The Wilmingtons. A novel

Chapter I

In song the spring comes welling To-day, from out the grass; And not a hedge but’s telling Earth’s gladness as you pass.

Far up the bright blue sky The quivering lark is singing; The thrush, in copses nigh, Shouts out the joy it’s bringing. —W. C. BENNETT. }

Ir is a trite observation, and yet one of those which it does not seem useless perpetually to reiterate: how great is the extent of mischief produced by the indulgence of what are commonly called, and what people are more especially inclined to call in themselves, venial faults.

Another observation, perhaps equally trite and equally worthy attention, is recorded by Miss Edgeworth in the proverb prefixed to one of the most incomparable of her incomparable tales, ‘Barring Out,” that ‘‘the mother of mischief

‘is no bigger than a midge’s wing.”

For true it is, that the weakest, and shallowest, and most contemptible among human beings, as regards understanding; and the emptiest, and vainest, and most trifling as regards heart and character, powerless as they may be to effect much good, even under a right direction, may yet prove very mischievous under a wrong one. The moral to be drawn from these observations is still more trite than the observations themselves. I leave it to be inferred by those who honour me in being my readers, and proceed to my tale.

A lovely wood, in the loveliest time of the English year, when May has just merged into June; when the oak is still in its golden or crimson spring tints; the beech yet silken and of a tender green; the ash putting forth its soft leaves, and the anemone, the blue hyacinth, the lychnis, and the - white stitchwort in flower; and the fairy groves of bilberries. under our feet, are hanging forth their little rose-coloured bells: and as happy a party are sitting together in this wood, and enjoying this delightful time of the year, as ever sallied forth, basket in hand, to gather cowslips in the meadows, or explore the brown horrors of the forest.

They are in their several periods of life just of the ages when such delights are most exquisitely enjoyed.

Wordsworth, in a poem, the beauty of which has rendered it almost too commonly known to bear a quotation, has celebrated the lovely lights that play round the imagination of the child and the youth, diffusing such a-heavenly glow upon the aspect of external nature; and he has compared it to the ineffable brightness of the early dawn of day. Were I gifted with the power of expression which belongs to the poet, I could have been tempted to add something to the beautiful lines—

Shades of the prison-house begin to close Upon the growing boy;

But he beholds the light, and whence it fiows ; He sees it in his joy:

The youth who daily from the east

Must travel, still is Nature’s priest,

And by the vision splendid

Js on his way attended ;

At length the man perceives it die away,

And fade into the light of common day.

I would have wished to have added, for the consolation of those who, under that fervid and arid noon, look back with fond regret upon the hours of dawn, that as the light descends and the sun of life sinks slowly to the west, colours and lights more beautiful than all gather round the closing day.

That the man, as he travels onward, when the heat and turmoil of the noontide hours are at an end, beholds those heavenly visions of the morning with a something more sober, yet more beautiful and tender still, welcoming, as it were, his return to the regions from whence, ‘‘ trailing clouds of glory,” he originally sprang; once more those finer ima-

ingtions which, in the active and stirring business of middle fe, had faded into ‘common day,” return to bless the wearied labourer, and to glorify the evening of his hours before he sinks to his final rest. Whilst the soft dew of evening falls, and the quiet moon rises over the eastern woods, the nightingale sings the requiem of the sun as he disappears amid the gathering curtains of the night.

To return from this effusion to plain story:

The little party assembled in this lovely wood, upon this most enchanting day, consisted of a set of young people, still children, and of one aged gentlewoman.

There were some servants in attendance at a little distance, which showed that the party belonged to a class in the higher walks of life; but the ease, gaiety, and simplicity of the little set proved that they had inherited its refinement and escaped all in it that was false or artificial: had profited by its privileges, and escaped its snares so far, at least. And this happy exemption was chiefly owing to the character of the aged lady, to whom her rank and dignity, combined with her character and temper, gave such a powerful influence in this circle of human life.

I am one of those, and I believe my taste has been shared with some of the finest painters the world has ever possessed, who have the greatest admiration for the beauty of old age.

