Chapter IX The novel
One afternoon, Mrs. Vernon returned exceedingly wearied from a visit to a sick woman who resided at some distance. The walk was too long for her, and had her daughter been at home, she would not have been suffered to take it; for Flora, in the vigour of her youthful strength, appropriated to herself all the more distant visits. Certainly a feeling of regret crossed the mind of Mrs. Vernon, as she wearily ascended her own stair, and heard loud, angry sounds from above, that peace and seclusion were now hers no longer—that she could not have rest when she was tired, nor solitude when she was sad. But she struggled against the feeling as against a sin.
As Mrs. Vernon approached the door of Emma’s sleeping apartment, it was evident that the sound came from thence, and that the angry voice was the widow’s.
“Tiresome monkey! you have destroyed it entirely! my beautiful India muslin! Was ever mother tormented as I am? Ah, is that you?” continued Emma, as Mrs. Vernon crossed the entrance to her room. “Just come in here, do, and see what this insufferable child has been doing!”
Mrs. Vernon entered, and beheld Lyddie, the little culprit, in the centre of the apartment, fancifully arrayed in all the finery which she had pillaged from a large trunk of her mother’s. A yellow satin dress, with the body turned in, was fastened by a red scarf round the waist of the child; and being, of course, much too long, swept the floor on every side with its gaudy folds. Long feathers, scarlet and white, were stuck in the girl’s lank dark hair; while an India muslin shawl, which had been twisted into the form of a turban, appeared, with a grievous rent in the middle, in the hands of the irritated parent.
“Did you ever see anything like it? The vanity, the folly, the absurdity of the child! Here I find her parading before the glass, dressed up like a May-queen, and in all the best clothes which I used to wear in my happier days! Take them off!” she cried in a shriller tone to the child, who stood biting the ends of her fingers, in mingled sulkiness and fear. “Take them off, I say! and if ever you touch them again, you shall have a whipping—such a whipping as you will remember to the last day of your life! I am sure that no one,” she continued, turning towards Mrs. Vernon, who was silently disrobing the culprit—“no one but a parent can tell the incessant anxiety, plague, and worry, caused by children! It is enough to drive us out of our senses!”
Mrs. Vernon saw in the expression of the countenances of both mother and child something far more saddening to her gentle spirit than the destruction of anything that gold could replace;—anger in the one, sullen defiance in the other; not maternal solicitude grieving over the folly of a daughter, but selfish vanity irritated at the loss of a bauble; not filial love distressed at the displeasure of a parent, but pride rising against the threat of punishment. Emma would permit the gravest faults of her children to pass unnoticed, until their consequences affected her own comfort, and then the most trivial excited in her anger as unreasonable as her former indifference had been culpable.
“I do not see that your English nurse manages the children any better than old Chloe. I always said, and I always will say, that it was a great pity to make any change,” cried Emma fretfully, willing as usual to blame anybody and anything but herself.
“We can scarcely expect wonders to be worked in three days,” replied Mrs. Vernon, as Lyddie, released from her cumbrous finery, made a hasty exit from the room, glad to escape from the presence of her mother. “To change old ways, and to introduce habits of order and obedience, must ever be a work of patience and time. And does it not appear to you, Emma,” continued Mrs. Vernon, cautiously approaching dangerous ground, “that children insensibly imbibe more from watching the example of those who are with them, than from any direct instruction?”
“I do not comprehend what that has to do with the question,” said Emma, stooping over the trunk to replace its contents.
“If our dear children see by our conduct how little we care for the petty vanities of this life, if they see that our minds are fixed upon nobler objects than the adorning of our poor perishing forms, they will learn to estimate at their true value such trifles as these”—Mrs. Vernon was handing the feathers to her daughter in-law—“and are not likely to fall into the childish folly into which our poor Lyddie has to-day been betrayed.”
“Ah! here is ‘The Master-Mind’” cried Emma, suddenly, diving into the lowest recess of her trunk, and bringing from thence two old soiled volumes. It is not impossible that a desire to change the subject of conversation had quickened her perceptions, and led her to make the discovery which turned it into a more agreeable channel. “This is the novel which you are so impatient to read. Here are the first and third volumes; I think that the second must be lost; but doubtless it is all the same to you, you could never spare enough of your valuable time for the perusal of more than two.”
