Aubrey

“ Aubrey is in his thirty-fourth year; and inherits the mental qualities of both his parents—the demeanor and person of his father. He has a reserve which is not cynical, but only diffident; yet it gives him, at least at first sight, and till you have become familiar with his features, which are of a cast at once refined and aristocratic, yet full of goodness—an air of hauteur, which is very—very far from his real nature. He has in truth the soft heart and benignant temper of his mother, joined with the masculine firmness of character which belonged to his father ”

“ Aubrey's strong spirit, set to stern labour for so long, and trained to toil with but scant peace for reward, now sprang up as it were to its full height of capability and resolution,—yet its power was tempered with that tender humility which, in a noble-hearted man, bends before the presence of the woman whose love for him shall make her sacred. ”

“ Aubrey—one (how idle and childish would have been the attempt!) by no means perfect, yet with very high qualities. He was a man of noble simplicity of character, generous, confiding, sincere, affectionate: possessing a profound sense of religion, really influencing his conduct in life; an intellect of a superior order, of a practical turn, of a masculine strength—as had been evidenced by his successful academical career, his thorough mastery of some of the most important and difficult branches of human knowledge, and by his aptitude for public business. ”

“ We owe to Aubrey a world of anecdote that but for his idleness would have been lost. He has the quickest eye for the odd humours and tricks of thought and gesture which distinguish one man from another. ”

“ Even the gods fall out—drift apart.
Aubrey and the O’Myre go different ways—Aubrey in pain that O’Myre has now discovered that there is no great work of art without a moral purpose—Aubrey holding that Aubrey himself is sufficient purpose. He, Aubrey, avers that he has found himself—nothing matters after that. He must back to Paris. There the women have secular lips and voices of brocade and understand being loved. ”

“ Now, Aubrey, what is thy wish?”
“I would like to be a rich king,” said he. “Were I a fairy queen, Aubrey, I would not give thee thy wish: for thou couldst scarce make a worser. ‘They that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare,’ and they that seek power be little behind them. ‘Godliness is great riches,’ lad, ‘if a man be content with that he hath.’”
“Methinks, Aunt, that is one of your favourite texts,” remarked Edith.
“Ay,” said she, “it is. ‘Enough is as good as a feast.’ Hans, ’tis thy turn.” ”

“ Aubrey's forte is certainly veneration. His first class of human beings is a large one, though quizzing is his ordinary form of adoration. For instance, he teases Mab and her devoted slave some degrees more than the victim can bear, and then relieves his feelings in my room by asseverations that the friendship with Leonard will be on the May and Spencer pattern. The sea is the elixir of life to both; Leonard looks quite himself again, "only more so," and Aubrey has a glow never seen since his full moon visage waned, and not all tan, though we are on the high road to be coffee-berries. ”

“ Therefore came there up to him a messenger from Heaven, with trouble and affliction in his countenance, telling him to descend from the happy solitude of his high mountain, into the dismal hubbub and conflict in the plain beneath. He came down with humility and awe, and with reverent resignation; and was—instantly surrounded!—
A weak man would have been confused and stunned, and so sunk helpless into the leaden arms of despair. But it was not so with Aubrey. ”

“ Good husbands, good fathers, good brothers, and idolised landlords, are plenty enough; but a man who, like Aubrey, is all these put together, is indeed a scarce article; the more so, as he is also a profound scholar, and an honest statesman. In short, though pretty well versed in the paragons of virtue that belong to the drama, we find this Charles Aubrey to be the veriest angel that ever wore black trousers and pumps. ”

“ But Aubrey had in truth grown quite conscious of the fact that this capricious little woman, with her alternate fits of cold shyness and madly high spirits, who could parry his nonsense with nonsense just as wild one moment, and the next hold her own in a serious discussion, had a charm for him which made all other women seem insipid in his eyes. ”

“ Aubrey had constant exercise for an active and vigorous mind, in the acquisition of the learning of a noble profession, the practice of which might possibly hereafter raise all of them to even affluence and distinction—at all events, might secure them the substantial comforts of life. But he would have moments of heaviness and trepidation. ”

