Chapter VII: Conversation in an Evening Walk

The evening was delicious, there was a stillness in the air, that seemed like the repose of nature, when our hero and his Amelia walked forth to enjoy those happy moments, which rural scenes and rural solitude afford to Love. They were no sooner out of ear-shot from the castle walls, when John began--Now, my sweet girl, when no witness is about us, but the unseen Spirit, that protects and guards you, I can open all my heart to you without reserve, for it honours you, it loves you, it adores you. I have been absent from you; I have visited another country, I have seen other women, and contemplated their charms and their allurements without emotion or the diversion of a thought from you. I am entirely and unalterably yours. I think you love me; nay, I am sure you do; nothing therefore but the hand of death can separate us, and when I dissuaded Anderton from leaving you his fortune, it was because I regarded you already as my wife. But time, my lovely girl, must pass before I can have legal right to call you by that name. You see within how short a period I have been deprived of both my parents, and although my grandfather De Lancaster treats or feigns to treat the late melancholy event as a philosopher, I cannot help feeling it as a son; for I was present to behold my father die and witnessed his last words. If I could charge my conscience with having hesitated or delayed to obey his summons, and hasten to his relief, I should be wretched in the extreme: but, thank Heaven, I had fortitude to tear myself from your arms, and cannot reproach myself with any breach of duty. Nothing can exceed the kindness I received from Mr. Devereux and his family: but neither his hospitality, nor the approaching nuptials of his daughter with my friend Major Wilson, could prevail with me to prolong my stay a single hour beyond the very first pacquet, that afforded me an opportunity of returning to the place where I had left my heart. You will perceive I gave you credit for a mind superior to the vanity of show and ornament; for I have not brought a single gem to glitter on that lovely person, whose elegance and simplicity are its best adornments. My dear Amelia, we must seek for other honours, than decoration can give us; we must find out better uses for the affluence we are entrusted with, than gems and equipage and splendid galas: If you and I decide upon a country life, we will not let our tranquillity degenerate into indolence, nor ever suffer these superfluities, which we have no present call for, to accumulate for those, may chance to come after us to inherit, and perhaps to misapply, them: No, we will consider prosperity as a loan, and administer our abundance as the almoners of Providence, and stewards for the uses of our fellow-creatures, whose privations and distresses shall have claims upon that, which is not given as a monopoly to be devoured by one, but as a resource against the wants of many. By this conduct I may atone for not devoting my life, as well as my fortune, to the service of my country; and you may walk forth amongst your poor dependent pensioners, brighter and more splendid in the lustre of your charities than if I hung you round with all the jewels of the Lady of Loretto. Let us live hospitably, becomingly, liberally, after the example of my grandfather; but don’t let us make an undistinguishing waste either by our domestic style of living, or by wanton largesses to any, who may not deserve, as well as need, relief. We will support the industrious, who struggle against hard fortune, and the helpless, who would else sink under it; but we will not confound the lazy drone with the laborious bee. And now, beloved of my soul, as I have occupied you with a long homily, and wearied you with a long walk, here is a baiting place to repose in; sit down with me upon this shady bench, and let me read my answer in those heavenly eyes.

Oh, my dear sir, replied the fond and happy Amelia, your just and generous sentiments instruct and charm me. Convinced, that by the practice of these virtues you will ensure all that my heart can wish, all that my prayers can ask of Heaven, you give me that supreme delight, which only can be felt, but not described. What can I say to you? What other answer can you look for from your devoted, your betrothed Amelia, but that I am entirely yours? Is it enough to tell you, that I love you, that my whole happiness depends upon you? No; I am not quite convinced, but that the impression, which at our first interview you left so deeply fixed in this poor hopeless heart, would have compelled me to have loved you still, though you had treated me with marked neglect; nay, though you had neglected your own self, and fallen off from that high character in which I now behold you and admire. I felt as if I could have forgiven you every thing: and when you left me for so long a time without a word to soften my despair, I feared indeed that you was lost for ever, but I did not suspect you to be cruel. I knew you was offended with Mrs. Jennings, but I was sorry to find your resentment could be so lasting, and that you would take no pains to acquit me, who was innocent, and set my mind at rest. Morning and night I mused upon the words I heard you utter, when, looking on the portrait of my father, you pledged protection to the orphan who then lived, as she still does, upon the bounty of your family--Is this the man (I said within myself) who threw his arms about me, and pressed me with such rapture to his heart? Was there no meaning in that fond embrace? Did it sink only into my sad heart? Alas, I hoped that his had felt it too!--Thus I tormented my poor wretched self, till now, behold! I am sitting by your side--Nay; hear me out!--I have not told one half--

The expostulation was not out of place, for by some means or other, (what I know not) our heroine was defrauded of her right to tell the other half; and whether it was ever told, or not, I hope is no great object to the reader; for, upon the word and honour of a novelist, I have no authority, that can decide the question.

