In answer to this letter, she received a few lines from Mr. Elmour, requesting to see her before she should go to town: accordingly upon her return to York, she went to Elmour Grove to take leave of her friends. She was under some anxiety, but resolved to carry it off with that ease, or affectation of ease, which she had learnt during her six weeks’ apprenticeship to a fine lady at Harrowgate. She was surprised that no Frederick appeared to greet her arrival; the servant showed her into Mr. Elmour’s study. The good old gentleman received her with that proud sort of politeness, which was always the sign, and the only sign, of his being displeased.
“You will excuse me, Miss Turnbull,” said he, “for giving you the trouble of coming here; it was my business to have waited on you, but I have been so far unwell lately, that it was not in my power to leave home; and these are papers,” continued he, “which I thought it my duty to deliver into your own hands.”
Whilst Mr. Elmour was tying up these papers, and writing upon them, Almeria began two sentences with “I hope,” and “I am afraid,” without in the least knowing what she hoped or feared. She was not yet sufficiently perfect in the part of a fine lady to play it well. Mr. Elmour looked up from his writing with an air of grave attention when she began to speak, but after waiting in vain for an intelligible sentence, he proceeded.
“You have judged very wisely for me, Miss Turnbull, in relieving my declining years from the fatigue of business: no man understands the management or the value of money better than Sir Thomas Stock, and you could not, madam, in this point of view, have chosen a more proper guardian.”
Almeria said, “that she hoped Mr. Elmour would always permit her to consider him as her best friend, to whose advice she should have recourse in preference to that of any person upon earth;” recovering her assurance as she went on speaking, and recollecting some of the hints Lady Stock had given her, about the envy and jealousy of the Elmours, and of their scheme of monopolizing her fortune; she added a few commonplace phrases about respectability — gratitude — and great obligations — then gave a glance at Lady Stock’s handsome carriage, which was waiting at the door — then asked for Miss Elmour — and hoped she should not be so unfortunate as to miss seeing her before she left the country, as she came on purpose to take leave of her — then looked at her watch: — but all this was said and done with the awkwardness of a novice in the art of giving herself airs. Mr. Elmour, without being in the least irritated by her manner, was all the time considering how he could communicate, with the least possible pain, what he had further to say—”You speak of me, Miss Turnbull, as of one of your guardians, in the letter I had the favour of receiving from you a few days ago,” said he; “but you must excuse me for declining that honour. Circumstances have altered materially since I first undertook the management of your affairs, and my future interference, or perhaps even my advice, might not appear as disinterested as formerly.”
Miss Turnbull here interrupted him with an exclamation of astonishment, and made many protestations of entire dependence upon his disinterested friendship. He waited with proud patience till she had finished her eulogium.
“How far the generous extent of your confidence, madam, reaches, or may hereafter reach,” said he, “must be tried by others, not by me — nor yet by my son.”
Almeria changed colour.
“He has left it to me, madam, to do that for him, which perhaps he feared he might not have sufficient resolution to do for himself — to return to you these letters and this picture; and to assure you that he considers you as entirely at liberty to form any connexion that may be suited to your present views and circumstances.”
Mr. Elmour put into her hand a packet of her own letters to Frederick, and a miniature picture of herself, which she had formerly given to her lover. This was an unexpected stroke. His generosity — his firmness of character — the idea of losing him for ever — all rushed upon her mind at once.
Artificial manners vanish the moment the natural passions are touched. Almeria clasped her hands in an agony of grief, and exclaimed, “Is he gone? gone for ever? — I have deserved it!” — The letters and picture fell from her hand, and she sunk back quite overpowered. When she recovered, she found herself in the open air on a seat under Mr. Elmour’s study windows, and Ellen beside her.
“Pity, forgive, and advise me, my dear, my best, my only real friend,” said Almeria: “never did I want your advice so much as at this moment.”
“You shall have it, then, without reserve,” said Ellen, “and without fear that it should be attributed to any unworthy motive. I could almost as soon wish for my brother’s death as desire to see him united to any woman, let her beauty and accomplishments be what they might, who had a mean or frivolous character, such as could consider money as the greatest good, or dissipation as the prime object of life. I am firmly persuaded, my dear Almeria, that however you may be dazzled by the first view of what is called fashionable life, you will soon see things as they really are, and that you will return to your former tastes and feelings.”
“Oh! I am, I am returned to them!” cried Almeria; “I will write directly to Lady Stock and to Sir Thomas, to tell them that I have changed my mind — only prevail upon your father to be my guardian.”
