Her son kissed her hand with warm grat.i.tude.

"You will not, I hope, think that I seek to prolong my regency, or to a.s.sume undue power or influence in affairs," continued Mrs. Beaumont, "if I hint to you in general terms what I think may contribute to your happiness. You must afterwards decide for yourself; and are now, as you have ever been, master, to do as you please."

"Too much--too much. I have had too much liberty, and have too little acquired the habit of commanding my will and my pa.s.sions by my reason.

Of this I am sensible. My excellent friend, Captain Walsingham, told me, some years ago, that this was the fault of my character, and he charged me to watch over myself; and so I have; but not so strictly, I fear, as if he had watched along with me.----Well, ma'am, you were going to give me some advice; I am all attention."

"My dear son, Captain Walsingham showed his judgment more, perhaps, in pointing out causes than effects. The weakness of a fond mother, I am sensible, did indulge you in childhood, and, perhaps, more imprudently in youth, with an unlimited liberty to judge and act for yourself. Your mother's system of education came, alas! more from her heart than her head. Captain Walsingham himself cannot be more sensible of my errors than I am."

"Captain Walsingham, believe me, mother, never mentioned this in reproach to you. He is not a man to teach a son to see his mother's errors--if she had any. He always spoke of you with the greatest respect. And since I must, at my own expense, do him justice, it was, I well remember, upon some occasion where I spoke too hastily, and insisted upon my will in opposition to yours, madam, that Captain Walsingham took me aside, and represented to me the fault into which my want of command over myself had betrayed me. This he did so forcibly, that I have never from that hour to this (I flatter myself) on any material occasion, forgotten the impression he made on my mind. But, madam, I interrupt you: you were going to give me your advice about--"

"No, no--no advice--no advice; you are, in my opinion, fully adequate to the direction of your own conduct. I was merely going to suggest, that, since you have not been accustomed to control from a mother, and since you have, thank Heaven! a high spirit, that would sooner break than bend, it must be essential to your happiness to have a wife of a compliant, gentle temper; not fond of disputing the right, or attached to her own opinions; not one who would be tenacious of rule, and unseasonably inflexible."

"Unseasonably inflexible! Undoubtedly, ma'am. Yet I should despise a mean-spirited wife."

"I am sure you would. But compliance that proceeds from affection, you know, can never deserve to be called mean-spirited--nor would it so appear to you. I am persuaded that there is a degree of fondness, of affection, enthusiastic affection, which disposes the temper always to a certain softness and yieldingness, which, I conceive, would be peculiarly attractive to you, and essential to your happiness: in short, I know your temper could not bear contradiction."

"Oh, indeed, ma'am, you are quite mistaken."

"Quite mistaken! and at the very moment he reddens with anger, because I contradict, even in the softest, gentlest manner in my power, his opinion of himself!"

"You don't understand me, indeed, you don't understand me," said Mr.

Beaumont, beating with his whip the leaves of a bush which was near him.

"Either you don't understand me, or I don't understand you. I am much more able to bear contradiction than you think I am, provided it be direct. But I do not love--what I am doing at this instant," added he, smiling--"I don't love beating about the bush."

"Look there now!--Strange creatures you men are! So like he looks to his poor father, who used to tell me that he loved to be contradicted, and yet who would not, I am sure, have lived three days with any woman who had ventured to contradict him directly. Whatever influence I obtained in his heart, and whatever happiness we enjoyed in our union, I attribute to my trusting to my observations on his character rather than to his own account of himself. Therefore I may be permitted to claim some judgment of what would suit your hereditary temper."

"Certainly, ma'am, certainly. But to come to the point at once, may I ask this plain question--Do you, by these reflections, mean to allude to any particular persons? Is there any woman in the world you at this instant would wish me to marry?"

"Yes--Miss Walsingham."

Mr. Beaumont started with joyful surprise, when his mother thus immediately p.r.o.nounced the very name he wished to hear.

"You surprise and delight me, my dear mother!"

