CHAPTER V. Here is one that wishes to live longer,- BEN JONSON. WHEN Sir Frederick Brashleigh received Rodney's answer to his proposal, (which we too well know contained an acceptance of it,) he forthwith began to prepare for his matrimonial expedition. He was to sail for India the ensuing month; he had much public business to transact at the Horse Guards, and at the India House; oaths to take in Leadenhall street; dinners to eat in Bishopsgate street, and arrangements to make in various parts of the town and country; considering all which, as well as his present age, he was induced to believe he had not much time to lose. His first operation was to transmit to Miss Rodney a splendid cadeau, consisting of a diamond necklace and ear-rings, together with a variety of trinkets, as ill suited to her present condition as necessary to the station she was about to fill; and with these evidences of affection he despatched a letter to the young lady, in which he suggested that it would be extremely agreeable to his family, if after his visit to her father, she and her mother were to come up to London, where the necessary purchases for her marriage and voyage must of course be made. Mrs. Brashleigh, his daughter-in-law, would be delighted to see them in York Place, and as Mr. Rodney's vacation would very soon occur, it might altogether be made an agreeable party previous to their de parture from England. It would be difficult to express the placid indifference with which the poor victim herself received all these tributes of praise and affection. The calm determination not to allow herself to reason, or indeed think upon the subject, and the steady adherence to her resolution, not to recur to any matter with which her adored Francis was connected or associated in her mind, were proofs of firmness little to be expected in a girl like Fanny, full of feeling, ardour and enthusiasm; but so it was, she suffered her parents to direct and regulate all her actions, she surrendered herself completely into their hands, and while Rodney was filled with admiration at her pious resignation to the noble sacrifice he knew that she was making at the shrine of filial duty, her mother kept praising her for being such a good girl, and hoping that nothing would happen to make her miserable, which she was very much afraid there might, &c. &c. &c. Meanwhile Sir Frederick was occupied in divulging his intentions to his own relations, who were overpowered with astonishment at his choice, and accordingly resolved, if he persisted in putting his desperate intentions into execution, to do every thing in their power to harass, annoy, vex, and mortify the rural beauty; for they were convinced that she had by trickery and artifice ensnared his affections, and would, perhaps, by the same means eventually divert his property into a new channel, for, to all the sanguine prognostications that he would have no family, a probability that there might be children, (which it must be confessed commonly exists in all such marriages,) opposed itself in the fertile imaginations of his expectant and presumptive heirs. In short nothing could be more dreadful than the prospect before poor Fanny; and if she had not, with the piety and philosophy which I have already noticed, and which were perfectly astonishing even to herself, wholly excluded from her mind all consideration of the approaching event, she would have started back, even now, on the eve of marriage, as from the edge of a precipice; while, as if to add to her future miseries. the humble ness of her rank, and her father's reported want of wealth, were assigned by the connexions of the gallant general, as the true and only causes of her acceptance of his offer. Before they saw her, they had learned to speak of her with that contempt which is justly incurred by women sufficiently base and mean to prostitute themselves, legally, to age and decrepitude for the sake of money. Little did these envious flatterers of Sir Frederick's family know the real state of the case, when they indulged in their sarcasms and scurrilities, their libels and lampoons. So soon as the proposal of a removal to town after the gallant general's visit to the academy was made, Fanny referred it, as she had referred all other measures connected with the expected ceremony, to her father; he was not a little puzzled; he saw the advantages, if not the absolute necessity of her visiting the metropolis ; and saw too the impossibility of her going alone with her future husband; but he dreaded considerably the exhibition of his excellent and exemplary wife in the semi-fashionable circles of Saint Mary-la-bonne, of which the gallant general (thereunto addicted by his Indian habits,) was the hero. He anticipated the blunders she would inevitably make in the great world, and trembled as he thought of the homely expressions and frugal notions, which he was convinced would come into play in mixed society, with an