Page images
PDF
EPUB

foreign accent, he explained the mechanical and scientific reasons for the construction he had suggested, gave evidence at once of no common talent, and of a considerateness and good-nature in its exercise more valuable than all the talent in the world. If trifling and every-day occurrences afford, as I believe they do, the surest and safest indications of character, we could have no hesitation in pronouncing upon the amiable qualities of M. Choynowski.

In person he was tall and graceful, and very noble-looking. His head was particularly intellectual, and there was a calm sweetness about the mouth that was singularly prepossessing. Helen had likened him to a hero of romance. In my mind he bore much more plainly the stamp of a man of fashion-of that very highest fashion which is too refined for finery, too full of self-respect for affectation. Simple, natural, mild, and gracious, the gentle reserve of his manner added, under ¦ the circumstances, to the interest which he inspired. Somewhat of that reserve continued even after our acquaintance had ripened into intimacy. He never spoke of his own past history, or future prospects, shunned all political discourse, and was with difficulty drawn · into conversation upon the scenery and manners of the North of Europe. He seemed afraid of the subject.

Upon general topics, whether of literature or art, he was remarkably open and candid. He possessed in an eminent degree the talent of acquiring languages for which his countrymen are distinguished, and had made the best use of those keys of knowledge. I have never met with any person whose mind was more richly cultivated, or who was more calculated to adorn the highest station. And here he was wasting life in a secluded village in a foreign country! What would become of him after his present apparently slender resources should be exhausted, was painful to imagine. The more painful, that the accidental discovery of the direction of a letter had disclosed his former rank. It was part of an envelope addressed, “ A Monsieur Monsieur le Comte Choynowski," and left as a mark in a book all except the name being torn off. But the fact needed no confirmation. All his habits and ways of thinking bore marks of high station. What would become of him?

It was but too evident that another calamity was impending over the unfortunate exile. Although studiously discreet in word, and guarded in manner, every action bespoke his devotion to his lovely fellow inmate. Her wishes were his law. His attentions to her little boy were such as young men rarely show to infants, except for love of the mother; and the garden, that garden abandoned since the memory of man, (for the Court, previous to the arrival of the present tenant, had been'

for years uninhabited,) was, under his exertions and superintendence, rapidly assuming an aspect of luxuriance and order. It was not impossible but Helen might realize her playful vaunt, and beat me in my own art after all.

John (our gardener lad) was as near being jealous as possible, and, considering the estimation in which John is known to hold our doings in the flower way, such jealousy must be accepted as the most flattering testimony to his rival's success. To go beyond our garden was, in John's opinion, to be great indeed!

Every thought of the Count Choynowski was engrossed by the fair Helen; and we saw with some anxiety that she in her turn was but too sensible of his attentions, and that every thing belonging to his country assumed in her eyes an absorbing importance. She sent to London for all the books that could be obtained respecting Poland; ordered all the journals that interested themselves in that interesting though apparently hopeless cause; turned liberal,- she who had been reared in the lap of conservatism, and whom my father used laughingly to call the little Tory ;—turned Radical, turned Republican,— for she far out-soared the moderate doctrines of whiggism in her political flights; denounced the Emperor Nicholas as a tyrant; spoke of the Russians as a nation of savages; and in spite of the evident uneasiness with which the Polish exile listened to any allusion to the wrongs of his country, for he never mingled in such discussions, omitted no opportunity of proving her sympathy by declaiming with an animation and vehemence, as becoming as anything so like scolding well could be, against the cruelty and wickedness of the oppressors of that most unfortunate of nations.

It was clear that the peace of both was endangered, perhaps gone; and that it had become the painful duty of friendship to awaken them from their too bewitching dream.

We had made an excursion, on one sunny summer's day, as far as the Everley Hills. Helen, always impassioned, had been wrought into a passionate recollection of her own native country, by the sight of the heather just bursting into its purple bloom; and M. Choynowski, usually so self-possessed, had been betrayed into the expression of a kindred feeling by the delicious odour of the fir plantations, which served to transport him in imagination to the balm-breathing forests of the North. This sympathy was a new, and a strong bond of union between two spirits but too congenial; and I determined no longer to defer informing the gentleman, in whose honour I placed the most implicit reliance, of the peculiar position of our fair friend.