“ The worthy doctor has poured old Mrs. Aubrey's, and young Mrs. Aubrey's, and Kate's glass full up to the brim:—"Our next Christmas!" quoth he, cheerily elevating his glass.
Yes, your next Christmas! The vigilant eye of Dr. Tatham alone perceived a faint change of color in Mr. Aubrey's cheek as the words were uttered; and his eye wandered for an instant, as if tracing across the room the image of old blind Bess; but 'twas gone in a moment; Aubrey was soon in much higher spirits than usual. Well he might be. How could man be placed in happier circumstances than he was? ”

“ Oh! your civility is the prettiest invention possible for dislike! Aubrey and I were inseparable, and we both gained by the intercourse. I grew more gentle, and he more masculine; and, for my part, the kindness of his temper so softened the satire of mine that I learned at last to smile full as often as to sneer.
The Abbe had obtained a wonderful hold over Aubrey; he had made the poor boy think so much of the next world, that he had lost all relish for this. He lived in a perpetual fear of offence: he was like a chemist of conscience, and weighed minutiae by scruples. ”

“ Aubrey," commenced Gammon, with a bland and subdued air, not fulsome, but extremely deferential, "before entering on any business which may have brought you here, to express deep and sincere sympathy with your sufferings, and my personal regret at the share we have had in the proceedings which have ended so adversely for your interests? But our duty as professional men, Mr. Aubrey, is often as plain as painful!"
"I feel obliged, sir," said Mr. Aubrey, with a sigh, "for your kind expressions of sympathy—but I cannot for a moment conceive any apology necessary. ”

“ Aubrey is calm and gentlemanlike; in person he is rather above the middle height, and of slight make. From the way in which his clothes hang about him, a certain sharpness at his shoulders catching the eye of an observer—you would feel an anxiety about his health, which would be increased by hearing of the mortality in his family ”

“ Aubrey, that Miss St. Clair consented to become the wife of a man, who, to this hour, loves her with all the passionate ardor with which she had first inspired him. And richly she deserves his love! She does, indeed, dote upon him; she studies, or rather, perhaps, anticipates his every wish; in short, had the whole sex been searched for one calculated to make happy the morbidly fastidious Aubrey, the choice must surely have fallen on Miss St. Clair; a woman whose temper, whose tastes, and whose manners were at once in delicate and harmonizing unison and contrast with his own. ”

“ Notwithstanding the vigilance of Sir Aubrey to keep his son out of view, the memory of princes, like those of other men, may be sometimes equally faithful. If Sir Aubrey was held in the confidential friendship of the King, his son was not obliterated from the flattering recollections of the Prince, then heir-apparent to the Crown, in reverting to those times when the young Aubrey, with others of his age, sons of the nobility attached to the Court, lent their aid to heighten the pleasure of his juvenile exercises. ”

“ Sir Aubrey De Brooke, the father of the General, possessed sentiments and principles wholly opposed to those of his son. In proportion as the former, worldly and aspiring, mounted, by degrees, the high summit of fame, the latter, however amiable in temper, yet indiscreet and volatile, sunk, in the same gradual succession, into obscurity.
Sir Aubrey, early in life, married an heiress, well knowing that ambition tends only to disappointment and mortification, unless it meets with encouragement and assistance from fortune. ”

“ But that which, above all other circumstances, conspired to alienate the affections of Sir Aubrey from his son, was his total aversion to a match he had set his mind upon, between the youthful Aubrey and a woman of high birth, an heiress, but counting nearly double his years. ”

“ Aubrey at the mantelpiece, gazing at himself in the mirror, said simply:
“Bosh!”
“Rather a dramatic situation when you come to think of it, eh?” said Fluffy Reubens, lolling his full length in the easy-chair.
Rippley, his hands in his trousers pockets, considered the situation with reflective eye fixed on the carpet:
“And a rippin’ dramatic emotion, eh! To feel one’s self being wrangled about from one end of the country to the other——”
Aubrey turned languidly from the mirror:
“Ah!” said he, “and then to listen to it all, robed in the delightful invisible cloak of pseudonymity!” ”