“That is out of my power,” said Ellen; “and I think that it is much better you should be as you are, left completely at liberty, and entirely independent of us. I advise you, Almeria, to persist in your scheme of spending the ensuing winter in town with Lady Stock — then you will have an opportunity of comparing your own different feelings, and of determining what things are essential to your happiness. If you should find that the triumphs of fashion delight you more than the pleasures of domestic life; pursue them — your fortune will put it in your power; you will break no engagements; and you will have no reproaches to fear from us. On the contrary, if you find that your happiness depends upon friendship and love, and that the life we formerly led together is that which you prefer, you will return to Elmour Grove, to your friend and your lover, and your choice will not be that of romance, but of reason.”
It was with difficulty that Almeria, in her present fit of enthusiasm, could be brought to listen to sober sense and true friendship. Her parting from Ellen and Mr. Elmour cost her many tears, and she returned to her fashionable friend with swollen eyes and a heavy heart. Her sorrow, however, was soon forgotten in the bustle and novelty of a new situation. Upon her arrival in London, fresh trains of ideas were quickly forced upon her mind, which were as dissimilar as possible from those associated with love, friendship, and Elmour Grove. At Sir Thomas Stock’s, every thing she saw and heard served to remind, or rather to convince her, of the opulence of the owner of the house. Here every object was estimated, not for its beauty or elegance, but by its costliness. Money was the grand criterion, by which the worth of animate and inanimate objects was alike decided. In this society, the worship of the golden idol was avowed without shame or mystery; and all who did not bow the knee to it were considered as hypocrites or fools. Our heroine, possessed of two hundred thousand pounds, could not fail to have a large share of incense — every thing she said, or looked, was applauded in Sir Thomas Stock’s family; and she would have found admiration delightful, if she had not suspected that her fortune alone entitled her to all this applause. This was rather a mortifying reflection. By degrees, however, her delicacy on this subject abated; she learned philosophically to consider her fortune a thing so immediately associated with herself as to form a part of her personal merit. Upon this principle, she soon became vain of her wealth, and she was led to overrate the consequence that riches bestow on their possessor.
In a capital city, such numerous claimants for distinction appear, with beauty, birth, wit, fashion, or wealth to support their pretensions, that the vanity of an individual, however clamorous, is immediately silenced, if not humbled. When Miss Turnbull went into public, she was surprised by the discovery of her own, nay even of Lady Stock’s insignificance. At York he
r ladyship was considered as a personage high as human veneration could look; but in London she was lost in a crowd of fellow-mortals.
It is, perhaps, from this sense of humiliation, that individuals combine together, to obtain by their union that importance and self-complacency, which separately they could never enjoy. Miss Turnbull observed, that a numerous acquaintance was essential to those who lived much in public — that the number of bows and curtsies, and the consequence of the persons by whom they are given or received, is the measure of merit and happiness. Nothing can be more melancholy than most places of public amusement, to those who are strangers to the crowds which fill them.
Few people have such strength of mind as to be indifferent to the opinions of numbers, even considered merely as numbers; hence those who live in crowds, in fact surrender the power of thinking for themselves, either in trifles or matters of consequence. Our heroine had imagined before she came to town, that Lady Stock moved in the highest circle of fashion; but she soon perceived that many of the people of rank who visited her ladyship, and who partook of her sumptuous entertainments, thought they condescended extremely whilst they paid this homage to wealth.
One night at the Opera, Almeria happened to be seated in the next box to Lady Bradstone, a proud woman of high family, who considered all whose genealogy could not vie in antiquity with her own as upstarts that ought to be kept down. Her ladyship, either not knowing or not caring who was in the next box to her, began to ridicule an entertainment which had been given a few days before by Lady Stock. From her entertainment, the transition was easy to her character, and to that of her whole family. Young Stock was pronounced to have all the purse-proud self-sufficiency of a banker, and all the pertness of a clerk; even his bow seemed as if it came from behind the counter.
Till this moment Almeria had at least permitted, if not encouraged, this gentleman’s assiduities; for she had hitherto seen him only in company where he had been admired: his attentions, therefore, had been flattering to her vanity. But things now began to appear in quite a different light: she saw Mr. Stock in the point of view in which Lady Bradstone placed him; and felt that she might be degraded, but could not be elevated, in the ranks of fashion by such an admirer. She began to wish that she was not so intimately connected with a family which was ridiculed for want of taste, and whose wealth, as she now suspected, was their only ticket of admittance into the society of the truly elegant. In the land of fashion, “Alps on Alps arise;” and no sooner has the votary reached the summit of one weary ascent than another appears higher still and more difficult of attainment. Our heroine now became discontented in that situation, which but a few months before had been the grand object of her ambition.