Detaining him, therefore, to coffee, (we had taken an early dinner in the fir grove,) and suffering Helen to go home to her little boy,

I contrived, by leading the conversation to capricious wills, to communicate to him, as if accidentally, the fact of her forfeiting her whole income in the event of a second marriage. He listened with grave attention. "Is she also deprived," inquired he, "of the guardianship of her child ?"

"No. But as the sum allowed for the maintenance is also to cease from the day of her nuptials, and the money to accumulate until he is of age, she would, by marrying a poor man, do irreparable injury to her son, by cramping his education. It is a grievous restraint."

He made no answer. And after two or three attempts at conversation, which his mind was too completely preoccupied to sustain, he bade us good-night, and returned to the Court. The next morning we heard that he had left Upton and gone, they said, to Oxford. And I could not help hoping that he had seen his danger and would not return until the peril was past.

I was mistaken. In two or three days he returned, exhibiting less self-command than I had been led to anticipate. The fair lady, too, I took occasion to remind of this terrible will, in hopes, since he would not go, that she would have the wisdom to take her departure. No such thing; neither party would move a jot. I might as well have bestowed my counsel upon the two stone figures on the great gateway. And heartily sorry, and a little angry, I resolved to let matters take their own course.

Several weeks passed on, when one morning she came to me in the sweetest confusion, the loveliest mixture of bashfulness and joy. "He loves me !" she said; "he has told me that he loves me!"

"Well?"

"And I have referred him to you. That clause"

"He already knows it." And then I told her, word for word, what had passed.

"He knows of that clause, and he still wishes to marry me! He loves me for myself! Loves me, knowing me to be a beggar! It is true, pure, disinterested affection!"

66

Beyond all doubt, it is. And if you could live upon true love—”

"Oh, but where that exists, and youth, and health, and strength, and education, may we not be well content to try to earn a living together? Think of the happiness comprised in that word! I could give lessons;-I am sure that I could. I would teach music, and drawing, and dancing-anything for him! or we could keep a school here at Upton-anywhere with him!

"And I am to tell him this ?"

"Not the words!” replied she, blushing like a rose at her own earnestness; "not those words!" Of course, it was not very long before M. le Comte made his appearance.

"God bless her, noble, generous creature!" cried he, when I had fulfilled my commission.

"God for ever bless her!"

"And you intend, then, to take her at her word, and set up school together?" exclaimed I, a little provoked at his unscrupulous acceptance of her proffered sacrifice. You really intend to keep a lady's boarding-school here at the Court?"

[ocr errors]

"I intend to take her at her word, most certainly," replied he very composedly; "but I should like to know, my good friend, what has put it into her head, and into yours, that if Helen marries me she must needs earn her own living? Suppose I should tell you," continued he, smiling, “that my father, one of the richest of the Polish nobility, was a favourite friend of the Emperor Alexander; that the Emperor Nicholas continued to me the kindness which his brother had shown to my father, and that I thought, as he had done, (gratitude and personal attachment apart,) that I could better serve my country, and more effectually ameliorate the condition of my tenants and vassals, by submitting to the Russian government, than by a hopeless struggle for national independence? Suppose that I were to confess, that chancing in the course of a three-years' travel to walk through this pretty village of yours, I saw Helen, and could not rest until I had seen more of her;supposing all this, would you pardon the deception, or rather the allowing you to deceive yourselves? Oh, if you could but imagine how delightful it is to a man, upon whom the humbling conviction has been forced, that his society is courted and his alliance sought for the accidents of rank and fortune, to feel that he is, for once in his life, honestly liked, fervently loved for himself, such as he is, his own very self,-if you could but fancy how proud he is of such friendship, how happy in such love, you would pardon him, I am sure you would; you would never have the heart to be angry. And now that the Imperial consent to a foreign union-the gracious consent for which I so anxiously waited to authorize my proposals-has at length arrived, do you think," added the Count, with some seriousness, "that there is any chance of reconciling this dear Helen to my august master? or will she still continue a rebel?"

At this question, so gravely put, I laughed outright. Why really, my dear Count, I cannot pretend to answer decidedly for the turn that the affair might take; but my impression-to speak in that idiomatic English, more racy than elegant, which you pique yourself upon understanding-my full impression is, that Helen having for no reason upon earth but her interest in you, ratted from Conservatism to Radicalism, will for the same cause lose no time in ratting back again. A woman's politics, especially if she be a young woman, are generally the result of feeling

rather than of opinion, and our fair friend strikes me as a most unlikely subject to form an exception to the rule. However, if you doubt my authority in this matter, you have nothing to do but to inquire at the fountainhead. There she sits, in the arbour. Go and ask."

