  The next morning, as soon as I thought Mr. Stanley had retreated to his library, I followed him thither. He was busy writing letters. I apologized for my intrusion. He laid his papers aside, and invited me to sit by him. "You are too good, sir," said I, "to receive with so much kindness a culprit who appears before you ingenuously to acknowledge the infraction of a treaty into which he had the honor of entering with you. I fear that a few days are wanting of my prescribed month. I had resolved to obey you with the most religious scrupulousness; but a circumstance, trifling in itself, has led almost irresistibly to a declaration, which in obedience to your command I had resolved to postpone. But though it is somewhat premature, I hope, however, you will not condemn my precipitancy. I have ventured to tell your charming daughter how necessary she is to my happiness. She does not reject me. She refers me to her father." "You have your peace to make with my daughter, I can tell you, sir," said Mr. Stanley, looking gravely; "I fear you have mortally offended her." I was dreadfully alarmed. "You know not how you afflict me, sir," said I: "how have I offended Miss Stanley?" "Not Miss Stanley," said he, smiling, "but Miss Celia Stanley, who extremely resents having been banished from the drawing-room yesterday evening." "If Celia's displeasure is all I have to fear, sir, I am most fortunate. Oh, sir, my happiness, the peace of my future life, is in your hands. But first tell me you forgive the violation of my promise." "I am willing to believe, Charles," replied he, "that you kept the spirit of your engagement, though you broke it in the letter; and for an unpremeditated breach of an obligation of this nature, we must not, I believe, be too rigorous. Your conduct since your declaration to me has confirmed the affection which your character had before excited. You were probably surprised and hurt at my cold reception of your proposal, a proposal which gave me a deeper satisfaction than I can express. Yet I was no dissembler in suppressing the pleasure I felt at an address so every way desirable. My dear Charles, I know a little of human nature. I know how susceptible the youthful heart is of impressions. I know how apt these impressions are to be obliterated—a new face, a more advantageous connection—" "Hold, sir," said I, indignantly interrupting him, "you can not think so meanly of me—you can not rate the son of your friend so low!" "I am very far indeed," replied he, "from rating you low. I know you abhor mercenary considerations; but I know also that you are a young man, lively, ardent, impressible. I know the rapid effect that leisure, retirement, rural scenes, daily opportunities of seeing a young woman not ugly, of conversing with a young woman not disagreeable, may produce on the heart, or rather on the imagination. I was aware that seeing no other, conversing with no other, none at least that, to speak honestly, I could consider as a fair competitor, hardly left you an unprejudiced judge of the state of your own heart. I was not sure but that this sort of easy commerce might produce a feeling of complacency which might be mistaken for love. I could not consent that mere accident, mere leisure, the mere circumstance of being thrown together, should irrevocably entangle either of you. I was desirous of affording you time to see, to know, and to judge. I would not take advantage of your first emotions. I would not take advantage of your friendship for me. I would not take advantage of your feeling ardently, till I had given you time to judge temperately and fairly." I assured him I was equally at a loss to express my gratitude for his kindness, and my veneration of his wisdom; and thanked him in terms of affectionate energy. "My regard for you," said he, "is not of yesterday: I have taken a warm interest in your character and happiness almost ever since you have been in being; and in a way more intimate and personal than you can suspect." So saying he arose, unlocked the drawer of a cabinet which stood behind him, and took out a large packet of letters. He then resumed his seat, and holding out the direction on the covers asked me if I was acquainted with the hand-writing. A tear involuntarily started into my eye as I exclaimed; "It is the well-known hand of my beloved father." "Listen to me attentively," resumed he. "You are not ignorant that never were two men more firmly attached by all the ties which ever cemented a Christian friendship than your lamented father and myself. Our early youth was spent in the same studies, the same pleasures, the same society. 