“ Something of sternness on the one hand, and of satire on the other, has mingled so long with my better feelings that the taint and the stream have become inseparable. Do not sigh, Aubrey. To be unamiable is not to be ungrateful; and I shall not love you the less if I have but a few objects to love. You ask me my inducement to leave you. ‘The World’ will be sufficient answer. I cannot share your contempt of it, nor your fear. I am, and have been of late, consumed with a thirst,—eager, and burning, and unquenchable: it is ambition!”
“Oh, Morton!” ”

“ Aubrey continuing highly excited—Gammon gazing at him with unfeigned amazement. The paper which he held in his hand rustled, and he was obliged to lay it down on his lap, lest Mr. Aubrey should notice this evidence of his agitation.
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"I am guilty of great weakness, sir," said at length Mr. Aubrey—his excitement only a little abated. He stood erect, and spoke with stern precision; "but you, perhaps unconsciously, provoked the display of it. Sir, I am ruined; I am a beggar: we are all ruined; we are all beggars: it is the ordering of God, and I bow to it. ”

“ But who would bear it with the calm fortitude which you have already evinced, my dear Aubrey?"
[Pg 10]
"You speak very kindly, Lord De la Zouch; I trust I shall play the man, now that the time for playing a man's part has come," said Mr. Aubrey, with an air of mingled melancholy and resolution. "I feel an inexpressible consolation in the reflection, that I cannot charge myself with anything unconscientious; and, as for the future, I put my trust in God. ”

“ Aubrey felt ashamed and mortified at himself, and conceived an admiration of the dignified forbearance of Gammon, which quickly heightened into respect for his general character as it appeared to Aubrey, and fervent gratitude for the disposition which he had evinced, from first to last, so disinterestedly to serve a ruined man. ”

“ Come in with me! Let us talk freely with one another; for, as iron sharpeneth iron, so doth the countenance of a man his friend. Is it not so?"
"It is indeed, my dear doctor," replied Mr. Aubrey, suddenly softened by the affectionate simplicity of the doctor's manner. How much the good doctor was shocked by the communication which Mr. Aubrey presently made to him, the reader may easily imagine. He even shed tears, on beholding the forced calmness with which Mr. Aubrey depicted the gloomy prospect that was before him. ”

“ The sun which was rising upon Titmouse was setting upon the Aubreys. Dear, delightful—now too dear, now too delightful—Yatton! the shades of evening are descending upon thee, and thy virtuous but afflicted occupants, who, early on the morrow, quit thee forever. Approach silently you conservatory. Behold, in the midst of it, the dark slight figure of a lady, solitary, motionless, in melancholy attitude—her hands clasped before her: it is Miss Aubrey. Her face is beautiful, but grief is in her eye ”

“ Aubrey, whose constancy at once strengthened and encouraged his partners in affliction, with many expressions of sincere and confident piety and resignation reminded them that they were in the hands of God, who intended all earthly suffering—however unaccountable—however harsh and apparently undeserved its infliction—to contribute infallibly to the ultimate benefit of His children. ”

“ According to Aubrey, 'his manner of study was thus: he wore a long quilt cap, which came two or three inches at least over his eyes, which served him as an umbrella to defend his eyes from the light; about every three hours his man was to bring him a roll and a pot of ale to refocillate his wasted spirits: so he studied and drank, and munched some bread ”

“ Lady Aubrey changed colour—‘Are you sure there are no others lurking near the house?’
“‘I have seen none, my lady.’
“‘Well, let her come,’ said Lady Aubrey: ‘but do you, Andrews, stay near.’ The old man soon returned, followed by the slight and almost shadowy form of the gipsy girl. The next instant Julia had sprung to her neck. Keziah looked timidly towards Lady Aubrey as if doubting whether she might venture to return the grateful child’s caresses; but the moist eyes and kindly smile that met her glance encouraged her, and kissing Julia’s forehead and hands, she burst into a flood of tears. ”