And before the words were well spoken, the lover, radiant with happiness, was at the side of his beloved.

THE LONDON VISITER.

BEING in a state of utter mystification, (a very disagreeable state, by-the-bye,) I hold it advisable to lay my unhappy case, in strict confidence, in the lowest possible whisper, and quite in a corner, before my kind friend, patron, and protector, the public, through whose means-for now-a-days every body knows everything, and there is no riddle so dark but shall find an Edipus to solve it-I may possibly be able to discover whether the bewilderment under which I have been labouring for the last three days be the result of natural causes, like the delusions recorded in Dr. Brewster's book, or whether there be in this little south of England county of ours, year 1836, a revival of the old science of Gramarye, the glamour art, which, according to that veracious minstrel, Sir Walter Scott, was exercised with such singular success in the sixteenth century by the Ladye of Branksome upon the good knight, William of Deloraine, and others his peers. In short, I want to know But the best way to make my readers understand my story, will be to begin at the beginning.

I am a wretched visiter. There is not a person in all Berkshire who has so often occasion to appeal to the indulgence of her acquaintance to pardon her sins of omission upon this score. I cannot tell how it happens; nobody likes society better when in it, or is more delighted to see her friends; but it is almost as easy to pull a tree of my age and size up by the roots, as it is to dislodge me in summer from my flowery garden, or in the winter from my sunny parlour, for the purpose of accepting a dinner invitation, or making a morning call. Perhaps the great accumulation of my debts in this way, the very despair of ever paying them all, may be one reason (as is often the case, I believe, in pecuniary obligations) why I so seldom pay any; then, whether I do much or not, I have generally plenty to do; then again, I so dearly love to do nothing; then, summer or winter, the weather is commonly too cold for an open carriage, and I am eminently a catch-cold person; so that between wind and rain, business and idleness, no lady in the county with

so many places that she ought to go to, goes to so few and yet it was from the extraordinary event of my happening to leave home three days following, that my present mystification took its rise. Thus the case stands.

Last Thursday morning, being the 23d day of this present month of June, I received a note from my kind friend and neighbour, Mrs. Dunbar, requesting very earnestly that my father and myself would dine that evening at the Hall, apologising for the short notice, as arising out of the unexpected arrival of a guest from London, and the equally unexpected absence of the General, which threw her (she was pleased to say) upon our kindness to assist in entertaining her visiter. At seven o'clock, accordingly, we repaired to General Dunbar's, and found our hostess surrounded by her fine boys and girls, conversing with a gentleman, whom she immediately introduced to us as Mr. Thompson.

Mr. Thompson was a gentleman of about

-Pshaw! nothing is so unpolite as to go guessing how many years a man may have lived in this most excellent world, especially when it is perfectly clear, from his dress and demeanour, that the register of his birth is the last document relating to himself which he would care to see produced.

Mr. Thompson, then, was a gentleman of no particular age; not quite so young as he had been, but still in very tolerable preservation, being pretty exactly that which is understood by the phrase an old beau. He was of middle size and middle height, with a slight stoop in the shoulders; a skin of the true London complexion, between brown and yellow, and slightly wrinkled eyes of no very distinct colour; a nose which, belonging to none of the recognized classes of that manynamed feature, may fairly be called anonymous; and a mouth, whose habitual mechanical smile (a smile which, by the way, conveyed no impression either of gaiety or of sweetness) displayed a set of teeth which did great honour to his dentist. His whiskers and his wig were a capital match as to colour; and altogether it was a head calculated to convey a very favourable impression of the different artists employed in getting it up.

His dress was equally creditable to his tailor and his valet, rather rich than gaudy," (as Miss Byron said of Sir Charles Grandison,) except in the grand article of the waistcoat, a brocade brodé of resplendent lustre, which combined both qualities. His shoes were bright with the new French blacking, and his jewelry, rings, studs, brooches, and chains (for he wore two, that belonging to his watch, and one from which depended a pair of spectacles, folded so as to resemble an eye-glass,) were of the finest material and the latest fashion.

