Lord Spoonbill was not like Cato. For history records of the latter that he preferred being good to seeming so: Lord Spoonbill had no great objection to being a rogue, but did not like to be thought one. It was therefore not very pleasant for him to be placed in that dilemma, of which we made mention in the last chapter. He saw, or at least had good reason to think that he saw, that Mr Darnley was bent on renewing the acquaintance with Miss Primrose; and he also feared that Penelope had not sufficiently forgotten her first lover.

There also occurred to his mind the thought that it was possible for Mr Darnley to make a journey to London for a personal explanation, if the letter to Mr Primrose should not be answered. This consideration suggested to his lordship the necessity of taking prompt and decided measures. He saw that no chance remained for him but in the way of matrimony. He certainly dreaded the encounter with his right honorable parents; but, if he could not live without Penelope, it was absolutely necessary that he should take steps to live with her.

This is a very proper place wherein to make a digression concerning the omnipotence of love; and here we ought to be extremely pathetic, shewing and demonstrating with heart-rending eloquence, how irresistible is this universal passion: and perhaps some of our readers, not many we hope, may think that we ought to make a very sentimental defence of Lord Spoonbill, as some of our predecessors in the history of lovers have made of those idle cubs who have shewn their refinement and sensibility by seducing engaged or betrothed affections. But we do not believe in the omnipotence of love; and we do not think Lord Spoonbill at all deserving of pity. Falling in love with Penelope was on his part perfectly voluntary, deliberate, wilful, and intentional. It is all very possible and very plausible for an inexperienced and thoughtless youth to find himself mightily attached to a young woman before he is aware almost of the existence of the passion; but this was not the case with Lord Spoonbill. When he saw Miss Primrose he admired her; when he became more acquainted with her, he liked her; and, from pursuing, he loved her. But he knew from the first that she was otherwise engaged; and his designs towards her had been degrading.

We have dwelt long, and perhaps tediously, on Lord Spoonbill’s embarrassment; we have done so intentionally, because that embarrassment dwelt tediously on his mind, and it was necessary, for the sake of accuracy in the picture, to represent the case not transiently, but copiously.

The result of the right honorable hereditary legislator’s meditation was, that as it was not possible for him to live without Penelope, and as delay might expose him to the danger of being compelled to do that which he knew to be impossible, he would take the earliest opportunity of making regular and deliberate overtures of marriage. And he felt satisfied that the fascination of title and the splendour of opulence would be too much for a female heart to withstand. There was also another thought on which he grounded his hopes: he considered that the affection which Penelope had for her father would induce her more readily to accept an offer which would provide her with the means of assisting him.

With this resolution he returned home; as he thought that it might be more advisable to communicate his intention to the parties concerned by letter than by word of mouth. Probably his lordship might imagine that, if thus Mr Primrose were made acquainted with the magnificent offer that awaited his daughter’s acceptance, paternal pride would be gratified, and paternal authority might be added to other motives, inducing the young lady’s compliance. Lord Spoonbill was by no means fastidious as to the manner in which he gained his object, provided that the object was gained.

His lordship dined that day at home. During dinner he was silent, and looked almost sulky. The Earl and Countess inferred from these looks that their hopeful son was on the eve of saying or doing something not very agreeable to his parents; for he most usually prefaced an act of opposition to their will by putting himself into an ill-humour. This is a refined piece of domestic tactics. None however but spoiled children can use it with proper dexterity and complete success. When a wife wishes to persuade her husband out of his senses, or to guide him against his better judgment, her prelude is generally an extraordinary degree of sweetness, and her preface is made of witching smiles; and then the husband thinks that it would be cruel to convert such smiles into tears, and he passively yields to the power of the silent logic of the laughing eye. But the policy of a great overgrown booby is different. The spoiled blockhead knows that no art of his can give extra loveliness to his looks in the eyes of his fond parents. His own precious numskull is to them the ne plus ultra of human excellence. But if that sweet face is darkened by a frown, and if the dear pet is sulky, cross-grained, and ill-humoured, then anything and everything must be conceded to bring him back to his good-humour again.

“Spoonbill, are you unwell?” said Lord Smatterton.

“No,” replied Spoonbill in a style of sulky abruptness, which Tony Lumpkin himself might have envied.

“You seem to be quite out of spirits to-day:” said the Countess, in one of her most agreeable and winning tones.

“One cannot be always laughing and talking,” was the uncourteous and ungrateful reply.

Then followed a long pause. The Earl and Countess scarcely dared to speak to each other, and Lord Spoonbill pertinaciously held his peace. Now such a state of things cannot last long; it is absolutely unbearable. Very soon after the servants had left the room, as the young man’s silence and sulkiness yet continued, Lord Smatterton, who thought himself a bit of a politician, gave her ladyship a hint to indulge them with her absence.

