The Memoirs of Harriette Wilson, Volumes One and Two. Harriette Wilson
"for there can be no rest here nor hereafter without the acquittal of our hearts. Mine was devoted to you with that sincere ardour and deep character of feeling which is so natural to me, before I knew that you were married. I know it now, too late to endure life when you shall have left me; but I can die when her happiness shall require it." Alas! I knew not half the anguish and suffering the human frame can endure, and yet survive!
One night, about a week from the day Ponsonby first visited me, when I did not expect him till midnight, I retired to bed and fell fast asleep, which said long nap neither Ponsonby nor any one else had disturbed. When I awoke, the sun was shining through my curtains. My first thoughts were always on Ponsonby, and I recollected, with a deep feeling of disappointment, that he had promised the night before to come to me by midnight, and I had desired my maid to send him up into my room as soon as he arrived. I felt for his little watch, which I always placed under my pillow; judge my astonishment to find, attached to it, a magnificent gold chain of exquisite workmanship. I began to think myself in the land of fairies! and still more so, when I observed a very beautiful pearl ring on one of my fingers. I rubbed my eyes and opened them wide, to ascertain beyond a doubt that I was broad awake. A very small strip of writing paper, which I had drawn from under my pillow with my watch, now caught my attention and I read, written with a pencil in Ponsonby's small beautiful character: "Dors, cher enfant, je t'aime trop tendrement, pour t'éveiller."
It was very sentimental and affectionate; for Ponsonby knew how much I required rest. I was very grateful, and yet I thought it altogether exceedingly provoking! How could I be so stupid as not to awake, even when he had his hand under my pillow, in search of my watch! I rang my bell, and inquired of my maid how long she thought Lord Ponsonby had stayed with me the night before.
"More than an hour," was the reply.
"Dear Ponsonby," said I, as soon as she had quitted the room, while I bestowed a thousand kisses on the beautiful watch and chain, "you are the first man on earth who ever sacrificed his own pleasure and passions to secure my repose!"
Lord Ponsonby's father still continued another fortnight in the same hopeless state. His favourite son deeply lamented his illness, and had been indefatigable in his attentions; refusing to visit me or anybody as long as there was hope, or while his father could derive comfort from his son's affections; but, when nothing more could be done, he had sought comfort in the society of the person who loved him best. I should do Lord Ponsonby great injustice were I to say that he ever forgot or neglected his father.
I asked a friend of Lord Ponsonby one day why he did not adore his beautiful wife? He had no idea that I was acquainted with his lordship.
"Lord Ponsonby is always very kind and affectionate to her," was the reply.
"True," I continued; "but I have heard that he does not fly to her for consolation when he is melancholy, nor consult her, nor make a friend of her."
"Lady Fanny is a sweet-tempered child," said he; "but not at all clever: and then, poor thing! she is very deaf, which affliction came on after a violent attack of scarlet fever."
"What a beautiful, sweet and calm expression of countenance she possesses," I remarked, "so pale, that her features at first sight appear only pretty; but on examination they are found perfect; and her dark, clear, brown eyes——"
"So like your own," said the gentleman, interrupting me.
"I have heard that remark made before," I replied, blushing deeply; "but I am not vain enough to credit it."
"With all their beauty," remarked Ponsonby's friend, "men soon grow tired of those Jerseys, with the exception only of Lady——, with whom the wicked world say the Duke of Argyle has been in love more than twenty years."
"Is not the boy they call Frank supposed to be a son of the duke?" I asked.
"I have heard so; but let us hope it is all vile scandal."
"With all my heart; but how does Lady Fanny Ponsonby pass her time?"
"She draws prettily," he observed: "and she has now got a little companion she is very fond of."
"Who is that?" said I.
"A mouse, which, having one night showed its little face to her ladyship in her drawing-room, she so coaxed him with her dainties for three weeks together, that she contrived to tame him: and now he will eat them out of her lovely hands."
"But then after the mouse is gone to bed," said I, "how does her ladyship amuse herself?"
"With her younger sister, or in writing or drawing. Lady Fanny does not much care for society."
"She is not a flirt, I believe?"
"What man can she think it worth while to flirt with," answered he, "being married to such a one as Ponsonby."
I was charmed to hear my own sentiments from the lips of another, and one of his own sex too.
"You admire Lord Ponsonby then?" said I.
"Admire! depend upon it there is nothing like him in all Europe. I speak of him altogether, as to his beauty, his manners, and his talents; but Lord Ponsonby," he continued, "owing to his extreme reserve and his excessive shyness is very little known. He never desires to be known or appreciated but by his own particular friends: yet I know few so capable of distinguishing themselves anywhere, particularly in the senate, as his lordship: his remarkably fine voice, and his language, always so persuasive and eloquent, besides he is such an excellent politician. He will now, shortly, by the expected death of his father," continued the gentleman, whose name if I recollect well, was Matthew Lee, "become one of the peers of the United Kingdom. I was telling him, the other day, how much we should be disappointed if he did not take a very active part in the debates. 'God forbid!' said Ponsonby. 'It is all I can do to find nerve for yes or no, when there is a question in the House, and that in a whisper.'"
"How came he to be so shy?" I asked.
"And how came it to become him so well?" returned his friend, "for it would make any other man awkward, and Ponsonby is most graceful when he is most embarrassed. I have known him from a boy. We were at school together. The ladies were all running mad for him before he was fifteen, and I really believe, that at eighteen Ponsonby, with the true genuine Irish character and warmest passions, had not looked any woman full in the face; and to this day his friends are obliged to make him half tipsy in order to enjoy his society. Yet, with all this timidity," he went on, observing that I was never tired of the subject, and could pay attention to no other, "Ponsonby has a remarkably fine high spirit. One night, very late, near Dublin, he met two of his brothers just as they had got into a violent row with three raw-boned, half naked Irish pats. Seeing that his brothers were drunk, Ponsonby began to remonstrate with them, and strove to persuade them to come home quietly, when one of those ruffians struck his youngest brother a very unfair blow with a stick.
"'Now, d—n your hearts and bl—ds!' said Lord Ponsonby, stripping and setting to with the strength and spirit of a prize-fighter.
"His own mother at this moment could not have known her son: the metamorphosis was nearly as laughable as it was astonishing."
I asked how long he had been married?
"Not five years."
"And Lady Fanny's age?"
"Twenty."
I then asked if he married her for love or money?
"Money!" said Lee, indignantly. "It is now clear to me that you do not know Lord Ponsonby. I was just beginning to suspect from the multiplicity of your questions that you did."
"He was very much in love with her then?" I inquired, without attending to this observation.
"She was not fourteen," answered Lee, "when Ponsonby first met her at her mother's, Lady Jersey's. He was of course, like everybody else, speedily struck with her beauty. She was not deaf then, but shortly afterwards she had a violent attack