity, have you? A pretty story truly. And you would disgrace me for ever, by marrying into the family of a lord, that despises us, and an old fellow, that for half a word would knock your father's brains out."

"Indeed sir," replied Delia, "I never thought of marrying without your consent. I only gave the young gentleman leave to ask it of you." "You gave him leave! And pray who are you? And so you was in league with him to send this fellow to abuse me?" "Upon my word, I was not. And I am very sorry if Mr. Moreland has behaved improperly." "_If_ Mr. Moreland!

and so you pretend to doubt of it! But, let me tell you, I have provided you a husband, worth fifty of this young prig, and I will make you think so." "Indeed sir, I can never think so." "You cannot. And pray who told you to object, before I have named the man. Why, child, lord Martin has ten thousand pounds a year, and is a peer, and is not ashamed of us one bit in all the world." "Alas, sir, I can never have lord Martin. Do not mention him. I am in no hurry. I will live single as long as you please."

"Yes, and when you have persuaded me to that, you will jump out at window the next day to this ungracious rascal." "Oh pray sir do not speak so. He is good and gentle." "Why, hussey, am I not master in my own house? I shall have a fine time of it indeed, if I must give you an account of my words." "Sir," said Delia, "I will never marry without your consent."

"That is a good girl, no more you shall. And I will lock you up upon bread and water, if you do not consent to marry who I please."

The despotic temper of Mr. Hartley led him to treat his daughter with considerable severity. He suffered her to go very little abroad, and employed every precaution in his power, to prevent any interview between her and her lover. He tried every instrument in turn, threats, promises, intreaties, bl.u.s.tering, to bend her to his will. And when he found that by all these means he made no progress; as his last resource, he fixed a day at no great distance, when he a.s.sured her he would be disappointed no longer, and she should either voluntarily or by force yield her hand to lord Martin.

During these transactions, the communication between Delia and her lover was, with no great difficulty, kept open by the instrumentality of their two friends. They scarcely dared indeed to think of seeing each other, as in case this were discovered, Delia would be subject to still greater restraint, and the intercourse, between her and Miss Fletcher, be rendered more difficult. In one instance however, this lady ventured to procure the interview so ardently desired by both parties.

Damon made use of this opportunity to persuade his mistress to an elopement. "You have already carried," said he, "your obedience to the utmost exremity. You have tried every means to bend the inflexible will of your father. If not for my sake then, at least for your own, avoid the crisis that is preparing for you. You detect the husband that your father designs you. If united to him, you confess you must be miserable. But who can tell, in the midst of persons inflexibly bent upon your ruin, no friend at hand to support you, your Damon banished and at a distance, what may be the event? You will hesitate and tremble, your father will endeavour to terrify you into submission, the odious peer will force from you your hand. If, in that moment, your heart should misgive you, if one faultering accent belie the sentiments you have so generously avowed for me, what, ah, what! may be the consequence? No, my fair one, fly, instantly fly. No duty forbids. You have done all that the most rigid moralist could demand of you. Put yourself into my protection. I will not betray your confidence. You shall be as much mistress as ever of all your actions. If you distrust me, at least chuse our common friends sir William Twyford. Chuse any protector among the numerous friends, that your beauty and your worth have raised you. I had rather sacrifice my own prospects of felicity forever, than see the smallest chance that you should be unhappy."

Such were the arguments, which, with all the eloquence of a friend, and all the ardour of a lover, our hero urged upon his mistress. But the gentleness of Delia was not yet sufficiently roused by the injuries she had received, to induce her, to cast off all the ties which education and custom had imposed upon her, and determine upon so decisive a step.

"Surely," said she, "there is some secret reward, some unexpected deliverance in reserve, for filial simplicity. Oh, how harsh, how bold, how questionable a step, is that to which you would persuade me!

Circ.u.mstanced in this manner, the fairest reputation might provoke the tongue of scandal, and the most spotless innocence open a door to the blast of calumny. I will not say that such a step may not be sometimes justifiable. I will not say to what I may myself be urged. But oh, how unmingled the triumph, how sincere the joy if, by persevering in a conduct, in which the path of duty is too palpable to be mistaken, propitious fate may rather grant me the happiness after which I aspire, than I be forced, as it were, myself to wrest it from the hands of providence!"