The beauty of old age is perhaps more rare than: that of any other time of life: I mean fewer attain to the beauty which adorns the hoary head; but when it is possessed, it is the most noble or the most lovely, because it is the most truly spiritual and most truly moral of all beauty. Other beauty, though probably in a great degree dependent upon, and certainly in a great degree enhanced by moral qualities, is yet in many respects an accident of forms and colours; but the beauty of old age is the résumé of the life of the mauw.. Upon that time-worn countenance the passions and the faults, the-virtues and the feelings, the tenderness, love, benevolence, or envy, covetousness, selfishness, and rage, have written their characters in ineffaceable lines; and beautiful it is to see, as we often do, faces actually plain to ugliness in their youth, gradually expanding into beauty under the influence of goodness, sense, and worth; the eye brightening into a serene clearness; the lines of the countenance assuming a heavenly refinement and repose; the whole face glorified with a sweetness and loveliness not of this world. And it is the reverse—and, alas! I fear more frequently—when the lovely features that delight us in youth gradually lose their charm, as the insipidity of vanity, the scowl of disappointment, the dulness of vacuity, the sharp thin lines of vicious

*

-excitement, or the grosser ones of sensual enjoyment, gradually obscure what once was.

My old lady belonged to the class I have first spoken of. Whether she had been a beauty or not in her youth I never inquired, but she was indeed beautiful now. She had beena large fair woman:once, and of stature rather above the common size; but now her form was bent with age and with sorrow; for it was plain she had known sorrow. What child of man, who possesses a feeling heart, attains her age without much sorrow? But whilst those traces of frail humanity were observable in both her form and face, the same form and face revealed how well that sorrow had been endured; how well the fiery strife which leaves its scars upon life’s toilworn soldier had been fought. They told how calm had been the courage, how noble the resignation, how serene the victory; what tenderness had softened so much strength, what anguish endured with so much fortitude; how energy had been combined with composure; how much goodness, sympathy, and love, had dwelt there.

Her hair was snow-white, her eye clear blue: that frosty blue of old age, to me so peculiarly beautiful; her skin, so delicately fair, adorned the wrinkles of her face. This, it may be said, is almost the only accidental beauty of colour which remains to old age; and she possessed it. Her thin withered lips bore an air of indescribable sweetness and kindness; relieved from insipidity by that expression of acuteness, fun, malice, which produces, so combined, in an aged face, something of the same pleasurable effect as when seen in a clever little child. ?

She was dressed in black silk, with a white satin quilted bonnet:and a white cloak. She was sitting upon the raised turf, under a magnificent tree, with her ivory-headed ebony staff lying beside her, surrounded by the children. These last were extremely busy, sorting, and dividing, and arranging great heaps of flowers which they had been gathering, and which lay prettily intermingled among them. There were five of these children: three little boys and two little girls.

One of the boys and one of the girls were grandchildren of the duchess, for that was the old lady’s worldly title; two others connected in a certain very remote manner with her; the third, a schoolboy friend—a pale, thin, sallow, large-featured, rather heavy-looking young man, dressed in rather an ungainly manner, in a green coat and pink-striped summer waistcoat—sat reading under a tree, at some distance from the rest.

We must of course give precedence to rank, even in children; and so [ have the pleasure to introduce you first to Lord George Tempest, a boy about ten or eleven years old, and as handsome a young creature as you have often seen. He was a regular beauty of the Norman race, as it is the affectation of the times to say: a regular beauty among our beautiful aristocracy, he had a right to be called. Features at once manly and delicate; eyes of the darkest blue, almost black in their cloudy splendour ; hair curling like the bells of the hyacinth, and of the most sunny golden brown; with a slender figure, formed for elegance and action at once, and promising to be just so much above the common height as to be distinguished, without being too tall; lips like cherries, and the face full of fun, spirit, and good humour. Such was this dear young Lord George.

