Adeline Mowbray Part 14

'But will she not allow me to live with her?'

'What! as Mr Glenmurray's mistress? receive under her roof the seducer of her daughter?'

'Sir, I am no seducer.'

'No,' cried Adeline: 'I became the mistress of Mr Glenmurray from the dictates of my reason, not my weakness or his persuasions.'

'Humph!' replied the doctor, 'I should expect to find such reason in Moorfields: besides, had not Mr Glenmurray's books turned your head, you would not have thought it pretty and right to become the mistress of any man: so he is your seducer, after all.'

'So far I plead guilty,' replied Glenmurray; 'but whatever my opinions are, I have ever been willing to sacrifice them to the welfare of Miss Mowbray, and have, from the first moment that we were safe from pursuit, been urgent to marry her.'

'Then why are you not married?'

'Because I would not consent,' said Adeline coldly.

'Mad, certainly mad,' exclaimed the doctor: 'but you, 'faith, you are an honest fellow after all,' turning to Glenmurray and shaking him by the hand; 'weak of the head, not bad in the heart; burn your vile books, and I am your friend for ever.'

'We will discuss that point another time,' replied Glenmurray: 'at present the most interesting subject to us is the question whether Mrs Mowbray will forgive her daughter or not?'

'Why, man, if I may judge of Mrs Mowbray by myself, one condition of her forgiveness will be your marrying her daughter.'

'O blest condition!' cried Glenmurray.

'I should think,' replied Adeline coldly, 'my mother must have had too much of marriage to wish me to marry; but if she should insist on my marrying, I will comply, and on no other account.'

'Strange infatuation! To me appears only justice and duty. But your reasons, girl, your reasons?'

'They are few, but strong. Glenmurray, philanthropically bent on improving the state of society, puts forth opinions counteracting its received usages, backed by arguments which are in my opinion incontrovertible.'

'In your opinion!--Pray, child, how old are you?'

'Nineteen.'

'And at that age you set up for a reformer? Well,--go on.'

'But though it be important to the success of his opinions, and indeed to the respectability of his character, that he should act according to his precepts, he, for the sake of preserving to me the notice of persons whose narrowness of mind I despise, would conform to an inst.i.tution which both he and I think unworthy of regard from a rational being.--And shall not I be as generous as he is? shall I scruple to give up for his honour and fame the petty advantages which marriage would give me?

Never--his honour and fame are too dear to me; but the claims which my mother has on me are in my eyes so sacred that, for her sake, though not for my own, I would accept the sacrifice which Glenmurray offers. If, then, she says that she will never see or pardon me till I am become a wife, I will follow him to the altar directly; but till then I must insist on remaining as I am. It is necessary that I should respect the man I love; and I should not respect Glenmurray were he not capable of supporting with fort.i.tude the consequences of his opinions; and could he, for motives less strong than those he avows, cease to act up to what he believes to be right. For, never can I respect or believe firmly in the truth of those doctrines, the followers of which shrink from a sort of martyrdom in support of them.'

'O Mr Glenmurray!' cried the doctor shaking his head, 'what have you to answer for! What a glorious champion would that creature have been in the support of truth, when even error in her looks so like to virtue!--And then the amiable disinterestedness of you both!--What a powerful thing must true love be, when it can make a speculative philosopher indifferent to the interests of his system, and ready to act in direct opposition to it, rather than injure the respectability of the woman he loves! Well, well, the Lord forgive you, young man, for having taken it into your head to set up for a great author!'

Glenmurray answered by a deep-drawn sigh; and the doctor continued: 'Then there is that girl again, with a heart so fond and true that her love comes in aid of her integrity, and makes her think no sacrifice too great, in order to prove her confidence in the wisdom of her lover,--urging her to disregard all personal inconveniences rather than let him forfeit, for her sake, his pretensions to independence and consistency of character! girl, I can't help admiring you, but no more I could a Malabar widow, who with fond and pious enthusiasm, from an idea of duty, throws herself on the funeral pile of her husband. But still I should think you a great fool, notwithstanding, for professing the opinions that led to such an exertion of duty. And now here are you, possessed of every quality both of head and heart to bless others and to bless yourself--owing to your foolish and pernicious opinions;--here you are, I say blasted in reputation in the prime of your days, and doomed perhaps to pine through existence in--Pshaw! I can't support the idea!'

added he, gulping down a sob as he spoke, and traversing the room in great emotion.

Adeline and Glenmurray were both of them deeply and painfully affected; and the latter was going to express what he felt, when the doctor seizing Adeline's hand, affectionately exclaimed, 'Well, my poor child!

