Miss Lavinia

“ Between them they have slain all talk that can be possible at such a moment. Incapable of thought, her brain a caldron of boiling miseries, Lavinia sets one foot before the other, plodding blindly on; while Rupert—she has never possessed the plate-glass window into his soul, which he has always had into hers, so that what memories, projects, torments, occupy his mind during that last half-hour she never knows. ”

“ He then informed her of the ardor of his affection, and urged his suit with such address, that the heart of Lavinia almost resisted the voice of prudence and duty. But the conflict was to be but short, as the impetuous youth would hear of no postponement. Lavinia discarded him; but not without candidly acknowledging, that his want of true morality, proper sobriety and religion, (facts long suspected, but recently ascertained beyond a doubt,) had induced her to relinquish the hand of the only man she had ever loved. ”

“ To explain the undue prominence given to Miss Lavinia, it should be stated that she is an old and intimate friend of the compiler of this frivolous work; and therefore her views on all subjects, though less valuable, were easier to obtain than those of the younger and more interesting shawl-strappists. ”

“ Lavinia assents with a motion of the head, quite as emphatic as her former asseveration of Mr. Prince’s sufferings.
“And if I had not told you”—answering the accusation of disloyalty brought by herself against herself, with as much defensive exasperation as if it had been proffered by her companion—“Féo would have done so herself! She sees nothing to be ashamed of. She glories in it!” ”

“ Often since she has grown up into sense and thoughtfulness, Lavinia has speculated about that dim lady, of whom no one now ever speaks—all others because they have forgotten her, and one concerning whom no one knows wherefore he is silent—speculated whether in her lifetime she had had as much buffer-work to do as has fallen to Lavinia herself, and whether, not being of so robust a constitution of mind or body, it had ended by killing her. For Lavinia is, and for several years past has been, before all things, a buffer. ”

“ How deep is Lavinia’s thankfulness that Miss Prince’s ignorance of this irregular interview saves her from the awful necessity of at once accounting for and relating it. She reaches her own room, trembling and unstrung. So complete has been her fidelity to Rupert, unconscious of the unusual in its absoluteness, that no man has ever before kissed even her hand, the hand which is so often a wicket-gate leading to the palace of the lips. ”

“ With what but the awe and pity of her silence can Lavinia answer an outburst so heart-rending? Several minutes elapse before she dares to hesitate her small attempt at solace.
“Do we go quite for nothing? You have us left! We may not be much, but we are something!” ”

“ Harry sat in a window-seat with Eliza Brooks and listened, and talked between the songs, and always the talk turned upon the fair Lavinia Creevy, although at last Eliza spoke of Isabel Done. “How the young men cluster about her! It is like bees around a cherry blossom,” said she.
Harry gave a start and a quick frown, and looked at the cousin whose fair head gleamed dully among her swarm of admiring swains. Then his face relaxed as Eliza spoke again of the fair Lavinia. ”

“ Of course it is Miss Prince—Miss Prince come to surprise Lavinia in her utter dishevelment of soul, though the habit of a lifetime keeps her unnerved body in its simple raiment neat and dainty—come to verify the staring facts that sleep has mocked her; that hope has bid her an eternal good-bye; that her despair is beyond the depth that any leaded line can plumb; that she is wretched and guilty beyond the sin-and-sorrow compass of any woful malefactor since the world began ”

“ But when Isabel spoke he considered that no doubt the fair Lavinia had a voice to the full as sweet and low, and as full of maidenly dignity as hers, He glanced at Isabel's delicate little hands, and knew for certain that Lavinia's would not be one whit less delicate and taper-fingered, and he thought that Lavinia, who doubtless had a fine taste for the adorning of such a lovely person as hers, must of a surety possess a canary-colored silk gown. ”

“ After courting her for two years, after compromising her as much as it is possible to compromise a young lady,—which is not a very easy thing to do in blessed Albion,—after causing her to reject some most eligible offers, you dropped her to run after an Italian singer, who certainly did not deserve the honor of inspiring such perfidy. Tell me, was not Lavinia clever and pretty? was she not the daughter of a Portuguese banker, a Jew to be sure, but very rich? was she not a good match? didn't she love you to distraction? ”

