Born to a considerable fortune, though with a narrow capacity, Sir Marmaduke had persuaded himself, that to make the tour of Europe, and to become a connoisseur in all the arts, was the same thing; and, as he was rich, and, therefore, able to make himself friends, civil, and therefore never addicted to make enemies, no one felt tempted, either by sincerity or severity, to undeceive him; and, as all he essentially wanted, for the character to which he thought himself elevated, was 'spirit, taste, and sense,' he uttered his opinions upon whatever he saw, or heard, without the smallest suspicion, that the assiduity with which he visited, or the wealth with which he purchased, works of art, included not every requisite for their appreciation. Yet though, from never provoking, he never encountered, that foe to the happy feelings of inborn presumption, truth, he felt sometimes embarrassed, when suddenly called upon to pronounce an opinion on any abtruse point of taste. He was always, therefore, watchful to catch hints from the dashing Miss Arbe, since to whatever she gave her fearless sanction, he saw fashion attached.
Nothing could be more different than the reception given to Ellis by Lady Kendover, and that which she experienced from the Miss Crawleys. Without any superiority to their brother in understanding, they had a decided inferiority in education and manners. They had been brought up by a fond uncle, in the country, with every false indulgence which can lead to idle ease and pleasure, for the passing moment; but which teems with that weariness, that a dearth of all rational employment nurses up for the listless and uncultured, when folly and ignorance out-live mere thoughtless merriment. Accustomed to follow, in every thing, the uncontrolled bent of their own humours, they felt fatigued by the very word decorum; and thought themselves oppressed by any representation of what was due to propriety. Their brother, on the contrary, taking the opposite extreme, had neither care nor wish but what related to the opinion of the virtuosi: because, though possessed of whatever could give pecuniary, he was destitute of all that could inspire mental independence.
'Oh ho! The Ellis!' cried Miss Crawley, mimicking her brother: 'you are come to be our school-mistress, are you? Quick, quick, Di; put on your dumpish face, and begin your task.'
'Be quiet, be quiet!' cried Miss Di; 'I shall like to learn of all things. The Ellis shall make me The Crawley. Come, what's to be done, The Ellis? Begin, begin!'
'And finish, finish!' cried the eldest: 'I can't bear to be long about any thing: there's nothing so fogrum.'
Their brother, now, ventured, gently, to caution them not to make use of the word fogrum, which, he assured them, was by no means received in good company.
'O, I hate good company!' cried the eldest: 'It always makes me fall asleep.'
'So do I,' cried the youngest; 'except when I take upon myself to wake it. O! that's the delight of my life! to run wild upon a set of formals, who think one brainless, only because one is not drowsy. Do you know any fogrums of that sort, brother?'
The merriment that this question, which they meant to be personal, occasioned, extremely confused Sir Marmaduke; and his evident consciousness flung them into such immoderate laughter, that the new mistress was forced to desist from all attempt at instruction, till it subsided; which was not till their brother, shrugging his shoulders, with shame and mortification, left the room.
Yawning, then, with exhausted spirits, they desired to be set to work.
Proficiency they had no chance, for they had no wish to make; but Ellis, from this time, attended them twice a-week; and Sir Marmaduke was gratified by the assurances of Miss Arbe, that all the world praised his taste, for choosing them so accomplished an instructress.
The fourth scholar that the same patronage procured for Ellis, was a little girl of eleven years of age, whose mother, Lady Arramede, the nearly ruined widow of a gamester peer, sacrificed every comfort to retain the equipage, and the establishment, that she had enjoyed during the life of her luxurious lord. Her table, except when she had company, was never quite sufficient for her family; her dress, except when she visited, was always old, mended, and out of fashion; and the education of her daughter, though destined to be of the first order, was extracted, in common with her gala dinners, and gala ornaments, from these daily savings. Ellis, therefore, from the very moderate price at which Miss Arbe, for the purpose of obliging her own various friends, had fixed her instructions, was a treasure to Lady Arramede; who had never before so completely found, what she was always indefatigably seeking, a professor not more cheap than fashionable.
On the part of the professor, the satisfaction was not quite mutual. Lady Arramede, reduced by her great expences in public, to the most miserable parsimony in private, joined, to a lofty desire of high consideration in the world, a constant alarm lest her pecuniary difficulties should be perceived. The low terms, therefore, upon which Ellis taught, though the real inducement for her being employed, urged the most arrogant reception of the young instructress, in the apprehension that she might, else, suspect the motive to her admission; and the instant that she entered the room, her little pupil was hurried to the instrument, that she might not presume to imagine it possible, that she could remain in the presence of her ladyship, even for a moment, except to be professionally occupied.