Such was the result of this last and decisive interview. Delia could not be moved from that line of conduct, upon which she had so virtuously resolved. And Damon having in vain exerted all the rhetoric of which he was master, now gave way to the gloomy suggestions of despair, and now flattered himself with the gleams of hope. He sometimes thought, that Delia might yet be induced to adopt the plan he had proposed; and sometimes he gave way to the serene confidence she expressed, and indulged the pleasing expectation, that virtue would not always remain without its reward.

CHAPTER V.

_A Woman of Learning_.

We are now brought, in the course of our story, to the memorable scene at Miss Cranley's. "Miss Cranley's!" exclaims one of our readers, in a tone of admiration. "Miss Cranley's!" cries another, "and pray who is she?"

I distribute my readers into two cla.s.ses, the indolent and the supercilious, and shall accordingly address them upon the present occasion. To the former I have nothing more to say, than to refer them back to the latter part of Chapter I., Part I. where, my dear ladies, you will find an accurate account of the character of two personages, who it seems you have totally forgotten.

To the supercilious I have a very different story to tell. Most learned sirs, I kiss your hands. I acknowledge my error, and throw myself upon your clemency. You see however, gentlemen, that you were somewhat mistaken, when you imagined that I, like my fair patrons, the indolent, had quite lost these characters from my memory.

To speak ingenuously, I did indeed suppose, as far as I could calculate the events of this important narrative beforehand, that the Miss Cranleys would have come in earlier, and have made a more conspicuous figure, than they now seem to have any chance of doing. Having thus settled accounts with my readers; I take up again the thread of my story, and thus I proceed.

Mr. Hartley being now, as he believed, upon the point of disposing of his daughter in marriage, began seriously to consider that he should want a female companion to manage, his family, to nurse his ailments, and to repair the breaches, that the hand of wintry time had made in his spirits and his const.i.tution. The reader will be pleased to recollect, that he had already laid siege to the heart of the gentle Sophia. He now prosecuted his affair with more alacrity than ever.

Alas, my dear readers! while we have been junketting along from Southampton to Oxford, from Oxford to Windsor, and from Windsor to Southampton back again, such is the miserable fate of human kind! Miss Amelia Wilhelmina Cranley, the most pious of her s.e.x, the flower of Mr.

Whitfield's converts, the wonder and admiration of Roger the cobler, has given up the ghost. You will please then, in what follows, to represent to yourselves the charms of Sophia as decked and burnished with a suit of sables. Her exterior indeed was sable and gloomy, but her heart was far superior to the attacks of wayward fate. She sat aloft in the region of philosophy. She steeled her heart with the dignity of republicanism; for her to drop one tear of sorrow would have been an eternal disgrace.

About this time--it was perhaps in reality a manoeuvre to forward the affair, to which she had no aversion at bottom, with the father of Delia--that Miss Cranley gave a grand entertainment, at which were present Mr. Hartley, Mr. Prattle, sir William Twyford, lord Martin, most of the ladies we have already commemorated, and many others.

The repast was conducted with much solemnity. The masculine character of the mind of Sophia had rendered her particularly attached to the grace of action. When she drank the health of any of her guests, she accompanied it with a most profound _conge_. When she invited them to partake of any dish, she pointed towards it with her hand. This action might have served to display a graceful arm, but, alas! upon hers the hand of time had been making depredations, and it appeared somewhat coa.r.s.e and discoloured.

After dinner, the lady of the house, as usual, turned the conversation upon the subject of politics. She inveighed with much warmth against the effeminacy and depravity of the modern times. We were slaves, and we deserved to be so. In almost every country there now appeared a king, that puppet pageant, that monster in creation, miserable itself, a combination of every vice, and invented for the curse of human kind. "Where now," she asked, "was the sternness and inflexibility of ancient story? Where was that Junius, that stood and gazed in triumph upon the execution of his sons? Where that Fabricius, that turned up his nose under the snout of an elephant? Where was that Marcus Brutus, who sent his dagger to the heart of Caesar? For her part, she believed, and she would not give the snap of her fingers for him if it were otherwise, that he was in reality, as sage historians have reported, the son of Julius."