In the mean time, as Mr. Stock had not overheard Lady Bradstone’s conversation at the Opera, and as he had a comfortably good opinion of himself, he was sure that he was making a rapid progress in the lady’s favour. He had of late seldom heard her mention any of her friends at Elmour Grove; and he was convinced that her romantic attachment to Frederick must have been conquered by his own superior address. Her fortune was fully as agreeable to him as to his money-making father: the only difference between them was, that he loved to squander, and his father to hoard gold. Extravagance frequently produces premature avarice — young Mr. Stock calculated Miss Turnbull’s fortune, weighed it against that of every other young lady within the sphere of his attractions, found the balance in her favour by some thousands, made his proposal in form, and could not recover his astonishment, when he found himself in form rejected. Sir Thomas and Lady Stock used all their influence in his favour, but in vain: they concluded that Almeria’s passion for Frederick Elmour was the cause of this refusal; and they directed their arguments against the folly of marrying for love. Our heroine was at this time more in danger of the folly of marrying for fashion: not that she had fixed her fancy upon any man of fashion in particular, but she had formed an exalted idea of the whole species — and she regretted that Frederick was not in that magic circle in which all her hopes of happiness now centred. She wrote kind letters to Miss Elmour, but each letter was written with greater difficulty than the preceding; for she had lost all interest in the occupations which formerly were so delightful. She and Ellen had now few ideas in common; and her epistles dwindled into apologies for long silence — promises of being a better correspondent in future — reasons for breaking these promises — hopes of pardon, &c. Ellen, however, continued steady in her belief that her friend would at last prove worthy of her esteem, and of her brother’s love. The rejection of Mr. Stock, which Almeria did not fail to mention, confirmed this favourable opinion.
When that gentleman was at length with some difficulty convinced that our heiress had decided against him, his manners and those of his family changed towards her from the extreme of civility to that of rudeness — they spoke of her as a coquette and a jilt, and a person who gave herself very extraordinary airs. She was vexed, and alarmed — and in her first confusion and distress thought of retreating to her friends at Elmour Grove. She wrote a folio sheet to Ellen, unlike her late apologetic epistles, full of the feelings of her heart, and of a warm invective against fashionable and interested friends. After a narrative of her quarrel with the Stocks, she declared that she would immediately quit her London acquaintance and return to her best friend. But the very day after she had despatched this letter she changed her mind, and formed a new idea of a best friend.
One morning she went with Lady Stock to a bookseller’s, whose shop served as a fashionable lounge. Her ladyship valued books, like all other things, in proportion to the money which they cost: she had no taste for literature, but a great fancy for accumulating the most expensive publications, which she displayed ostentatiously as part of the costly furniture of her house. Whilst she was looking over some literary luxuries, rich in all the elegance of hot-press and vellum binding, Lady Bradstone and a party of her friends came into the room. She immediately attracted and engrossed the attention of all present. Lady Stock turned over the leaves of the fine books, and asked their prices; but she had the mortification to perceive that she was an object rather of derision than of admiration to the new comers. None are so easily put out of countenance by airs, as those who are most apt to play them off on their inferiors. Lady Stock bit her lips in evident embarrassment, and the awkwardness of her distress increased the confidence and triumph of her adversary. She had some time before provoked Lady Bradstone by giving a concert in opposition to one of hers, and by engaging, at an enormous expense, a celebrated performer for her night: hostilities had thenceforward been renewed at every convenient opportunity, by the contending fair ones. Lady Bradstone now took occasion loudly to lament her extreme poverty; and she put this question to all her party, whether if they had it in their power they should prefer having more money than taste, or more taste than money? They were going to decide par acclamation, but her ladyship insisted upon taking each vote separately, because this prolonged the torments of her rival, who heard the preference of taste to money reiterated half a dozen times over, with the most provoking variety of insulting emphasis. Almeria’s sufferings during this scene were far more poignant than those of the person against whom the ridicule was aimed: not that she pitied Lady Stock — no; she would have rejoiced to have seen her humbled to the dust, if she could have escaped all share in her mortification: but as she appeared as her ladyship’s acquaintance, she apprehended that she might be mistaken for her friend. An opportunity offered of marking the difference. The bookseller asked Lady Stock if she chose to put her name down in a list of subscribers to a new work. The book, she saw, was to be dedicated to Lady Bradstone — and that was sufficient to decide her against it.
She declared that she never supported such things either by her name or her money; that for her part she was no politician; that she thought female patriots were absurd and odious; and that she was glad none of that description were of her acquaintance.
All this was plainly directed agains
t Lady Bradstone, who was a zealous patriot: her ladyship retorted, by some reflections equally keen, but rather more politely expressed, each party addressing their inuendoes to the bookseller, who afraid to disoblige either the rich or the fashionable, preserved, as much as it was in the power of his muscles, a perfectly neutral countenance. At last, in order to relieve himself from his constraint, he betook himself to count the subscribers, and Miss Turnbull seized this moment to desire that her name might be added to the list. Lady Bradstone’s eyes were immediately fixed upon her with complacency — Lady Stock’s flashed fire. Regardless of their fire, Almeria coolly added, “Twelve copies, sir, if you please.”
Complete Novels of Maria Edgeworth Page 506