When they were alone, the Earl of Smatterton thus addressed his hopeful son: “Spoonbill, I fear that something is preying upon your mind. May I be permitted to know what it is that disturbs you?”

Lord Spoonbill did not make any reply to this consolatory interrogation: for he felt very well satisfied that the communication of the cause of his concern would not be very likely to remove it. He therefore thought it best to contrive, if it could be so managed, to let the truth come out gradually, and to bring his father to guess, than to tell abruptly, the cause of his oppression.

“You are silent,” said the Earl of Smatterton. Lord Spoonbill knew that without requiring to be told of it. The Earl then continued:

“Why should you conceal from me anything that concerns and interests you? I am only desirous of promoting your welfare; and, if in any matter I can serve you, command me.”

It is quite contrary to our notions of propriety that sons should command their parents; it was also contrary to Lord Smatterton’s ideas of his own dignity that any one should dictate to him; but in the present instance he adopted the courtier’s language. As his son did not seem disposed to command him, the father felt very much inclined to command his son, and to insist with mighty dignity on knowing the cause of this strange behaviour. But Lord Spoonbill was rather too old to be treated like a boy. His lordship would not be snubbed; but he could not always escape a lecturing.

There is this difference between the rational and irrational part of the creation; that, among the irrational animals, the parents are in haste to give their offspring a hint of their independence; but among rational beings, the young ones are more in haste to throw off their dependence than parents to renounce their authority or withdraw their protection. One reason perhaps for this arrangement is, that rational youngsters are not quite so well able to guide and to take care of themselves as irrational animals are.

The feeling of which we are here speaking operated very powerfully in the minds of Lord Smatterton and his son. The father was especially fond of authority, and the son as fond of independence: but the father held the purse, and there lay the great secret of his power. Lord Spoonbill knew that he could not marry Miss Primrose without the consent of more parties than himself and the young lady; he knew that the means of an establishment must be contributed by his own right honorable father; and therefore his consideration was, how to obtain that consent, and how to reconcile his father’s well-known horror of plebeianism with his own marriage, with the daughter of a man who had originally sprung from the City. To have made the proposal flatly and plainly, would have put the Earl into a most tremendous passion. It was therefore necessary to have recourse to management.

Finding that the Earl was slow in uttering conjectures, Lord Spoonbill was compelled to give broader hints; and for that purpose he rose from his seat and walked to the fire-place, and put his elbow on the chimney-piece, and his hand upon his forehead, and sighed—oh, how he did sigh! He would have been a fine subject for Chantrey; but neither Chantrey nor any one else could have immortalized that magnificent sigh.

At this movement the Earl started, and exclaimed: “Are you in love, Spoonbill?”

“Suppose I am, sir;” replied the son of the patrician, “and what then?”

“What then!” echoed Lord Smatterton; “that very much depends on the person who has engaged your affections. If it be a suitable connexion, I shall throw no impediment in your way.”

“But, perhaps, what may appear a suitable connexion to me may not appear in the same light to you.”

“Of course you will not think of marrying a woman of no understanding.”

“Certainly not,” replied Lord Spoonbill cheerfully and confidently; “I could not bear to live with a wife who was not a person of intellect.”

Some of our readers might not have expected this remark from Lord Smatterton, or this reply from Lord Spoonbill; but let those readers look out among their acquaintance for a great blockhead, and let them talk to him about intellect, and they will not wonder that Lord Spoonbill had a fancy for an intellectual wife. There is, now a-days, a great demand for intellect, and a demand will always create a supply of some sort or other.

“And I think,” continued the Earl of Smatterton, “that I know your opinions on that subject too well to suppose that you would ever degrade yourself so far as to marry a person of low birth.”

Lord Spoonbill bit his lips; and said, “I would never marry a woman of vulgar manners, whatever might be her birth.”

“You are right,” said the Earl; “but why can you not tell me at once, without all this circumlocution, who is the lady that is destined to the honor of becoming Lady Spoonbill?”

Here the young man hesitated and demurred, and endeavoured to say something that should amount to nothing. But the Earl was not content to be put off evasively, and pressed so hard, that at length the secret was extorted. Then was the Lord of Smatterton exceedingly astonished and grieved, and he groaned and shook his head most solemnly, and in a tone of great anguish of mind, said;

“Oh, Spoonbill! Spoonbill! That you should ever have come to this! And have you made the young woman an offer of your hand?”

“I have,” replied the son, who thought that the readiest way of bringing the matter to a conclusion would be to avow it at once.