He was an imaginative being, though a mischievous, petulant schoolboy, and, consequently, he already fancied himself in love; and it was with his little cousin Flavia, who sat by his side almost buried in flowers. She was-an active little creature, and had gathered a huge nosegay by her own exertions, which now lay upon one side of her; whilst another, twice as big, was upon the other, gathered by her indefatigable adorer—her knight, her squire, her slave—Lord George.

They were very busy together; for she was an orderly little thing, though full of fancy, as she was full of goodness and feeling; and she was sorting and arranging the confused heap of treasures that lay around her, and so absorbed that she seemed as if she could think of nothing but her flowers.

A little way from her, but upon the same side of the circle, we come to Harry. Heis a plain, rather heavy-looking boy, certainly not cast in an aristocratic mould; his complexion is pun-burned, his features are coarsely cut; his motions too are asually more awkward, and his speech more slow and confused, than they were need to be, for he is excessively, painfully shy. He is, however, at present completely engaged in what he is about; and with gravity worthy of a more impor- _ tant occasion, is arranging, re-arranging, tying up and untying, a nosegay of the flowers he has collected; endeavouring to please his own eye by his arrangement, but in vain. Poor Harry Wilmington, even so early, experiences what it is to be one of those hapless beings who possess a taste beyond ~ their powers of execution, and therefore is destined to be dissatisfied with himself and with all his performances. Thence his self-distrust, his hesitation, his awkwardness, his painful sense of timidity and shyness, when in the company of those he admires: admires with all the fervour of a most sensitive disposition, and most vivid perception of the excellent and the beautiful in all things.

Opposite to Harry, and at a very short distance from the duchess, whom she perfectly adores, sits Caroline. A fine brown gipsy girl, larger and stronger-looking than the rest, with nut-brown clear eyes, full of strength and intelligence, dark-brown hair cut short in a crop, and a cheek finely proportioned, but colourless as that of a Spaniard. She is not making nosegays; she has got some grasses and a book, and is studying to make them out, assisted by a thin, delicate-looking, fair-haired boy, with complexion transparent as the finest porcelain; soft pink colour in his cheeks; sweet, intelligent blue eyes, which are both tender and melancholy; and a mouth that one would hardly think could belong to a boy, so gentle, so almost plaintive is its expression. He is called Albert Selwyn by the others, being the schoolboy acquaintance of Harry, who, as sometimes happens, is always Harry in and out of school. Now, we must know who these children are, and their connection with each other.

Lord George is the duchess’s grandson, descended from her eldest daughter, now a widow, her husband, the Ear] of Sandown, having been some time dead, leaving this boy with a very slender younger son’s portion. His elder brother, who has inherited the estates, being much older, is now abroad, travelling with his tutor; and as he probably will appear no more in this history, we may as well dispose of him at once.

He married abroad, and spent most of his time afterwards: there, to the injury of the rightful pretensions of his fair countrywomen ‘‘on the market,” in the first place, and of his tenants, dependants, and the country under whose laws and protection he inherited and held his property, in the second. The mother of Lord George had a plentiful jointure, and led a life of the great world; spending every farthing she possessed, and indeed rather more, upon herself and her son. In consequence, he had now, and continued to have for some years, much more money to spend than was at all good for him; but his tender mother, who perfectly adored him, was — ever lamenting his miserably slender inheritance, and resolved that, at least while she lived, he should not know what privation was. She therefore spared no expense to secure for him luxuries and enjoyments that heirs of even very large fortunes are often denied. So that handsome, good-hearted, lively Lord George, is in danger of being spoiled, I am afraid ; and so thinks his good grandmother, and remonstrates, and even lectures, and strives with all her might to undo the evil

THE WILMINGTONS. LS

-effects of such. a system; with what success we shall presently “See.