Yet was she by no means more niggardly in bestowing favour, than rapacious in seeking advantage. Her thoughts were constantly employed in forming interrogatories for obtaining musical information, by which her daughter might profit in the absence of the mistress; though she made them without troubling herself to raise her eyes, except when she did not comprehend the answer; and then, her look was of so haughty a character, that she seemed rather to be demanding satisfaction than explication.
The same address, also, accompanied her desire to hear the pieces, which her daughter began learning, performed by the mistress: she never made this request till the given hour was more than passed; and made it then rather as if she were issuing a command, for the execution of some acknowledged duty, than calling forth talents, or occupying time, upon which she could only from courtesy have any claim.
Miss Brinville, the fifth pupil of Ellis, was a celebrated beauty, who had wasted her bloom in a perpetual search of admiration; and lost her prime, without suspecting that it was gone, in vain and ambitious difficulties of choice. Yet her charms, however faded and changed, still, by candle-light, or when adroitly shaded, through a becoming skill in the arrangement of her head-dress, appeared nearly in their first lustre; and in this view it was that they were always present to herself; though, by the world, the altered complexion, sunk eyes, and enlarged features, exhibited by day-light, or by common attire, were all, except through impertinent retrospection, that were any more noticed.
She was just arrived at Brighthelmstone, with her mother, upon a visit to an acquaintance, whom that lady had engaged to invite them, with a design of meeting Sir Lyell Sycamore, a splendid young baronet, with whom Miss Brinville had lately danced at a private ball; where, as he saw her for the first time, and saw her to every advantage which well chosen attire, animated vanity, and propitious wax-light could give, he had fallen desperately enamoured of her beauty; and had so vehemently lamented having promised to join a party to Brighthelmstone, that both the mother and the daughter concluded, that they had only to find a decent pretence for following him, to secure the prostration of his title and fortune at their feet. And though similar expectations, from gentlemen of similar birth and estate, had already, at least fifty times, been disappointed, they were just as sanguine, in the present instance, as if, new to the world, and inexperienced in its ways, they were now receiving their first lessons, upon the fallaciousness of self-appreciation: so slight is the impression made, even where our false judgment is self-detected, by wounds to our vanity! and so elastic is the re-bound of that hope, which originates in our personal estimation of our deserts!
The young Baronet, indeed, no sooner heard of the arrival at Brighthelmstone of the fair one who had enchanted him, than, wild with rapture, he devoted all his soul to expected extacies. But when, the next morning, fine and frosty, though severely cold, he met her upon the Steyn, her complexion and her features were so different to those yet resting, in full beauty, upon his memory, that he looked at her with a surprise mingled with a species of indignation, as at a caricature of herself.
Miss Brinville, though too unconscious of her own double appearance to develope what passed in his mind, was struck and mortified by his change of manner. The bleak winds which blew sharply from the sea, giving nearly its own blue-green hue to her skin, while all that it bestowed of the carnation's more vivid glow, visited the feature which they least become, but which seems always the favourite wintry hot-bed of the ruddy tints; in completing what to the young Baronet seemed an entire metamorphosis, drove him fairly from the field. The wondering heroine was left in a consternation that usefully, however disagreeably, might have whispered to her some of those cruel truths which are always buzzing around faded beauties, missing no ears but their own! had she not been hurried, by her mother, into a milliner's shop, to make some preparations for a ball to which she was invited for the evening. There, again, she saw the Baronet, to whose astonished sight she appeared with all her first allurements. Again he danced with her, again was captivated; and again the next morning recovered his liberty. Yet Miss Brinville made no progress in self-perception: his changes were attributed to caprice or fickleness; and her desire grew but more urgent to fix her wavering conquest.
At the dinner at Lady Kendover's, where Miss Arbe brought forward the talents and the plan of Ellis, such a spirit was raised, to procure scholars amongst the young ladies of fashion then at Brighthelmstone; and it seemed so youthful to become a pupil, that Miss Brinville feared, if left out, she might be considered as too old to enter such lists. Yet her total ignorance of music, and a native dull distaste to all the arts, save the millinery, damped her wishes with want of resolution; till an exclamation of Sir Lyell Sycamore's, that nothing added so much grace to beauty as playing upon the harp, gave her sudden strength and energy, to beg to be set down, by Miss Arbe, as one of the first scholars for her protegée.