"Surprise!--How can that be?--Surely you must know my high opinion of Miss Walsingham. But----"

"But--you added _but_----"

"There is no woman who may not be taxed with a _but_--yet it is not for her friend to lower her merit. My only objection to her is--I shall infallibly affront you, if I name it."

"Name it! name it! You will not affront me."

"My only objection to her then is, her superiority. She is so superior, that, forgive me, I don't know any man, yourself not excepted, who is at all her equal."

"I think precisely as you do, and rejoice."

"Rejoice? why there I cannot sympathize with you. I own, as a mother, I should feel a little--a little mortified to see my son not the superior; and when the comparison is to be daily and hourly made, and to last for life, and all the world to see it as well as myself. I own I have a mother's vanity. I should wish to see my son always what he has. .h.i.therto been--the superior, and master in his own house."

Mr. Beaumont made no reply to these insinuations, but walked on in silence; and his mother, unable to determine precisely whether the vexation apparent in his countenance proceeded from disapprobation of her observations, or from their working the effect she desired upon his pride, warily waited till he should betray some decisive symptom of his feelings. But she waited in vain--he was resolved not to speak.

"There is not a woman upon earth I should wish so much to have as a daughter-in-law, a companion, and a friend, as Miss Walsingham. You must be convinced," resumed Mrs. Beaumont, "so far as I am concerned, it is the most desirable thing in the world. But I should think it my duty to put my own feelings and wishes out of the question, and to make myself prefer whomsoever, all things considered, my judgment tells me would make you the happiest."

"And whom would your judgment prefer, madam?"

"Why--I am not at liberty to tell--unless I could explain all my reasons. Indeed, I know not what to say."

"Dear madam, explain all your reasons, or we shall never understand one another, and never come to an end of these half explanations."

Here they were interrupted by seeing Mr. Twigg, a courtly clergyman, coming towards them. Beaumont was obliged to endure his tiresome flattery upon the beauties of Beaumont Park, and upon the judicious improvements that were making, had been made, and would, no doubt, be very soon made. Mrs. Beaumont, at last, relieved his or her own impatience by commissioning Mr. Twigg to walk round the improvements by himself. By himself she insisted it should be, that she might have his unbia.s.sed judgment upon the two lines which had been marked for the new belt or screen; and he was also to decide whether they should call it a belt or a screen.--Honoured with this commission, he struck off into the walk to which Mrs. Beaumont pointed, and began his solitary progress.

Mr. Beaumont then urged his mother to go on with her explanation. Mrs.

Beaumont thought that she could not hazard much by flattering the vanity of a man on that subject on which perhaps it is most easily flattered; therefore, after sufficient delicacy of circ.u.mlocution, she informed her son that there was a young lady who was actually dying for love of him; whose extreme fondness would make her live but in him; and who, besides having a natural ductility of character, and softness of temper, was perfectly free from any formidable superiority of intellect, and had the most exalted opinion of his capacity, as well as of his character and accomplishments; in short, such an enthusiastic adoration, as would induce that belief in the infallibility of a husband, which must secure to him the fullest enjoyment of domestic peace, power, and pre-eminence.

Mr. Beaumont seemed less moved than his mother had calculated that the vanity of man must be, by such a declaration--discovery it could not be called. "If I am to take all this seriously, madam," replied he, laughing, "and if, _au pied de la lettre_ my vanity is to believe that this damsel is dying for love; yet, still I have so little chivalry in my nature, that I cannot understand how it would add to my happiness to sacrifice myself to save her life. That I am well suited to her, I am as willing as vanity can make me to believe; but how is it to be proved that the lady is suited to me?"

"My dear, these things do not admit of logical proof."

"Well--moral, sentimental, or any kind of proof you please."

"Have you no pity? and is not pity akin to love?"

"Akin! Oh, yes, ma'am, it is akin; but for that very reason it may not be a friend--relations, you know, in these days, are as often enemies as friends."

"Vile pun! far-fetched quibble!--provoking boy!--But I see you are not in a humour to be serious, so I will take another time to talk to you of this affair."

"Now or never, ma'am, for mercy's sake!"