Flavia is the daughter of the duchess’s third daughter, and is dear_and precious above all things to the good grandmother’s heart; for she has lived very much with her. The mother had married a Welsh squire, that is to say, a Welshman with a good deal of landed property in Wales; but he was not, like most Welsh squires, a man of high family. His father, or perhaps himself, I forget which, had considerably added to a small estate by successful trade; so that when Lady Margaret married him, it was regarded as rather a de- ‘rogation to her high dignity; and though she had fallen in love with the young man, or his plentiful fortune, so she thought herself. However, he died soon, and left her with this one little girl, heiress to all his wealth. But the mother hated trouble and loved dissipation, and the care and attention necessary to educate a little solitary child, under such circumstances, was quite beyond her; so the task had chiefly fallen upon the good duchess, who was one of those who stood by, ready to step in and atone for the deficiencies of others. She had spared no care or exertion to rear this little plant properly; and such care and exertion always result in making a child doubly dear. But Flavia is indeed a very nice little thing; gay, innocent, affectionate, simple-hearted; a laughing, loving child, yet full of character; with something ‘determined, which had been doggedness in her mother, softened by her own natural pliancy and softness. Lord George loved her dearly, both as cousin and as a young imaginative boy. He thought her quite an angel, and his mother encouraged the feeling by every means in her power; whilst the good grandmother, though too wary and too well-principled to encourage this nascent attachment, or influence the affections of either in anyway, could not help feeling a certain complacency when she saw them thus sitting busily occupied together, apparently forgetting the existence of every one in the world but themselves.

Harry was the son of Mr. Wilmington, the rich City merchant—the prosperous, the millionnaire Mr. Wilmington; and also, it may be added, the very handsome and brilliant Mr. Wilmington; the idol and the star among a very numerous and wealthy, if not a very tiptop circle. He had married a daughter of a distant relation of the Welsh squire; and thus was, in a very remote degree, connected with the duchess; a connection, however slight, in which he took the greatest pride. Such a gossamer thread of union would, however, in all probability, have long ago yanished from all recollection upon the one side, had not the memory of it been kept up by the accident of Flavia L and Caroline Wilmington being educated at the same school.

Mrs. Wilmington had been, almost from the time of her marriage, in a declining state of health: a circumstance which left her gay husband to pursue his objects, either of business or pleasure, very much alone: a thing to be regretted; for his wife, who was sensible and serious, a woman of simple tastes and of a quiet and reserved disposition, might. have acted as a very useful check upon his rash, sanguine temperament, and as a mute censor upon that unbounded love of expense and display in which his plentiful fortune allowed: him to indulge almost without limit.

His children, luckily for them, had, however, been left almost entirely to the guidance of their mother. Of Caroline the gay father was proud and fond. She was a clever, spirited, handsome little thing; always ready with a. lively answer to many a sportive attack, and with spirits equal to any of the schemes of pleasure he might have in view for her. Asa little child, she had seldom been sick, and never crogs.

Harry was none of these things. Asa child, he had been ugly, tender-spirited, of feeble health, and consequently rather fretful temper. As he grew older, the ill health and. the fretfulness had disappeared; but the effects. of the constant checks he had received from his too thoughtless father remained, and, acting upon a most sensitive disposition, and a most simple, humble, and affectionate heart, had produced all that shyness, timidity, and self-distrust which obscured so many latent good qualities.

Selwyn was the orphan son of a merchant, belonging to that mercantile aristocracy of honourable, long-descended, commercial houses which fill so high a place in our mixed society. He was heir to a very large fortune, and there was another in expectation. His mother had been sister to that Mr. Craiglethorpe, who, it was reported, was now making his millions in India, though he had left England somewhat late in life.

It was Mr. Craiglethorpe’s only brother, Thomas, who sat under the tree reading.

Selwyn was being educated at the same school with Harry and Lord George, with the former of whom he had contracted a close intimacy, which was ripening into tender friendship. These two sensitive and feeling, and, we may add, suffering hearts, grew together; for though Selwyn had not that bashfulness, shyness, and awkwardness which dis-.

tressed Harry, being aremarkably gentlemanlike boy, though silent and quiet, yet the extreme delicacy of his: health ill fitted him for the strifes and. difficulties of a large school; and his suffermgs would have been great, if it had not been for the support and assistance of Harry, who, with all his social timidity, was physically and morally brave as a lion, and, when roused, courageous as a hero. He had fought many a hard battle in defence of his friend; and had done more, for he had defied the general ridicule by the tender, almost womanly attentions which he paid to the wants and comforts of the delicate and suffering boy.