In due time the corpse of Philip De Lancaster arrived and was interred in the vault with his ancestors. Every member of that antient house attended the funeral, and several of the intimates and friends of the family shewed their respect by being present at the solemnity.

As the parishioners and labouring poor had no particular reason for tears and lamentations, they reasonably enough forbore to interrupt the ceremony, and only gratified their curiosity by gazing on the plumes and scutcheons and the costly pall and coffin: this did extremely well, and the cheering horn of fat Welch ale, that was dealt out to quench a thirst, that was natural to them at all times, and did not spring upon this occasion from sorrow, did still better. A great company were regaled in the state apartment’s of the castle, and a mighty mob in the lower regions.

Whilst these things were going on, Lawyer Davis, Doctor Llewellyn and the family-bard old Williams held a special consistory in a private cell, for the purpose of minuting down the _memoranda_, proper to be inserted in the family archives under the article of “Philip De Lancaster Esquire, lineally descended in the male line without a flaw from Japhet, son of Noah.”

The bard was to dictate; the Lawyer was to write, and the Doctor was to smoke his pipe, and make comments. As it was a business not to be dismissed in a slight perfunctory manner, there was a huge can of metheglin on the table to assist thought, for the _data_, that blind David had to go upon, were rather of the scantiest; and when a biographer has little or nothing before him, he must depend upon his wits for matter.

David opened the consultation by observing, that, before they sate down to their work, it was correctly in rule to make a libation to the immortal memory of the excellent person, whose virtues they were about to record; and he assured himself, that posterity would peruse the life and actions of Mr. Philip De Lancaster with peculiar interest and avidity.

After they had drank they began to deliberate, and the Doctor suggested, that the first thing needful was to prove the life, before they narrated the actions, of Mr. De Lancaster.

That is already settled, said the Lawyer, by entering, as I have done, the date of his birth.

Pardon me, replied the Doctor, that entry is not quite authority, unless you can show that he was _born to die_; for in many cases, which I have met, the death of the object in question has been known to forerun the birth.

Here is the date of his death, rejoined the Lawyer, copied from the plate on his coffin; and by this it appears, that he lived to complete a period of forty-three years, five months and three days.

_Sufficit!_ said Llewellyn; the plate upon his coffin is evidence. Now let us understand what he employed himself upon during that period.

A silence ensued for a considerable time. David referred himself to the metheglin; the other two to meditation on the past events of Philip’s life, as materials for history.

He was very fond of angling, said the Lawyer.--He was so, replied the Doctor, and you may put that down in the archives, only you need not inform posterity, that he never got a bite.

Pooh! rejoined Davis, that naturally happened, because he was too indolent to bait his hook.--He had an acknowledged partiality for the game of chess.

Yes, and an acknowledged ignorance of it, said the Doctor. I am apt to think, that it will be perfectly safe to record, that he was six feet high--

Wanting half an inch, rejoined the Lawyer.

Pshaw! exclaimed the Doctor; if you begin to reckon up all that is _wanting_, there will be no end to the account.

David now unmuzzled his oracle, and began to utter--Gentlemen, give me leave to observe to you, that you wander from the points, that chiefly constituted the exemplary character of the deceased personage, whose incomparable qualities we are even now preparing to commemorate. He possessed, as I can witness, a most laudable respect for the almost miraculous powers of music: I do not say that Mr. Philip De Lancaster was skilled in the practice of that sublime art; but I do say, that he was at the pains of ascending the winding stair-case of my turret, and of entering my chamber on the top of it, for the benevolent purpose of employing me to expel the meagrims, or blue devils, as they are called, from the possession they had taken of his lady, and restoring her to health and spirits by the healing remedy of dulcet tones, elicited by me from my harp.

A fiddlestick for your harp! exclaimed the man of medicine. I tell you, that its dulcet tones were the very death of his wife. You may take that from me, friend David, _in verbo medici_.

I’ll not take that from you, or any one else, friend or foe, retorted the enraged musician; and now began an altercation between chemicals and galenicals _versus_ chords and crotchets, which was maintained with such heat, (both gentlemen being of the principality,) that in the confusion of tongues all memory of poor Philip’s history was done away, and to this hour no record, anecdote or account of that unfortunate gentleman is any where to be found, save only what the historic tool of the engraver has briefly inscribed upon the lacquered plate, that ornaments his coffin.