“ Here was not one of Lavinia's lisping, painted puppy-dogs, for in spite of the effeminate curls, it was easy to see that this man had character and a will of his own, and, above all, a great charm of manner. He saw Lavinia blush and rap the Captain's knuckles in answer to some remark, and his heart sank. He rose and came to meet them.
Lady Lavinia smiled sweetly upon him, and patted his arm with a possessive little air.
"Dicky dear, I have found an old friend—a very old friend! Is it not agreeable? Captain Lovelace—Mr. Carstares." ”

“ I love Lavinia more than all the world. DEMETRIUS. Youngling, learn thou to make some meaner choice: Lavina is thine elder brother's hope. AARON. Why, are ye mad, or know ye not in Rome How furious and impatient they be, And cannot brook competitors in love? I tell you, lords, you do but plot your deaths By this device. CHIRON. Aaron, a thousand deaths Would I propose to achieve her whom I love. AARON. To achieve her- how? DEMETRIUS. Why mak'st thou it so strange? She is a woman, therefore may be woo'd; She is a woman, therefore may be won; She is Lavinia, therefore must be lov'd. ”

“ Presently she slipped away — although Harry gazed ruefully after her, for he wished to hear more of the fair Lavinia — and sought her brother. He was about to seek Isabel Done, but he turned at his sister's touch on his arm. “John, John,” whispered Eliza, “find me some one save that youth, some one who has not so much fancy and sharper eyes. I have not worn my best gown for nothing, nor my gold chain. I will not be looked past for Lavinia.” ”

“ Then, with an upbraiding accent, that escapes him against his will, “Why should we talk about her, poor soul?”
“Why not?” she answers. “What else is there to talk about? There is nothing else.”
The words, extravagant as they are, represent to Lavinia the exact truth. He! She! There is nothing else in God’s universe; and before both him and her stands the prohibitory angel, the flame of whose waved sword blinds them to all creation also. ”

“ Lavinia accompanies her young friends to the door into the churchyard, as a sort of consolation stakes for the flatness of their visit.
“I never saw Rupert in bed before!” says Daphne, with a sort of awed interest.
“Do you think he looks quite as nice as darling Captain Binning did?” lisps little Serena, stealing an insinuating hand into Lavinia’s palm.
“Do not be silly!” cries Phillida, who of late has shown faint symptoms of a slightly inaccurate knowledge of good and evil. “Nobody looks nice in bed; they are not meant to!” ”

“ She runs off nodding; and Lavinia, much more slowly, takes her way home through the churchyard.
She feels as if some one—surely it cannot be the gentle friend made up of sense, sympathy, and esprit?—has given her a blow on the head with a cudgel. She has always known that she is to marry Rupert. The idea is perfectly familiar, and not the least unwelcome. To be his wife in the future is as inevitable a part of the scheme of life as to die. ”

“ Her friend accompanies her to the gate, hatless, and having got rid of the children by a slight gesture of dismissal, instantly obeyed, despite the bite of February’s still bitter tooth, that makes the winter aconites in the grass sink their round yellow heads chillily into their green capes, she loiters even when the limit of the Rectory demesne is reached; and Lavinia knows that she has something difficult of utterance to say to her. ”

“ Lavinia as certainly is sitting over the fire alone—alone, like herself—but, unlike herself, with no nursery-ful of kissed children, no dear, pompous devoted husband so filling the vacant chambers of her heart, that absence means but a keener sense of their beloved presence. The telling her own riches strikes the rector’s wife with a generous compunction, almost a feeling of guilt towards her friend in her cold heart-poverty.
“If I had only hung up a stocking for her!” she cries inwardly; and then derides herself for the puerility of the thought. ”

“ Lavinia’s eye follows the direction her uncle’s has taken. The Kentish landscape, with its rustic smile is nearly as dear, though not as melancholy, to her as to him. The idea of living in any other surroundings is as unfamiliar to her as the wish. “The thing that hath been shall be.” To go on living and doing for her men—since there are now only two left, she must make the most of them—what other fate has ever occurred to her as possible? For as long as she can remember the thought of what she herself would like has been always subordinated to the wishes, divined or expressed, of her menkind. ”

