A farther continuation of her story.
In the mean time Mr. Courteney corresponded privately with his mother, whose gentle nature had, with little difficulty, been softened into a forgiveness of her son’s imprudent marriage; but all her endeavours to reconcile the earl to it had proved ineffectual. He continued inexorable, and peremptorily commanded her never to mention that undutiful son to him more, whom he reprobated for ever.
“The countess durst not hazard an interview with her son, while his father’s resentment continued unappeased; but she allowed him two hundred pounds a year out of her pin-money,14 and upon this moderate income they lived with more happiness than is often to be found in the highest affluence.”
“And why not,” interrupted miss Woodby here, “a cottage, with the person we love, is to be preferred to a palace with one to whom interest and not affection has joined us. I know I could be contented to keep sheep with the man I loved. Speak truth, my dear Clelia, would you not like to be a shepherdess? O, what a delightful employment, to watch a few harmless sheep! to wander thro’ groves and fields, or lie reclined upon the flowery margin of some murmuring stream, and listen to the plaintive voice of the nightingale, or the tender faithful vows of some lovely and beloved shepherd!”
“What a romantic picture,” said miss Courteney laughing, “have you drawn! It is a mighty pretty one it must be confessed, but there is no resemblance in it. I remember, when I was about fourteen, I had the same notions of shepherds and shepherdesses; but I was soon cured. I happened to be at the house of a country gentleman, who managed a large farm of his own; one of the servants saying something about the shepherd, my heart danced at the word. My imagination represented to me such a pretty figure as we see on the stage in the dramatic pastoral entertainment of Damon and Phillida, in a fine green habit, all bedizened with ribbons, a neat crook, and a garland of flowers. I begged to be permitted to go into the fields to see the shepherd, and eagerly enquired if there were no shepherdesses likewise; but how was I disappointed!—The shepherd was an old man in a ragged waistcoat, and so miserably sun-burnt, that he might have been mistaken for a mulatto: the shepherdess looked like a witch; she was sitting under a hedge, mending old stockings, with a straw hive on her head, and a tatter’d garment on, of as many colours as there were patches in it. How diverting it would have been to have heard this enamour’d swain sigh out soft things to this lovely nymph!”
“Oh! ridiculous,” cried miss Woodby—“I am sick at the very thought; but, my dear Clelia, go on, I beseech you, with your story”
“I have not come to my own story yet,” said miss Courteney; “all that you have heard has been only an introduction to it; and I have given you the history of my parents in the words, as near as I can remember, of my mother; for she loved scribbling, and committed the principal incidents of her life to paper, which for my instruction she permitted me to read: I say instruction, for she was a woman of fine understanding and deep thinking; and she had interspersed through her little narrative many beautiful and just reflections, and many observations and useful maxims, such as her reading, which was very comprehensive, and her experience furnished her with.”
“Proceed, my dear Clelia,” said miss Woodby, observing Henrietta paused here, “I am impatient to hear more.” “If you please,” said miss Courteney, “we will drink tea first.” “I have just two hours to stay with you,” replied miss Woodby, looking at her watch; “if I am at home by nine o’clock, which is my aunt’s hour for supper, it will do.” Henrietta then ordered tea, which was soon dispatched, and she resumed her story in this manner:
“My father, who was very desirous of conciliating his elder brother’s affections, at least wrote to him, he being now upon his travels, and gave him an account of his marriage; but his letter, though conceived in the most tender and respectful terms, produced a cruel and supercilious answer, which not only took away all hope of his proving a mediator between him and his father, but proved that he had in him no longer a friend or brother.