Ellis was received by her with civility, but treated with the utmost coldness. The sight of beauty at its height, forced a self-comparison of no exhilarating nature; and, much as she built upon informing Sir Lyell of her lessons, she desired nothing less than shewing him from whom they were received. To sit at the harp so as to justify the assertion of the Baronet, became her principal study; and the glass before which she tried her attitudes and motions, told her such flattering tales, that she soon began to think the harp the sweetest instrument in the world, and that to practise it was the most delicious of occupations.
Ellis was too sincere to aid this delusion. Of all her pupils, no one was so utterly hopeless as Miss Brinville, whom she found equally destitute of ear, taste, intelligence, and application. The same direction twenty times repeated, was not better understood than the first moment that it was uttered. Naturally dull, she comprehended nothing that was not familiar to her; and habitually indolent, because brought up to believe that beauty would supply every accomplishment, she had no conception of energy, and not an idea of diligence.
Ellis, whose mind was ardent, and whose integrity was incorrupt, felt an honourable anxiety to fulfil the duties of her new profession, though she had entered upon them merely from motives of distress. She was earnest, therefore, for the improvement of her pupils; and conceived the laudable ambition, to merit what she might earn, by their advancement. And though one amongst them, alone, manifested any genius; in all of them, except Miss Brinville, she saw more of carelessness, or idleness, than of positive, incapacity. But here, the darkness of all musical apprehension was so impenetrable, that not a ray of instruction could make way through it; and Ellis who, though she saw that to study her looks at the instrument was her principal object, had still imagined that to learn music came in for some share in taking lessons upon the harp, finding it utterly vain to try to make her distinguish one note from another, held her own probity called upon to avow her opinion; since she saw herself the only one who could profit from its concealment.
Gently, therefore, and in terms the most delicate that she could select, she communicated her fears to Mrs Brinville, that the talents of Miss Brinville were not of a musical cast.
Mrs Brinville, with a look that said, What infinite impertinence! declared herself extremely obliged by this sincerity; and summoned her daughter to the conference.
Miss Brinville, colouring with the deepest resentment, protested that she was never so well pleased as in hearing plain truth; but each made an inclination of her head, that intimated to Ellis that she might hasten her departure: and the first news that reached her the next morning was, that Miss Brinville had sent for a celebrated and expensive professor, then accidentally at Brighthelmstone, to give her lessons upon the harp.
Miss Arbe, from whom Ellis received this intelligence, was extremely angry with her for the strange, and what she called unheard-of measure that she had taken. 'What had you,' she cried, 'to do with their manner of wasting their money? Every one chooses to throw it away according to his own taste. If rich people have not that privilege, I don't see how they are the better for not being poor.'
The sixth scholar whom Ellis undertook, was sister to Sir Lyell Sycamore. She possessed a real genius for music, though it was so little seconded by industry, that whatever she could not perform without labour or time, she relinquished. Thus, though all she played was executed in a truly fine style, nothing being practised, nothing was finished; and though she could amuse herself, and charm her auditors, with almost every favourite passage that she heard, she could not go through a single piece; could play nothing by book; and hardly knew her notes.
Nevertheless, Ellis found her so far superiour, in musical capacity, to every other pupil that had fallen to her charge, that she conceived a strong desire to make her the fine player that her talents fitted her for becoming.
Her utmost exertions, however, and warmest wishes, were insufficient for this purpose. The genius with which Miss Sycamore was endowed for music, was unallied to any soft harmonies of temper, or of character: she was presumptuous, conceited, and gaily unfeeling. If Ellis pressed her to more attention, she hummed an air, without looking at her; if she remonstrated against her neglect, she suddenly stared at her, though without speaking. She had a haughty indifference about learning; but it was not from an indifference to excel; 'twas from a firm self-opinion, that she excelled already. If she could not deny, that Ellis executed whole pieces, in as masterly a manner as she could herself play only chosen passages, she deemed that a mere mechanical part of the art, which, as a professor, Ellis had been forced to study; and which she herself, therefore, rather held cheap than respected.
Ellis, at first, seriously lamented this wayward spirit, which wasted real talents; but all interest for her pupil soon subsided; and all regret concentrated in having such a scholar to attend; for the manners of Miss Sycamore had an excess of insolence, that rather demanded apathy than philosophy to be supported, by those who were in any degree within her power. Ellis was treated by her with a sort of sprightly defiance, that sometimes seemed to arise from gay derision; at others, from careless haughtiness. Miss Sycamore, who gave little attention to the rumours of her history, saw her but either as a Wanderer, of blighted fortune, and as such looked down upon her with contempt; or as an indigent young woman of singular beauty, and as such, with far less willingness, looked up to her with envy.