“ Lavinia has spoken accurately. The pleasant spot in which their agility has landed her and her companion is not a wood. It is merely one of those low green tangles of hazel and maybush, sapling chestnut, and gnarly willow, whose woof is nowhere too thick to let in a thrifty shower of temperate sunbeams; and through the woof of whose carpet the blue hyacinth dye runs dim and rich. A path not wide enough to admit of any couple save a lover-pair walking abreast, girdles the little sheet of water at quiet play with its dancing flies and leaping fish and placidly oaring moorhens. ”

“ Yet Sir George looks at her askance.
“Ready!” he repeats distrustfully. “A man, if he has any pluck, may be ready to go to the gallows!”
Lavinia makes a face between a laugh and a frown.
“Choose your own words,” she says, the habit of a lifetime controlling and smoothing away any outward expression of impatience.
But he will not let her off. “Are you glad to marry him? Do you feel that it is essential to your happiness?” he asks, pressing home his inquiries with a persistency that he imagines to be conscientious, but which she feels to be cruel and perverse. ”

“ ‘Affection,’ said Miss Lavinia, glancing at her sister for corroboration, which she gave in the form of a little nod to every clause, ‘mature affection, homage, devotion, does not easily express itself. Its voice is low. It is modest and retiring, it lies in ambush, waits and waits. ”

“ There is a safe publicity and generality in the emotion it evokes; and Lavinia, hurling billets of wood on to the bonfire, and being exhorted, directed, and scolded by Binning, leaning on the top of his staff, which he ultimately, in the excitement of the moment, throws in too, is in far less peril than Lavinia chokingly reading aloud to its recipient the little paragraph which announces that he is among those to whom the Victoria Cross is to be awarded. She struggles through the small naked record of his achievement. ”

“ At ten o'clock, I will be at Lady Lavinia's door on horseback, holding your palfrey and ready to hand you your rein, exactly as our big William used to do at the theatre, when he was reduced to playing the jockey, the great man! Come, Lionel, here's your portmanteau, a white cravat, and some wax for your moustache. Patience! Oh! such negligence! such apathy! Can you think of such a thing, my dear fellow, as appearing carelessly dressed before a woman you no longer love? ”

“ My dear Lavinia!"
She laughed at his haughty tone.
"You've not always been so nice, Tracy! But what of your Diana? An you are so infatuated, you had best wed her."
"Why, so I think."
Lady Lavinia gasped.
"Tracy! You do not mean it? Goodness me, but a marriage!"
"Why not, Lavinia?"
"Oh, a respectable married man, forsooth! And how long will the passion last?"
"I cannot be expected to foretell that, surely? I hope, for ever."
"And you'll tie yourself up for the sake of one chit? Lud!"
"I can conceive a worse fate for a man."
"Can you? Well, tell me more! 'Tis monstrous exciting. ”

“ Lionel was preparing to persist obstinately in his entreaties, when Pepa entered hurriedly.
"Monsieur le Comte de Morangy insists upon coming in," she said to her mistress, in Portuguese. "He is at the door, he won't listen to a word——"
"Ah! great heaven!" cried Lavinia, ingenuously, in English; "he is so jealous! What am I to do with you, Lionel?"
Lionel stood as if struck by lightning.
"Show him in," said Lavinia, hastily, to the negress. "And do you"—to Sir Lionel—"go out on the balcony. It is a magnificent night; you can wait there five minutes, to do me a favor." ”

“ But the days pass, fall into the ordered routine of habit, and Rupert does not speak, does not say the one thing for which Lavinia listens day and night—the one thing whose utterance can keep her sane. It is not her fault that there is any interruption day or night to her listening; and, while forced away for necessary food, there is but one thought in her mind—the thought that he may speak, and she not be by to hear! ”

“ Jane Lavinia smiled radiantly into the little cracked glass. Just then she was pretty, with the glow on her cheeks and the sparkle in her eyes. Her uncertainly tinted hair and an all-too-certain little tilt of her nose no longer troubled her. Such things did not matter; nobody would mind them in a successful artist. ”