In short, our new acquaintance was an old beau. He was not, however, that which an

last extorted from Edward Dunbar, upon a promise not to hint at the story until the hero of the adventure should be fairly off, that, after trying with exemplary patience all parts of the mere for several hours without so much as a nibble, a huge pike, as Mr. Thompson asserted, or, as Edward suspected, the root of a tree, had caught fast hold of the hook. If pike it were, the fish had the best of the battle, for, in a mighty jerk on one side or the other (the famous Dublin tackle maintaining its reputation, and holding as firm as the cordage of a man-of-war,) the unlucky angler had been fairly pulled into the water, and soused over head and ears. How his valet contrived to reinstate his coiffure, unless, indeed, he travelled with a change of wigs, is one of those mysteries of an old beau's toilet which pass female comprehension.

old beau so frequently is, an old bachelor. On the contrary, he spoke of Mrs. Thompson and her parties, and her box at the opera (he did not say on what tier) with some unction, and mentioned with considerable pride a certain Mr. Browne, who had lately married his eldest daughter; Browne, be it observed, with an e, as his name (I beg his pardon for having misspelt it) was Thomson without the p; there being I know not what of dignity in the absence of the consonant, and the presence of the vowel, though mute. We soon found that both he and Mr. Browne lent these illustrious names to half a score of clubs, from the Athenæum downward. We also gathered from his conversation that he resided somewhere in Gloucester Place or Devonshire Place, in Wimpole Street or Harley Street, (I could not quite make out in which of those respectable double rows of houses his domicile was situate,) and that he contemplated with considerable jealousy the manner in which the tide of fashion had set in to the south-west, rolling its changeful current round the splendid mansions of Belgrave Square, and threatening to leave this once distinguished quartier as bare and open to the jesters of the silver-fork school as the ignoble precincts of Bloomsbury. It was a strange mixture of feeling. He was evidently upon the point of becoming ashamed of a neighbourhood of which he had once been not a little proud. He spoke slightingly of the Regent's Park, and eschewed as much as possible all mention of the Diorama and the Zoological, and yet seemed pleased and flattered, and to take it as a sort of personal compliment, when Mrs. Dunbar professed her fidelity to the scene of her youthful gaiety," Ion," and " Paracelsus;" to me he spoke of; Cavendish Square and its environs.

Of course there was no further mention of angling. Our new acquaintance had quite subjects enough without touching upon that. In eating, for instance, he might fairly be called learned. Mrs. Dunbar's cuisine was excellent, and he not only praised the different! dishes in a most scientific and edifying manner, but volunteered a recipe for certain little mutton pies, the fashion of the season. In drinking he was equally at home. Edward had produced his father's choicest hermitage and lachryma, and he seemed to me to know literally by heart all the most celebrated vintages, and to have made pilgrimages to the most famous vineyards all over Europe. He talked to Helen Dunbar, a musical young lady, of Grisi and Malibran; to her sister Caroline, a literary enthusiast, of the poems of the year,

geraniums; and to my father of politics-conHe had been, it seemed, an old friend of the triving to conciliate both parties, (for there General's, and had come down partly to see were Whigs and Tories in the room,) by dubhim, and partly for the purpose of a day's bing himself a liberal Conservative. In short, fishing, although, by some mistake in the he played his part of Man of the World perwording of his letter, his host, who did not fectly to his own satisfaction, and would have expect him until the next week, happened to passed with the whole family for the very be absent. This, however, had troubled him model of all London visiters, had he not unlittle. He saw the General often enough in fortunately nodded over certain verses which | town. Angling was his first object in the he had flattered Miss Caroline into producing, country; and as the fine piece of water in the and fallen fast asleep during her sister's cava park (famous for its enormous pike) remained tina; and if his conversation, however easy in statu quo, and Edward Dunbar was ready and smooth, had not been felt to be upon the to accompany and assist him, he had talked whole rather vapid and prosy. "Just exact the night before of nothing but his flies and ly," said young Edward Dunbar, who, in the his rods, and boasted, in speaking of Ireland, migration transit between Eton, which he had the classic land of modern fishermen, of what left at Easter, and Oxford, which he was to, he meant to do, and what he had done-of enter at Michaelmas, was plentifully imbued salmon caught in the wilds of Connemara, with the aristocratic prejudices common to and trout drawn out amid the beauties of Kil- each of those venerable seats of learning larney. Fishing exploits, past and future," just exactly what in the fitness of things formed the only theme of his conversation during his first evening at the Hall. On that which we spent in his company, nothing could be farther from his inclination than any allusion, however remote, to his beloved sport. He had been out in the morning, and we at

the talk of a Mr. Thompson ought to be."

