Dilemmas of Pride. Mrs. Loudon
argument which can be brought to bear upon the subject. Acuteness in prejudging is the boast of the fool. Discrimination to give its due weight to every part of the evidence, the privilege of the man of sense. The fool is always telling you he can see with half an eye. We would request such persons to employ in future the whole of both orbs, and possibly with a vision so extraordinary, they might be enabled to pierce even to the bottom of that far-famed well, in which it is said that truth has hitherto lain hid from the researches of mankind.
Certainly no claim to merit or distinction can be more absurd than that which is founded on the wilfully limited means employed for producing the desired end.
Excellence, to challenge admiration, should be excellence in the abstract; while he who would be even a respectable candidate for the prize, should use every power that Providence has given to man, avail himself of every ray of light that the experience of past ages has elicited, and bringing all to a focus, pour the concentrated beam on the path to be explored.
Thus only can each generation hope to gain some step on the road towards perfection unattained by its predecessor.
CHAPTER VII.
Gloucester Villa, the residence of Mr. Salter, at Cheltenham, was in a state of high preparation for a dinner to be given to Lady Flamborough.
Mrs. Johnson had no leisure to assist the young ladies to dress, they were therefore left to perform that office for each other.
"By-the-by, I have been so much hurried, I forgot to tell you," said Grace, "but Lady Arden is now really coming: Mrs. Dorothea's maid has been telling Johnson all about it."
"Oh, I dare say it's just talk as usual," said Miss Salter.
"No, no, it's quite certain now," persisted her sister, "for Violet Bank is taken for her ladyship for six months certain, and the adjoining villa, Jessamine Bower, for another titled lady; and I daresay they'll be acquainted, so you see what we've lost!"
"Well, that is really provoking!" exclaimed Miss Salter. "I wonder would there be any use in sending her an invitation for this evening?"
"Sending who an invitation?" said Grace. "Mrs. Dorothea do you mean? Oh, quite ridiculous at this late hour; and after leaving her out of the ball too!"
"I know all that," replied Miss Salter; "but let me see, I'll write her a long apology about having sent a card for our ball to her old lodging in mistake! and for the short notice I'll say, that I know she likes friendly invitations better than formal ones, and that our party this evening is to be so particularly select, just what I know she likes; and then I'll give a list of the titles, and that I think will decide her, even if she does see through the excuses."
Accordingly Miss Salter, in great triumph at her own diplomatic abilities, wrote and dispatched her note.
"After all," she added, as she resumed her toilette, "these are sorrowful rejoicings for us, for I suppose with this fine lady coming to dinner, and being so gracious, and all that, she means to marry my father; and if she does, though to be sure it'ill bring fine acquaintance, I suppose, but will it bring us husbands?—on the contrary, if it gets abroad that we're not to have a shilling—"
"We'll have but a poor chance, I'm afraid," interrupted Grace.
"But I'll tell you what I have done to endeavour to obviate that," said her sister; "I have been telling Johnson, and I have told her too that she may tell it where she pleases, for it's no harm that the truth should be known, that our mother's fortune was a hundred thousand pounds, and was so settled upon us that my father can't keep it from us; and she has begun already with Sir William Orm's man, and he has told his master, and Sir William is full of it; so we shall see how he behaves to-day."
"But what a shocking lie!" said Grace.
"Lie! Nonsense!" replied her sister, "Who tells the truth, I'd be glad to know?"
Here the answer to the note interrupted the conversation. It was of course a formal apology. Mrs. Dorothea had not been at a loss to see through the motives of her friends the Salters.
The young ladies now descended to the drawing-room, where Mr. Salter was already standing at a window, in high dress; with the bright white, angular points of a fresh put on collar, contrasting finely with the shining ruby of his cheeks. A carriage with a coronet drove up to the door; bless me, how fine! thought the Misses Salter; it was almost enough to reconcile their father's marrying again.
Lady Flamborough was announced. Her ladyship entered; her round, fat, rosy face, smiling in a round wreath of red roses. Her dress, a colour de rose satin, her ornaments, necklace and earrings of pink topaz.
The broad daylight, or rather sunshine, of the first day in May, in weather unusually fine, and even hot for the season, in a three windowed, south-west drawing room, at six o'clock, did ample justice to the glow of her ladyship's appearance, which nothing less than the entrance, immediately after, of Lady Whaleworthy, in a crimson velvet, could have at all subdued.
Lady Shawbridge arrived next. Her dress was a gold coloured velvet, and gold tissue turban, the wide circumference of which displayed the fiery countenance hinted at by Mrs. Dorothea to great advantage. Indeed the whole assembly was of a fiery order; although being, as we have said, hot weather, there was no occasion for fire. But the very furniture of the room, unluckily for the day and aspect, was crimson, while in addition to the red and reddish countenances already enumerated, Miss Salter's face, on all warm occasions like the present, was much too apt to emulate the glow of her father's. While even poor Miss Grace, though in general, from hardness and thinness, a chilly object, was subject with peculiar provocation, to a dullish red knob, like a winter cherry, just at the end of her nose.
The rest of the party having arrived, and among them Sir William Orm, Sir James Lindsey, Sir Francis Brierton, and the general, dinner was announced. Mr. Salter gave his arm to Lady Flamborough, and leading the way, was followed by the rest of the company, to the dining-room; which, having the same aspect as the drawing-room, and being, besides over the kitchen, was by no means calculated to cool the already heated guests. The two turtles, we mean Mr. Salter and Lady Flamborough, every way so well entitled to the title, being in their forms turtles, and in their present dispositions towards each other turtle doves, took their loving seats side by side, opposite to the turtle-soup, at the head of the table. (Men who have no wives of course head their own tables.)
The dinner having been entirely provided at so much a-head, by a pastrycook, who was to remove its remains, was of course only too good, we mean too fine, too much ornamented, too technical; in fact the display of each course resembled more a confectioner's counter than a gentleman's table. Every thing, in short, was so befrosted, and so beglazed, that if one had been at all absent, one might have put one's hand in one's pocket, and asked what was to pay.
It is an acknowledged fact, that to act the gentleman is impossible. It is equally impossible for people, though possessed of the purse of Fortunatus, to ape successfully, on special occasions, a style of living not habitual to them.
We hope we have not cooled the turtle-soup by our digression. Poor Mr. Salter, instead of quietly conveying ladles of soup to soup-plates, till the demand ceased, was most unnecessarily prolonging his own labours, and delaying the progress of the feast, by deliberately inquiring of every several member of the assembly by name, if they chose turtle-soup, and poising the while, his insignia of office over the tureen, till their ear caught the question and his the reply.
By the time similar rites had been performed over every steaming remove, it may be believed that the countenance of our host had lost nothing of its brilliancy. During the dessert he had more leisure to turn its lustre, adorned with smiles, on his fair companion; whose uplifted eyes languishingly met his, till there wanted but the pipe to make the pair an excellent study for a painter of the Dutch school. The attitude too, leaning back at their ease in their chairs, so favourably displayed their forms, that the couple in this particular very much resembled a pair