This friendship had become quite a proverb in the family; and wishing to please Harry Wilmington, the good duchess had invited Selwyn to join this little party, which she had assembled round her.

Flavia and Caroline were returned for the holidays from Mrs. Steelcollar’s establishment: a highly fashionable seminary, to which Caroline had been sent much against the wishes of her mother, and Flavia equally against the opinion of her grandmother. But the resolution of Mr. Wilmington, most anxious for his daughter’s progress in all those external accomplishments which in his opinion her mother prized too lightly, and of the worldly-minded Lady Margaret, had prevailed in both cases; and these young people had been brought more closely together, considering the slenderness of their connection, and the different. circles of society in which they seemed destined to move, than would otherwise have been the case. i

The two girls, though Caroline was some five years the senior in age, had become greatly attached to each other; and Flavia had made it: her first. petition upon her return home, that Caroline might be invited with her brother Harry, of whom she was so very fond, to spend the first weeks of thé summer holidays at Castle Delaval.

Harry had seen Flavia several times before, when she had been allowed to come home for a day with Miss Wilmington ; for, as her mother had the honour to be, though distantly, allied to her father’s family, in spite of Mr. Wilmington’s city connections, Lady Margaret could not, in decency, refuse Flavia’s earnest entreaties to be allowed to visit her friend.

Harry was no brilliant, precocious boy like Lord George, and he never ventured upon those flattering speeches to the pretty little girl of which the other was so lavish: he only displayed the more fervent admiration with which his boyish heart was filled, by eyes fixed upon her in silent reverential tenderness, as upon some being belonging to a sphere quite beyond his own, and by his very timid attempts at rendering her any little service, for which the opportunity might occur: whilst, unluckily, poor fellow, the very sensibility of his heart acted, as it too often does, on one so sensitive, in an adverse manner; producing a more than usual awkwardness in his motions, and hesitation in his voice whenever he addressed her. Caroline was vexed to see her darling brother appear to so little advantage, but was too young to understand the nature of such feelings; and her animated remonstrances and evident mortification upon such occasions, did not tend to mend the matter. The good old duchess, who had penetration enough to discover the sterling qualities possessed by the boy under this somewhat homely outside, succeeded, however, better in her endeavours to encourage him. She could in secret have wished, perhaps, that her darling and brilliant grandson could have united with his other engaging qualities, something of the modesty, the gentleness, and the unaffected simplicity of Harry’s manner; but this would have been, indeed, to combine contradictions, and she knew the thing was next to impossible. Yet she could not help every now and then falling into the mistake ot holding up to Lord George something in the light of an example, the boy he looked down upon as infinitely his inferior in every respect. This did Harry no good service in the eyes of the other: he looked upon any proofs of this preference above himself as a most crying injustice; and was not so much inclined to be jealous of Harry, a feeling he would — kave thought infinitely beneath him, as to regard him with a certain dislike, as the cause of a partiality which he thought so injurious to his own claims. With this feeling was mingled a little schoolboy jealousy of his admiration of Flavia, Which, though Harry in his pride and delicacy endeavoured to conceal, he was too artless not to betray unconsciously upon almost every occasion.

Lord George had, however, little cause to envy Harry the place he held in the little lady’s favour: her preference for himself was as undisguised as were all the other innocent emotions of her honest little heart.

‘““ Well, Harry,” said the duchess, after a long silence, during which she had been observing him, ‘‘ you have taken infinite pains with that nosegay of yours; you have tied and untied it twenty times, I think. I have been watching your attempts, and admiring your patience; and now it is at last done, it looks extremely pretty; but you keep holding it in your hand. Do you mean it only for yourself, after all?”