I will see your mother once more; I will go to London tomorrow--by this time she is there--and you had better follow me; you will hear of me at the Old Hummums; and here is a card of address to an hotel near it, where I would advise you to take up your abode.'

So saying he shook Glenmurray by the hand; when, starting back, he exclaimed 'Why, man! here is a skin like fire, and a pulse like lightning. My dear fellow, you must take care of yourself.'

Adeline burst into tears.

'Indeed, doctor, I am only nervous.'

'Nervous!--What, I suppose you think you understand my profession better than I do. But don't cry, my child: when your mind is easier, perhaps, he will do very well; and, as one thing likely to give him immediate ease, I prescribe a visit to the altar of the next parish church.'

So saying he departed; and all other considerations were again swallowed up in Adeline's mind by the idea of Glenmurray's danger.

'Is it possible that my marrying you would have such a blessed effect on your health?' cried Adeline after a pause.

'It certainly would make my mind easier than it now is,' replied he.

'If I thought so,' said Adeline: 'but no--regard for my supposed interest merely makes you say so; and indeed I should not think so well of you as I now do, if I imagined that you could be made easy by an action by which you forfeited all pretensions to that consistency of character so requisite to the true dignity of a philosopher.'

A deep sigh from Glenmurray, in answer, proved that he was no philosopher.

In the morning the lovers set off for London, Dr Norberry having preceded them by a few hours. This blunt but benevolent man had returned the evening before slowly and pensively to his lodgings, his heart full of pity for the errors of the well-meaning enthusiasts whom he had left, and his head full of plans for their a.s.sistance, or rather for that of Adeline. But he entered his own doors again reluctantly--he knew but too well that no sympathy with his feelings awaited him there. His wife, a woman of narrow capacity and no talents or accomplishments, had, like all women of that sort, a great aversion to those of her s.e.x who united to feminine graces and gentleness, the charms of a cultivated understanding and pretensions to accomplishments or literature.

Of Mrs Mowbray, as we have before observed, she had always been peculiarly jealous, because Dr Norberry spoke of her knowledge with wonder, and of her understanding with admiration; not that he entertained one moment a feeling of preference towards her, inconsistent with an almost idolatrous love of his wife, whose skill in all the domestic duties, and whose very pretty face and person, were the daily themes of his praise. But Mrs Norberry wished to engross all his panegyrics to herself, and she never failed to expatiate on Mrs Mowbray's foibles and flightiness as long as the doctor had expatiated on her charms.

Sometimes, indeed, this last subject was sooner exhausted than the one which she had chosen; but when Adeline grew up, and became as it were the rival of her daughters in the praises of her husband, she found it difficult as we have said before, to bring faults in array against excellencies.

Mrs Norberry could with propriety observe, when the doctor, was exclaiming, 'What a charming essay Mrs Mowbray has just written!'

'Aye,--but I dare say she can't write a market bill.'

When he said, 'How well she comprehends the component parts of the animal system!'

She could with great justice reply, 'But she knows nothing of the component parts of a plum pudding.'

But when Adeline became the object of the husband's admiration and the wife's enmity, Mrs Norberry could not make these pertinent remarks, as Adeline was as conversant with all branches of housewifery as herself; and, though as learned in all systems as her mother, was equally learned in the component parts of puddings and pies. She was therefore at a loss what to say when Adeline was praised by the doctor; and all she could observe on the occasion was, that the girl might be clever, but was certainly very ugly, very affected, and very conceited.

It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that Mrs Mowbray's degrading and unhappy marriage, and Adeline's elopement, should have been sources of triumph to Mrs Norberry and her daughters; who, though they liked Mrs Mowbray very well, could not bear Adeline.

'So Dr Norberry, these are your uncommon folks!'--exclaimed Mrs Norberry on hearing of the marriage and of the subsequent elopement;--'I suppose you are now well satisfied at not having a genius for your wife, or geniuses for your daughters?'

'I always was, my dear,' meekly replied the mortified and afflicted doctor, and dropped the subject as soon as possible; nor had it been resumed for some time when Adeline accosted them on the beach at Brighton. But her appearance called forth their dormant enmity; and the whole way to their lodgings the good doctor heard her guilt expatiated upon with as much violence as ever: but just as they got home he coldly and firmly observed, 'I shall certainly call on the poor deluded girl this evening.'

And Mrs Norberry, knowing by the tone and manner in which he spoke, that this was a point which he would not give up, contented herself with requiring only that he should go in the dark hour.

CHAPTER XV

It was to a wife and daughters such as these that he was returning, with the benevolent wish of interesting them for the guilty Adeline.

'So, Dr Norberry, you are come back at last!' was his first salutation, 'and what does the creature say for herself?'

'The creature!--Your fellow-creature, my dear, says very little--grief is not wordy.'