“His affairs were in this desperate situation when my mother became pregnant; a distant relation of my father’s now took an interest in this event, and being very rich and ambitious of making a family, he declared that if the child was a son, he would adopt him and make him his heir. You may imagine this design was received with great joy; the old gentleman was very assiduous in his visits to my mother during her pregnancy, and seemed extremely happy in the thoughts of perpetuating his name; an ambition very common to persons of low extraction, who, by industry and thrift, have risen to great riches: for he was only by marriage a relation to my father, and had been too much neglected on account of the meanness of his original. But all these flattering expectations were destroyed by my birth, which I had reason to say proved a misfortune to my parents. The capricious old man was so greatly chagrined at his disappointment, that he transferred all his favours to another cousin, who was so lucky as to present him with a son to succeed to his fortune, and continue his obscure name to posterity.
“My brother’s birth happened a year afterwards, and unfortunately for him a year too late. My father still continued to draw his whole income from the bounty of his mother, who was a constant but fruitless mediator in his behalf: her death, which happened about three years after his marriage, was an irreparable loss to him; for it was not improbable but the lenient hand of time, which weakens the force of every passion, joined to her tender solicitations, might have effected a reconciliation between his father and him; but this hope was now no more: the countess bequeathed my father all the money she had saved, which was but a very small sum; for she had always given with a liberal hand to the poor, though with so little ostentation, that it was supposed she had saved some thousands out of her pin-money, for she was less expensive than any other woman of her rank in England; but it was not till after my father’s marriage, that she began to save, and then only for him.
“Six hundred pounds was all that was found in her cabinet, which some months after her decease was paid to my father with every circumstance of contempt.
“These repeated calamities were so far from lessening the love of my father and mother, that they seemed to redouble their tenderness; seeking in each other that happiness which fortune denied them, and which they were always sure to find in their own virtue and mutual affection.
“My father, who had had a very liberal education, employed the greatest part of his time in the instruction of his children: under his tuition I acquired the French and Italian languages; by my mother I was taught every useful accomplishment for a young woman in my situation; nor did my father’s narrow circumstances hinder him from procuring me those which were suitable to my birth. My brother had no other tutor but this excellent father, who qualified him for an university; and at fourteen years of age he was sent to that of Leyden, and I have never seen him since.
“In the mean time the earl my grandfather, who still continued inexorable, was taken off suddenly by an apoplectick fit; and having never altered his will, which he made immediately after the marriage of my father, he found he was cut off with a shilling. This stroke, as it was always expected, was less sensibly felt than another which immediately followed it. That relation, to whose estate my father was to succeed, having buried his wife, married a young woman, who, in a year afterwards brought him a son to inherit his fortune.
“My father, now seeing no prospect of any provision for his children, fell into a deep melancholy: he had by the interest of some of his friends, obtained a place which brought him in between three and four hundred a year; but out of this it was impossible to save much. The uneasiness of mind which he laboured under corrupted his blood; he was seized with a decay which carried him off in a few months, and deprived his wife of the best husband, his children of the best father that ever was.
“In his last illness he had wrote to his brother, and recommended his helpless family to his compassion; but that nobleman, whose avarice was his strongest passion, and whose resentment against his brother was kept up by the arts of his wife; her family, though noble, being very poor, and therefore dependent upon him, took no other notice of my father’s last request, than to send my mother a bank bill for an hundred pounds; declaring at the same time that it was all the assistance she must ever expect from him; and with this heroick act of generosity, he silenced the soft pleadings of nature, and persuaded himself that he had done his duty.
“My mother, being young with child when my father died, miscarried; and by that accident, together with her continual grief, she fell into a languishing illness, which threatened a short period to her days. Eight hundred pounds was all that my father left: from this small sum a widow and two children were to draw their future subsistence. What a melancholy prospect! however my brother, who was then about seventeen, had made such great proficiency in learning, that, notwithstanding his youth, he was recommended by the professors of the university to have the care of some English youths who studied there, which afforded him a decent subsistence.
“My mother having placed eight hundred pounds in the hands of a rich merchant a man of birth and liberal education, who had been a friend of my father’s, and gave her very good interest for it, she disposed of all her furniture, and with the money arising from the sale, set out with me for Bath, the waters being prescribed to her by her physician.