But, when the Earl farther enquired whether the offer had been accepted or not, the young lord was under the necessity of acknowledging that it had not been exactly accepted, but that he had no doubt it would be. This was a curious piece of refinement in the art of lying. Lord Spoonbill was too scrupulous to commit himself by a downright palpable falsehood, which might be detected, but instead of that he had recourse to one of those lies, which are not so easy of detection, but which answer quite as well the purpose of deceit. It was quite as much a lie to say that he had no doubt that his offer would be accepted, as it would have been to say that it had already been accepted. But the one lie might have been detected, the other could not. He had doubts of his acceptance, and serious doubts too; but he thought that if the young lady and her father found that the match was countenanced by the Earl, and, if proposals could be fairly and fully made before Mr Darnley should have an opportunity of holding any intercourse with Miss Primrose or her father, there was a possibility of success.

This information was indeed melancholy news to Lord Smatterton, who had enjoyed and pleased himself with the thought that he had to boast of true patrician blood, and who looked forward to see his only son uphold the dignity of his house. There is a pleasure in greatness which none but great ones know. It had been the pride of the Earl of Smatterton to look down with contempt on such noble families as had degraded themselves by admixture with plebeian blood. Now all his sneers and sarcasms, he thought, would be turned against himself, and it pained him to think that it might be said of him, “that is Lord Smatterton, whose son married a woman from the City.”

His lordship knew that his son was obstinate and headstrong, and he saw that there was no mode of preventing the catastrophe, if the young man had set his mind upon it. But notwithstanding he knew that opposition must be fruitless, he could not help speaking in his own peculiarly emphatic manner against the proposed match.

“Spoonbill,” said the Earl, “marry Miss Primrose if you please; but remember”—here his lordship made a most magnificent pause—“remember that your establishment must be from the fortune of your destined bride. From me you have nothing.”

Had circumstances been otherwise than they were, and not requiring such despatch, Lord Spoonbill would not have heeded this speech. He would have known that ultimately he should succeed with his magnificent father; but his object was to come to a speedy decision; he wished to be able at once to make a decided proposal. At this remark of his father Lord Spoonbill was angry and sulky, and he pettishly replied; “I think I have a right to marry as I please.”

“And I also have a right to use my property as I please; and I will never consent to appropriate any part of it to the purpose of introducing a woman of low birth into my family.”

It may be very well supposed by our readers, that the discussion on this interesting topic between Lord Smatterton and his son did not end here; and we shall not be blamed for omitting the remainder of the angry discussion between father and son on this very interesting and delicate topic. It may be very easily imagined that the son went on grumbling, and that the father went on prosing, for a considerable length of time, and that they did not arrive at any satisfactory conclusion.

It may be also very easily imagined that when the melancholy intelligence was communicated to Lady Smatterton, her ladyship must have suffered very acutely when she found that her beloved and only child had so far forgotten the pure and high principles in which he had been nourished, as to think of bringing misery and disgrace into a noble family, by letting down the Spoonbills to an alliance with the Primroses.

It is a pity that in these days of invention and ingenuity no contrivance can be hit upon for preventing such miserable and heart-breaking casualties, as patrician youths falling in love with plebeian damsels. The “order” of hereditary legislators has been in many instances most cruelly and mercilessly invaded by impertinent, instrusive plebeians. Sometimes love and sometimes necessity have compelled an union between the high and low; and yet, notwithstanding these painful and melancholy admixtures, patricianism has kept up a very pretty spirit of distinctness, and does yet contain some choice specimens of the finer sorts of humanity. How much more magnificent and sublime patricianism might have been but for these admixtures, it is impossible to say.

It is enough however for our present purpose to observe that, with all the power which Lord Spoonbill, as an only one and a spoiled child, possessed over his parents, he was not able, even with the additional force of his sulkiness and ill-humour, to bring them to assent to the ill-assorted union which he contemplated. The Earl and Countess of Smatterton could not give their consent to such a humiliating and degrading connexion. They did not indeed know who or what Mr Primrose was, but they did know who and what he was not. They knew that he was not of their set; that he was not a man of family or title, and that whatever property he might possess, he had acquired it by his own diligence or wit. Now that was an abomination, an indelible disgrace, a reproach not easily to be wiped away. They took it for granted, indeed, that Mr Primrose had some property; but if they had known that even the little property which he had was placed in jeopardy, their indignation would have been greater still at the folly of their own and only precious pet essaying to unite himself with a young woman who had nothing to recommend her but the possession of almost every virtue that can adorn the female character, united with a strong and masculine understanding, and embellished with gracefulness of manners, gentleness of deportment, and a moral dignity, which was high enough to look down with indifference on the accidental distinctions of society.

All that Lord Spoonbill could gain from his inexorable and right honorable parents, was a promise that they would think about it.