'We took sweet counsel together and went to the house of God as friends.' He condescendingly overlooked my being five or six years younger than himself. After his marriage with your excellent mother, the current of life carried us different ways, but without causing any abatement in the warmth of our attachment. "I continued to spend one month every year with him at the Priory, till I myself married. You were then not more than three or four years old; and your engaging manners, and sweet temper, laid the foundation of an affection which has not been diminished by time, and the reports of your progress. Sedentary habits on the part of your father, and a rapidly increasing family on mine, kept us stationary at the two extremities of the kingdom. I settled at the Grove, and both as husband and father have been happiest of the happy. "As soon as Lucilla was born, your father and I, simultaneously, formed a wish that it might be possible to perpetuate our friendship by the future union of our children." When Mr. Stanley uttered these words, my heart beat so fast, and the agitation of my whole frame was so visible that he paused for a moment, but perceiving that I was all ear, and that I made a silent motion for him to proceed, he went on. "This was a favorite project with us. We pursued it however with the moderation of men who had a settled sense of the uncertainty of all human things, of human life itself; and with a strong conviction of the probability that our project might never be realized. "Without too much indulging the illusions of hope, we agreed that there could be no harm in educating our children for each other: in inspiring them with corresponding tastes, similar inclinations, and especially with an exact conformity in their religious views. We never indulged the presumptuous thought of counteracting providential dispensations, of conquering difficulties which time might prove to be inseparable, and, above all, we determined never to be so weak, or so unjust, as to think of compelling their affections. We had both studied the human heart long enough to know that it is a perverse and wayward thing. We were convinced that it would not be dictated to in a matter which involved its dearest interests, we knew that it liked to pick out its own happiness in its own way." As Mr. Stanley proceeded, my heart melted with grateful love for a father who, in making such a provision for my happiness, had generously left my choice so free. But while my conscience seemed to reproach me as if I had not deserved such tenderness, I rejoiced that my memory had no specific charge to bring against it. "For all these reasons," continued Mr. Stanley, "we mutually agreed to bury our wishes in our own bosoms; to commit the event to Him by whom all events are governed; never to name you to each other but in a general way; to excite no fictitious liking, to elicit no artificial passion, and to kindle neither impatience, curiosity, nor interest. Nothing more than a friendly family regard was ever manifested, and the names of Charles and Lucilla were never mentioned together. "In this you have found your advantage. Had my daughter been accustomed to hear you spoken of with any particularity; had she been conscious that any important consequences might have attached to your visit, you would have lost the pleasure of seeing her in her native simplicity of character. Undesigning and artless I trust she would have been under any circumstances, but to have been unreserved and open would have been scarcely possible; nor might you, my dear Charles, with your strong sense of filial piety, have been able exactly to discriminate how much of your attachment was choice, how much was duty. The awkwardness of restraint would have diminished the pleasure of intercourse to both. "Knowing that the childish brother and sister sort of intimacy was not the most promising mode for the development of your mutual sentiments, we agreed that you should not meet till within a year or two of the period when it would be proper that the union, if ever, might take place. "We were neither of us of an age or character to indulge very romantic ideas of the doctrine of sympathies. Still we saw no reason for excluding such a possibility. If we succeeded, we knew that we were training two beings in a conformity of Christian principles, which, if they did not at once attract affection, would not fail to insure it, should inferior motives first influence your mutual liking. And if it failed, we should each have educated a Christian, who would be likely to carry piety and virtue into two other families. Much good would attend our success, and no possible evil could attend our failure. "I could show you, I believe, near a hundred letters on each side, of which you were the unconscious subject. Your father, in his last illness, returned all mine, to prevent a premature discovery, knowing how soon his papers would fall into your hands. If it will give you pleasure, you may peruse a correspondence of which, for almost twenty years, you were the little hero. In reading my letters you will make yourself master of the character of Lucilla. You will read the history of her mind; you will mark the unfolding of her faculties, and the progress of her education. In those of your father, you will not be sorry to trace back your own steps." Here Mr. Stanley making a pause, I bowed my grateful acceptance of his obliging offer. I was afraid to speak, I was almost afraid to