“Not being able to support the expence of living in the town, she took lodgings in a pleasant village, about three miles distance from it; and here, feeling her distemper daily gaining ground, she prepared for death, with a resignation that was only interrupted by her anxiety for me.
“It was not indeed easy to form any plan for my future subsistence, which would not subject me to a situation very unfit for my birth. Had my brother been provided for, she would have made no scruple of sinking that small sum that was left, into an annuity for my life, which with economy might support me above necessity and dependence. She wrote to my brother, and desired his advice with regard to me. My brother, as if he had entered into her views, in his answer conjured her to have no solicitude about him, since, with the education he had received, he could not fail of supporting himself in the character of a gentleman, but to dispose of that money in any manner which might be most for my advantage.
“My mother shed tears of tender satisfaction over this letter, so full of duty to her, and affection for me; but the more generous and disinterested appeared her son, the less was she capable of taking a resolution, which, if any disappointment happened to him, must leave him without any resource.
“You may be sure, my dear miss Woodby, I was not very forward to fix her purpose; for I could not bear the thought of being the only person, in our little distressed family, to whom a subsistence was secured. While my mother was thus fluctuating, she was visited in her retirement by lady Manning, a widow lady of a very plentiful fortune, with whom she had been in some degree of intimacy during the life of my father.
“This lady showed great fondness for me; and my mother imparting to her her difficulties with regard to settling me, lady Manning begged her to make herself quite easy, for that she would take me under her own care.
“Miss Courteney, said she, will do me honour by accepting my house for an asylum, and I and my daughter will think ourselves happy in such an agreeable companion. My mother was extremely pleased with this offer; and lady Manning pressed me to go with her to London, for which place she was to set out in a few days.
“I was so much shocked at the proposal of leaving my mother in the dangerous condition she was judged to be, that I did not receive lady Manning’s offer with that sense of her intended kindness which she doubtless expected; and when my mother, wholly governed by the consideration of my interest, urged me to go with lady Manning, I burst into a violent passion of tears, vehemently protesting that I would never leave her; and lamenting her causeless distrust of my affection, in supposing that I could be prevailed upon, by any prospect of advantage to myself, to separate from her.
“I observed lady Manning redened at these words, which she understood as a reproach for her making so improper a proposal, and which I really desired she should: for I was highly disgusted with her want of delicacy, in desiring me to leave my mother, and her believing it possible that I could consent.
“I saw pleasure in my mother’s eyes at this artless expression of my tenderness for her; but at the same time I thought I could perceive by the turn of her countenance that she was apprehensive I had disobliged lady Manning: therefore I endeavoured to remove her fears by the strongest assurances of gratitude to that lady. She received those assurances with a little superciliousness at first, but that presently wore off; and at parting she renewed her professions of friendship to my mother, and promises of a parent’s care of me.
“She left Bath three days afterwards, so that we did not see her again, which made my mother a little uneasy; but we had soon a very kind letter from her, in which she repeated all her former offers, and expressed great tenderness for me.
“At her return from London, she passed through Bath in her way to her country-seat; and, finding my mother much worse, she redoubled her professions of affection for me, and was so lavish in her promises, that she left her quite easy on my account. Indeed, notwithstanding what I have suffered from lady Manning, I shall ever think myself obliged to her for contributing so greatly towards that composure of mind which my mother felt, from the time that she thought me secure of a retreat, till it would suit with my brother’s circumstances to take me under his own care.
“I will not, my dear miss Woodby, enlarge upon the last three months of my mother’s life, which was spent in a constant preparation for her end. Indeed the innocence of her manners, and the unfeigned piety that shone through her conduct, made her whole life one continued preparation for that awful moment, so dreadful to the wicked; so full of peace, confidence, and holy joy to the good. In fine, I lost this excellent mother, and my bleeding heart still feels her loss.”
The tears, which at this tender remembrance flowed from miss Courteney’s eyes, made a pathetick pause in her relation; but recovering herself, she proceeded, as will be found in the following Book.