Mrs. Vernon took the work, and laid it aside; she had not at that hour leisure for reading. But when the children had gone to rest, and their mother retired to her own room, when the day’s duties had all been fulfilled, and the still summer night had closed in, Mrs. Vernon, in her own quiet apartment, opened the first volume of the work of Sir Amery.
She soon became strongly interested both in the characters and the plot. “The Master-Mind” had been written by a master’s hand; the author’s powers had not been over-rated. Sir Amery described his hero as one distinguished by birth, but yet more by exalted talents. He was generous, humane, chivalrous and constant, possessing every virtue but piety, every grace but the grace of God, every gift but “the one thing needful.” Not that he was represented as one destitute of every sentiment of religion. He was made to revere with lofty devotion an almighty Creator, but not a righteous Judge; one so merciful that he could not punish, so lenient that he would not destroy. The hero was not a believer in revelation—his lofty mind could not bow to the mysterious truths which his reason could not grasp; but his scepticism was represented as candour, his pride as greatness of soul—he was placed in bright contrast to hard, narrow-minded bigots, who denounce sin because God hath condemned it, and fear hell because divine truth hath declared that its terrors await the impenitent.
Mrs. Vernon read on and on, and wondered as she read. She had seen very few novels in her life, and all appeared to her strange and new. Sometimes she was filled with admiration by a generous sentiment or a noble deed; then she was startled by some idea, veiled in sublime language and beautiful imagery, but which, as it appeared to her, was contrary to the simple truth of the Scriptures.
The close of the first volume left the hero deeply, passionately loving a fair and highly-principled girl, the daughter of parents who, under the garb of great sanctity, were drawn as worldly, heartless and unforgiving. He was resolved to win her under circumstances of difficulty which, to love less ardent and a spirit less firm, must have presented obstacles insuperable. Mrs. Vernon closed the book and glanced at her candle. It had burnt quite down to the socket. She rose and lighted another. Was it a strange fascination that made her sit down again, with her pale cheek and her heavy aching eyes, to resume her unwonted occupation? Was the interest of a mere novel so strong that it could render her careless of needful rest? It was that in the hero Mrs. Vernon was reading the character of the author—that she, almost unconsciously, connected the gentle heroine with her own fondly-loved child.
“I see the moral of the tale,” said the widow to herself: “Virgilius, ennobled by his affection for a worthy object, enlightened by experience, and improved by trials, will find out the errors into which his fine mind has been led; he will become religious as well as moral, and all will end happily at last.”
All did end happily in the novel, but not in the way which Mrs. Vernon expected. Hypocrisy was unmasked, bigotry disgraced, but infidelity triumphed in success! The brilliant winding-up of the work was almost a paraphrase of the celebrated line,
“He can’t be wrong whose life is in the right;”—
as if any life could be right in which the chief end of our existence, the glory of God, is disregarded! It is as though we should speak of the perfection of the ocean without water, or of the universe without the sun!
The dim light of morning was purpling the sky before the widow had finished the book. She sat for some moments with her brow resting upon her hand, and the open volume on her knee.
“Perhaps I have read until my mind is too much wearied to form a correct judgment,” she murmured to herself. “Perhaps I have mistaken the meaning of the author, and have done him injustice. I am a weak, ignorant woman, not capable of appreciating all the beauties of this work; I will lean on a stronger mind than my own, ask the aid of a better judgment. I will take the books to Mr. Ward to-morrow, and see if he views the work in the same light as I do. And now I must go to my rest; I have done wrong to waste so many hours over a novel!”
But even in sleep the mind of the mother pursued the same theme; the scenes of the novel were repeated in her dreams, only the actors were Sir Amery and Flora. Mrs. Vernon arose unrefreshed and uneasy, and before many hours were over, she was on her way to the little vicarage, bearing with her “The Master-Mind.”
“How foolish I am to take these anxious thoughts!”—such were the lady’s reflections as she wearily toiled up the lane, which had never seemed so long before. “I have no reason to fear that Sir Amery is anything more to my child than an admired author, an agreeable acquaintance. He is above her in birth and position; flattered as he is by the world, why should I fancy that my simple moss-rose should attract the regard of one who is the idol of all the circles of fashion! It is a mother’s weakness, a mother’s vanity, which make me believe that all who see her must view her with eyes like my own! But oh! is she not my earthly all, and can it be wondered at that my heart should tremble at the most distant prospect of danger to one so beloved!”