In the very paroxysm of her oratory she chanced to cast her eyes upon Mr.

Prattle. With the character of Mr. Prattle, the reader is already partly acquainted. But he does not yet know, for it was not necessary for our story he should do so, that the honourable Mr. Prattle was a commoner and a placeman. Good G.o.d, sir, represent to yourself with what a flame of indignation our amazon surveyed him! She rose from her seat, and, taking him by the hand, very familiarly turned him round in the middle of the company. "This," said she, "is one of our Fabiuses, one of our Decii.

Good G.o.d, my friend, what would you do, if a brother officer shook a cane over your shoulders as he did over those of the divine Themistocles? What would you do, if the brutal lull of an Appius ravished from your arms an only daughter? But I beg your pardon, sir. You are a placeman, mutually disgracing and disgraced. You sell your const.i.tuents to the vilest ministers, that ever came forward the champions of despotism. And those ministers show us what is their insignificance, their impotence, their want of discernment, in giving such a thing as you are, places of so great importance, offices of so high emolument."

Mr. Prattle, unused to be treated so cavalierly, and arraigned before so large a company, trembled in every limb: "My dear madam, my sweet Miss Sophia, pray do not pinch quite so hard;" and the water stood in his eyes.

Unable however to elude her grasp he fell down upon his knees. "For G.o.d's sake! Oh dear! Oh lack a daisy! Why, Miss, sure you are mad." Miss Cranley, unheedful of his exclamations, was however just going to begin with more vehemence than ever, when a sudden accident put a stop to the torrent of her oratory. But this event cannot be properly related without going back a little in our narrative, and acquainting the reader with some of those circ.u.mstances by which it was produced.

CHAPTER VI.

_A Catastrophe_.

Sir William Twyford had gained great credit with lord Martin by his conduct in the affair of Mr. Prettyman. He now imagined that he saw an opening for the exercise of his humour, which he was never able to refill.

He communicated his plan to lord Martin. By his a.s.sistance he procured that implement, which school-boys have denominated a cracker. This his lordship found an opportunity of attaching to the skirt of Miss Cranley's sack. At the moment we have described, when she was again going to enter into the stream of her rhetoric, which, great as it naturally was, was now somewhat improved with copious draughts of claret, the cracker was set on fire.

Poor Sophia now started in great agitation. "Bounce, bounce," went the cracker. Sophia skipped and danced from one end of the room to the other.

"Great G.o.ds of Rome," exclaimed she, "Jupiter, Minerva, and all the celestial and infernal deities!" The force of the cracker was now somewhat spent. "Ye boys of Britain, that bear not one mark of manhood about you!

Would Leonidas have fastened a squib to the robe of the Spartan mother?

Would Cimber have so unworthily used Portia, the wife of Brutus? Would Corbulo thus have interrupted the heroic fort.i.tude of Arria, the spouse of Thrasea Paetus?"

"My dear madam," exclaimed lord Martin, his eyes glistening with triumph, "with all submission, Corbulo I believe had been a.s.sa.s.sinated, before Arria so gloriously put an end to her existence." "Thou thing," cried Miss Cranky, "and hast thou escaped the torrent of my invective! Thou eternal blot to the list, in which are inserted the names of a Faulkland, a Shaftesbury, a Somers, and above all, that Leicester, who so bravely threw the lie in the face of his sovereign!" "He! he!" cried lord Martin, who could no longer refrain from boasting of his great atchievement. If I have escaped your vengeance, let me tell you, madam, you have not escaped "mine." "And was it thee, thou nincomp.o.o.p? Hence, thou wretch! Avaunt!

Begone, or thou shalt feel my fury!" Saying this, she clenched her fist, and closed her teeth, with so threatening an aspect, that the little peer was very much terrified. He flew back several paces. "My dear Miss Griskin," said he, "protect me! This barbarous woman does not understand wit,"--and he precipitately burst out of the room. The lady too was so much discomposed, that she thought proper to retire, a.s.suring the company that she would attend them again in a moment.