The next afternoon I happened to be engaged to the Lady Margaret Gore, another. pleasant neighbour, to drink tea; a convenient fashion, which saves time and trouble, and is much followed in these parts during the sum

mer months. A little after eight I made my appearance in her saloon, which, contrary to her usual polite attention, I found empty. In the course of a few minutes she entered, and apologised for her momentary absence, as having been caused by a London gentleman on a visit at the house, who arriving the evening before, had spent all that morning at the side of Loddon fishing, (where, by the way, observed her ladyship, he had caught nothing,) and had kept them waiting dinner. "He is a very old friend of ours," added Lady Margaret; "Mr. Thompson, of Harley Street, whose daughter lately married Mr. Browne of Gloucester Place," and, with the word, entered Mr. Thompson in his own proper person.

[blocks in formation]

As she ceased to speak, we entered; and Was it or was it not the Mr. Thompson of another Mr. Thompson-another, yet the the day before? Yes! no!-No! yes! It same, stood before me. It was not yet four would have been, only that it could not be. o'clock in the day, therefore of course the The alibi was too clearly proved: Lady Mar- dress-coat and the brocade waistcoat were garet had spent the preceding evening with wanting; but there was the man himself, her Mr. Thompson in one place, and I myself Thompson the third, wigged, whiskered, and with my Mr. Thompson in another. Different eye-glassed, just as Thompson the first might they must be, but oh, how alike! I am too have tumbled into the water at General Dunshort-sighted to be cognizant of each separate bar's, or Thompson the second have stood feature. But there it was, the same common waiting for a nibble at Lady Margaret's. height and common size, and common phy-There he sat evidently preparing to do the siognomy, wigged, whiskered, and perfumed agreeable, to talk of music and of poetry, of to a hair! The self-same sober magnificence Grisi and Malibran, of "Ion" and Paracelof dress, the same cut and colour of coat, the sus," to profess himself a liberal Conservative, same waistcoat of brocade brodé-of a surety to give receipts for patés, and to fall asleep they must have employed one identical tailor, over albums. It was quite clear that he was and one measure had served for both! Chains, about to make this display of his conversastuds, brooches, rings- -even the eye-glass tional abilities; but I could not stand it. spectacles were there. Had he (this he) Nervous and mystified as the poor Frenchman stolen them? Or did the Thompsons use in the memorable story of "Monsieur Tonthem alternately, upon the principle of ride son," I instinctively followed his example, and fairly fled the field.

and tie?

In conversation the similarity was even more striking-safe, civil, prosy, dozy, and yet not without a certain small pretension. The Mr. Thompson of Friday talked as his predecessor of Thursday had done, of Malibran and Grisi, " Paracelsus" and " Ion," politics and geraniums. He alluded to a recipe (doubtless the famous recipe for mutton pies) which he had promised to write out for the benefit of the housekeeper, and would beyond all question have dozed over one young lady's verses, and fallen asleep to another's singing, if there had happened to be such narcotics as music and poetry in dear Lady Margaret's drawing-room. Mind and body, the two Mr. Thompsons were as alike as two peas, as two drops of water, as two Emperorof-Morocco butterflies, as two death's-head moths. Could they have been twin brothers, like the Dromios of the old drama? or was the vicinity of the Regent's Park peopled with Cockney anglers-Thompsons whose daughters had married Brownes?

The resemblance haunted me all night. I dreamt of Browns and Thompsons, and to freshen my fancy and sweep away the shapes

JESSE CLIFFE.

[ocr errors]

LIVING as we do in the midst of rivers, water in all its forms, except indeed that of the trackless and mighty ocean, is familiar to our little inland county. The slow majestic Thames, the swift and wandering Kennet, the clear and brimming Loddon, all lend life and verdure to our rich and fertile valleys. Of the great river of England whose course from its earliest source, near Cirencester, to where it rolls calm, equable, and full, through the magnificent bridges of our splendid metropolis, giving and reflecting beauty,* presents so

from Waterloo-bridge on a July evening, whether coloured by the gorgeous hues of the setting sun reflected on the water in tenfold glory, or illuminated by a thousand twinkling lights from lamps, and boats, and houses, mingling with the mild beams of the

*There is nothing finer in London than the view

rising moon. The calm and glassy river, gay with unnumbered vessels; the magnificent buildings which line its shores; the combination of all that is loveliest in art or in nature, with all that is most animating in

« PreviousContinue »