‘‘Oh, no!” stammered Harry; ‘‘only—I don’t: = I don’t feel sure.”

‘‘ What don’t you know? What don’t you feel sure of ?”

‘‘ Whether she will think it, after all, worth having. es

‘She! Who?”

‘* Miss Flavia.”

‘“ Yes,” said the good-natured old lady ; “Tam sure she. will, if you mean it t for her, and think it as pretty as Ido. Here, Flavia, my dear.”

But Flavia heard not. She and Lord George were very much too busy to listen to anything but their own rapid and animated prattle.

‘* Come hither, Flavia.” But Flavia did not even turn her head.

Harry looked at them, and then at his nosegay, and then at the duchess.

‘*'Thank you, ma’am; but perhaps she wouldn’t like it.”

‘* Why not? Any one must like such a beautiful assemblage of flowers; and you have taken such pains with it, too. Flavia, my dear,” raising her voice a little, *‘do’you not hear me? Look what a beautiful nosegay of flowers Harry Wilmington has made for you!”

‘‘ For me, is it? Oh, what a beauty! Comeand sit here, Uarry,” said the little girl, making room for him. ‘ Look, George, what a beauty!” x

‘*Do you call that a beauty? It’s tied together as if it were going to be sold by the. bunch in Covent Garden market. Do you call that a nosegay? Here, hand it over to me, Flavia, and let me look at it.”

She gave it to him: he took it, and surveyed it scornfally.

‘¢ Well, to be sure, here is a taste!”

Harry’s countenance fell: his spirits were unfortunately so. tender as to be daunted in some things by the merest trifles. The duchess watched him with interest, and said laughingly, in order to encourage him—

‘‘T am afraid, dear George, you are a sad conceited fellow, and fancy nobody can do anything well but yourself; even to the tying-up of a nosegay he would fain be considered incomparable,” said she, turning to Harry. ‘‘I hope this ambition may extend to objects of more importance. In the mean time, my dear, you must not trouble yourself with the fancies of little girls,” she added, seeing Flavia drop the nosegay upon the grass by her side, with an air of indifference. “At that little girl’s age we have no idea of having a taste or opinion different from those we love.”

The last sentence was not exactly adapted to console the

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‘proud and feeling boy. He rose from the ground, and retreating, walked quietly away through the bushes by himself. And then he watched the trees playing in the soft summer wind, and the white blossoms of the mountain-ash bowing and rising again, and filling the air with sweetness, whilst the birds were whistling and chirping and singing, and nature ail so harmoniously beautiful. He walked on, musing, and heard the laughter and the talk going on behind him, and felt how lonely he was, and how different from other people; and then a deep sense of discouragement laid hold of him. He was nothing, and should be nothing. No one on earth seemed to . care for him but his mother and Caroline; and his mother was far: away, and Caroline seemed absorbed by Selwyn. What was he now to any of them? But, indeed, what was «there in him that he should?

Presently he heard the bustle as the company departed from the place they had been occupying, and gradually the hum. of voices, broken by the merry and exhilarating laugh, died away.

Then Harry returned to the spot which they had quitted,

~and there he found his nosegay left neglected upon the ground. He was far from resenting this neglect as a piece of injustice, vas Lord George would have done infallibly in his place; but he felt it acutely, and in a manner beyond his years. He, how- ‘ever, preserved his youthful dignity and composure, walked quietly:to the place, took it up, and, going to the side of a brook: which ran sparkling and gurgling through the hazelbushes hard by, he deliberately dropped it in, and watched it, vexed and tossed by the whirling stream, till it disappeared. “Then he returned to the house in apparent tranquillity, but more sore of heart, more depressed in spirits, by such a » trifle, than'one could have thought possible.

CHAPTER It.

Hold nét my passion’s offering poor; Trust in a true heart’s worth; Ay, more than all the tinsel shows That dazzle the dull earth.—W. C. BENNETT.

No doubt this visit, in spite of the kind encouragement of the duchess, was upon the whole unfavourable to the development of this sensitive character,