"Well," cried Miss Griskin, as soon as she had disappeared, "this was the nicest fun!" "I was afraid," said Miss Prim, "it would have discomposed Miss Cranley's petticoats." "Law, my dear!" said Miss Gawky, "by my so, I like the music of a cracker, better than all the concerts in the varsal world." We need not inform our readers, that Miss Languish, in the very height and alt.i.tude of the confusion, had been obliged to retire.

Lord Martin, in the midst of his triumph and exultation, had not leisure to recollect, nor perhaps penetration to perceive, the effect that this little sally might have upon his interests. Despotic and boorish as was the genius of Mr. Hartley, it cowred under that of Sophia with the most abject servility. And that lady now vowed eternal war against the heroical peer.

"Mr. Hartley," said she, in their next _tete a tete_, "let me tell you, lord Martin, must never have Miss Delia." "My dearest life," said the old gentleman, "consider, the day is fixed, my word is pa.s.sed, and it is too late to revoke now. Beside, lord Martin has ten thousand pounds a year." "Ten thousand figs," said she, "do not tell me, it is never too late to be wife. Lord Martin is a venal senator, and a little sniveling fellow." "My dear," said Hartley, "I never differed from you before: do let me have my mind now." "Have your mind, sir! Men should have no minds.

Tyrants that they are! And now I think of it, Miss Delia does not like lord Martin." "Pooh," said Mr. Hartley, recovering spirit at such an objection, "that is all stuff and nonsense." "Nonsense! Let me tell you, sir, women are not _born to be controled_. They are queens of the creation, and if they had their way, and the government of the world was in their hands, things would go much better than they do." "I know they would," replied her admirer, "if they were all as wise as you." "Child,"

returned Sophia, turning up her nose, "that is neither here nor there. The matter in short is this. Damon loves Delia, and Delia loves Damon. And if your daughter be not Mrs. Villiers, I will never be Mrs. Hartley."

From a decision like this there could be no appeal. Mr. Hartley told lord Martin, the next time he came to his house to pay his devoirs to his mistress, that he had altered his mind. His lordship was too much surprised at this manoeuvre to make any immediate answer; so turned upon his heel, and decamped.

The happy revolution, by the intervention of Miss Fletcher, was soon made known to sir William and his friend. Damon now paid his addresses in form.

A reconciliation took place between Mr. Moreland and the father of our heroine. The marriage was publicly talked of, the day was fixed, and every thing prepared for the nuptials.

It is impossible to describe the happiness of our lovers, when they saw every obstacle thus unexpectedly removed. Damon was beside himself with surprise and congratulation. Delia, at intervals, rubbed her eyes, and could scarcely be persuaded that it was not a dream. They saw each other at least once every day. Together they wandered along the margin of the ocean, and together they sought that delicious alcove, which now appeared ten times more beautiful, from the recollection it suggested of the sufferings they had pa.s.sed.

Lord Martin was in the mean time most grievously disappointed. "The devil d.a.m.n the fellow!" said he, "he crosses me like my evil genius. I have a month's mind to send him a challenge. He is a tall, big looking fellow to be sure. But then if I could contrive to kill him. Ah, me! but fortune does not always favour the brave. My reputation is established. I do not want a duel for that. And for any other purpose, it is all a lottery. Fire and furies, death and destruction! something must be done. Let me think--_About my brain_."

But lord Martin was not the only one whose hopes were disappointed, by the expected marriage of Delia. He loved her not, he felt not one flutter of complacency about his heart. It was vanity that first prompted him to address her. It was disappointed pride that now stung him. Even Mr.

Prattle viewed her with a more generous affection. His genius was not indeed a daring one, but it was active and indefatigable. Squire Savage did not feel the less, though he did not spend many words about it. He was a bl.u.s.tering hector. He had the reputation of fearing nothing, and caring for nothing, that stood in his way. There were also other lovers beside these, _whom the muse knows not, nor desires to know_.