breathe, lest I should lose a word of a communication so interesting. "You now see," resumed Mr. Stanley, "why you were sent to Edinburg. Cambridge and Oxford were too near London, and of course too near Hampshire, to have maintained the necessary separation. As soon as you left the University, your father proposed accompanying you on a visit to the Grove. Like fond parents, we had prepared each other to expect to see a being just such a one as each would have wished for the companion of his child. "This was to be merely a visit of experiment. You were both too young to marry. But we were impatient to place you both in a post of observation; to see the result of a meeting; to mark what sympathy there would be between two minds formed with a view to each other. "But vain are all the projects of man. 'Oh! blindness to the future!' You doubtless remember, that just as every thing was prepared for your journey southward your dear father was seized with the lingering illness of which he died. Till almost the last, he was able to write me, in his intervals of ease, short letters on the favorite topic. I remember with what joy his heart dilated, when he told me of your positive refusal to leave him, on his pressing you to pursue the plan already settled, and to make your visit to London and the Grove without him. I will read you a passage from his letter." He read as follows: "In vain have I endeavored to drive this dear son for a short time from me. He asked with the indignant feeling of affronted filial piety, if I could propose to him any compensation for my absence from his sick couch? 'I make no sacrifice to duty,' said he, 'in preferring you. If I make any sacrifice, it is to pleasure.'" Seeing my eyes overflow with grateful tenderness, Mr. Stanley said, "If I can find his last letter I will show it you." Then looking over the packet—"here it is," said he, putting it into my hands with visible emotion. Neither of us had strength of voice to be able to read it aloud. It was written at several times.
On the cover was written, in Mr. Stanley's hand, "He died three days after!" It is impossible to describe the mingled and conflicting emotions of my soul, while I perused this letter. Gratitude that I had possessed such a father; sorrow, that I had lost him; transport, in anticipating an event which had been his earnest wish for almost twenty years; regret, that he was not permitted to witness it; devout joy, that he was in a state so superior to even my sense of happiness; a strong feeling of the uncertainty and brevity of all happiness; a solemn resolution that I would never act unworthy of such a father; a fervent prayer that I might be enabled to keep that resolution: all these emotions so agitated and divided my whole mind, as to render me unfit for any society, even for that of Lucilla. I withdrew, gratefully pressing Mr. Stanley's hand; he kindly returned the pressure, but neither of us attempted to speak. He silently put my father's packet into my hands. I shut myself into my apartment, and read, for three hours, letters for which I hope to be the better in time and in eternity. I found in them a treasure of religious wisdom, excellent maxims of human prudence, a thorough acquaintance with life and manners, a keen insight into human nature in the abstract, and a nice discrimination of individual characters; admirable documents of general education, the application of those documents to my particular turn of character, and diversified methods for improving it. The pure delight to which I looked forward in reading these letters with Lucilla, soon became my predominant feeling. I returned to the company with a sense of felicity, which the above feelings and reflections had composed into a soothing tranquillity. My joy was sobered without being abated. I received the cordial congratulations of my friends. Mrs. Stanley behaved to me with increased affection: she presented me to her daughter, with whom I afterward passed two hours. This interview left me nothing to desire but that my gratitude to the Almighty Dispenser of happiness might bear some little proportion to his blessings. As I was passing through the hall after dinner, I spied little Celia peeping out of the door of the children's apartment, in hope of seeing me pass. She flew to me, and begged I would take her in to the company. As I knew the interdict was taken off, I carried her into the saloon where they were sitting. She ran into Lucilla's arms, and said, in a voice which she meant for a whisper, but loud enough to be heard by the whole company, "Do, dear Lucilla, forgive me, I will never say another word about the curricle, and you sha'n't go to the Priory since you don't like it." Lucilla found means to silence her, by showing her the pictures in the "Peacock at Home;" and without looking up to observe the general smile, contrived to attract the sweet child's attention to this beautiful little poem, in spite of Sir John, who did his utmost to widen the mischief. |
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