effect the very reverse of that which it would be desirable to produce: in addition to which difficulty, there arose another;-it was an essential part of such an affair to raise a sum of money, as an outfit for Fanny. Where was it to come from? It was utterly impossible to confide a detail of the delicate state of his finances to Sir Frederick, on the eve of such a ceremony, and his poetical mind was dreadfully harassed with contending hopes and fears, desires and doubts, in none of which he could make his better half a participator, inasmuch as he wished them to remain secret, which, were they once entrusted to her safe keeping, he was quite certain they would shortly cease to be. 66 At length he came to a resolution, often formed by greater and wiser men than himself, in cases of nicety and difficulty, which was neither more nor less, than to wait and see" what would turn up for the best. Of Sir Frederick's visit there could be no doubt; that was fixed for the following Friday, and therefore he directed his daughter, in announcing the acceptance of the old gentleman's presents, to say that she had referred the question of her journey to London to her father, who had thought it best to postpone the decision until they had the pleasure of seeing Sir Frederick there: and all this Fanny said, and wrote as mechanically as a clerk in a lawyer's office, and with a callosity of feeling, as impenetrable as if she had not been in the smallest degree concerned or interested in any of the results; not a tear dimmed her eye, not a sigh heaved her bosom,-nature seemed palsied in her living frame, and she sat like an automaton, whose movements were involuntary, and the result of some extraneous power and influence. No sooner had Mrs. Rodney been to call at Evans's about the mutton, and stepped to Miss Wilkinson's to inquire after her health, than the great mystery of Fanny's approaching nuptials became no mystery at all; even the butcher's boys knew it; and great and frequent were the visitations of the neighbours to inquire, and talk the matter over: and when it was ascertained that Sir Frederick was to pass some few days at the Academy, the Rev. Mr. Willows, the rector, called upon Rodney, for the second time in his life, to hope that the family would dine at the parsonage-house on the following Saturday, for the first time in their lives; to state that he would himself wait upon Sir Frederick as soon as he arrived, and beg the honour of his company and Mrs. Ewbright, the wife of a retired lawyer, who had built a small upright villa just outside the village, with a round weedy pond, looking like a basin of green pease soup upon a circular lawn (closely resembling a card table,) in front of it, with a flight of steps leading up to its door, upon which there was a brass knocker, and I believe a plate with the owner's name; dropped in to solicit the pleasure of the Rodneys' company on the next Tuesday, and hoped that Sir Frederick would honour her by joining them; and immediately after having quitted the Academy, the same exemplary lady called upon Miss Wilkinson to avow her hatred and contempt of great folks, whom, for her part, she could not endure; but what was to be done? there were "certain duties to be performed in certain stations of life," she had been obliged to receive Sir Frederick at dinner on Tuesday, as a mark of attention to the Rodneys, who were really very good sort of people.-"Would Miss Wilkinson come over in the evening and play a rubber?" Miss Wilkinson, who languished for tufts, and who had never been in company with any thing superior to a small cross of Maria Theresa, or an ungazetted commandery of Poyais, was afraid that her cold would prevent her going out late in the evening; but finding that her manœuvre failed, and that Mrs. Ewbright would not have her at dinner, she at length declared her intention of meeting the great man, about whom as much fuss was made in the little village, as if he had been Signor Rossini, or the Autocrat of all the Russias. Things went on much in the same feverish manner until Friday, and Fanny's deportment was precisely the same as it had been during the earlier part of the week. Except when alone with her father, neither sigh nor tear gave evidence of her feelings. She was still pale, cold, and still apparently senseless to every thing which was doing; and while Mrs. Rodney was praising her sweet disposition, and the perfect serenity with which she received such an accession of wealth and honour, her agitated father, whose heart in truth bled for her, and whose sorrow at her present state was augmented by the repentance of his own past conduct, saw that which, by the superficial spectator, passed unheeded: a forced smile would for a moment play over his child's pale cheeks, like the doubtful gleam of a winter's sun upon the drifted snow; but to Rodney's feelings the ray was cold and cheerless, and as the days passed until that arrived |