"Mercy's sake! you who show none--Ah! this is the way with you men; all this is play to you, but death to us."

"Death! dear ma'am; ladies, you know as well as I do, don't die of love in these days--you would not make a fool of your son."

"I could not; nor could any other woman--that is clear: but amongst us, I am afraid we have, undesignedly indeed, but irremediably, made a fool of this poor confiding girl."

"But, ma'am, in whom did she confide? not in me, I'll swear. I have nothing to reproach myself with, thank G.o.d!--My conscience is clear; I have been as ungallant as possible. I have been as cruel as my nature would permit. I am sure no one can charge me with giving false promises--I scarcely speak--nor false hopes, for I scarcely look at the young lady."

"So, then, you know who the young lady in question is?"

"Perhaps I ought not to pretend to know."

"That would be useless affectation, alas! for I fear many know, and have seen, and heard, much more than you have--or I either."

Here Mrs. Beaumont observed that her son's colour changed, and that he suddenly grew serious: aware that she had now touched upon the right chord, she struck it again "with a master's hand and prophet's fire."

She declared that all the world took it for granted that Miss Hunter was to be married to Mr. Beaumont; that it was talked of every where; that she was asked continually by her correspondents, when the marriage was to take place?--in confirmation of which a.s.sertion, she produced bundles of letters from her pockets, from Mrs. and Miss, and from Lady This, and Lady That.

"Nay," continued she, "if it were confined even to the circle of one's private friends and acquaintance, I should not so much mind it, for one might contradict, and have it contradicted, and one might send the poor thing away to some watering-place, and the report might die away, as reports do--sometimes. But all that sort of thing it is too late to think of now--for the thing is public! quite public! got into the newspapers! Here's a paragraph I cut out this very morning from my paper, lest the poor girl should see it. The other day, I believe you saw it yourself, there was something of the same sort. 'We hear that, as soon as he comes of age, Mr. Beaumont, of Beaumont Park, is to lead to the altar of Hymen, Miss Hunter, sister to Sir John Hunter, of Devonshire.' Well,--after you left the room, Albina took up the paper you had been reading; and when she saw this paragraph, I thought she would have dropped. I did not know what to do. Whatever I could say, you know, would only make it worse. I tried to turn it off, and talked of twenty things; but it would not do--no, no, it is too serious for that: well, though I believe she would rather have put her hand in the fire, she had the courage to speak to me about it herself."

"And what did she say, ma'am?" inquired Mr. Beaumont, eagerly.

"Poor simple creature! she had but one idea--that you had seen it! that she would not for the world you had read it. What would you think of her--she should never be able to meet you again--What could she do? It must be contradicted--somebody must contradict it. Then she worried me to have it contradicted in the papers. I told her I did not well know how that could be done, and urged that it would be much more prudent not to fix attention upon the parties by more paragraphs. But she was _not_ in a state to think of prudence;--_no_. What would you think was the only idea in her mind?--If I would not write, she would write that minute herself, and sign her name. This, and a thousand wild things, she said, till I was forced to be quite angry, and to tell her she must be governed by those who had more discretion than herself. Then she was so subdued, so ashamed--really my heart bled for her, even whilst I scolded her. But it is quite necessary to be harsh with her; for she has no more foresight, nor art, nor command of herself sometimes, than a child of five years old. I a.s.sure you, I was rejoiced to get her away before Mr. Palmer came, for a new eye coming into a family sees so much one wouldn't wish to be seen. You know it would be terrible to have the poor young creature _commit_ and expose herself to a stranger so early in life. Indeed, as it is, I am persuaded no one will ever think of marrying her, if you do not.----In worldly prudence--but of that she has not an atom--in worldly prudence she might do better, or as well, certainly; for her fortune will be very considerable. Sir John means to add to it, when he gets the Wigram estate; and the old uncle, Wigram, can't live for ever. But poor Albina, I dare swear, does not know what fortune she is to have, nor what you have. Love! love! all for love!--and all in vain. She is certainly very much to be pitied."