CHAPTER IX.

Violante's first evening at the Lansmeres, had seemed happier to her than the first evening, under the same roof, had done to Helen. True that she missed her father much--Jemima somewhat; but she so identified her father's cause with Harley, that she had a sort of vague feeling that it was to promote that cause that she was on this visit to Harley's parents. And the Countess, it must be owned, was more emphatically cordial to her than she had ever yet been to Captain Digby's orphan. But perhaps the real difference in the heart of either girl was this, that Helen felt awe of Lady Lansmere, and Violante felt only love for Lord L'Estrange's mother. Violante, too, was one of those persons whom a reserved and formal person, like the Countess, "can get on with," as the phrase goes. Not so poor little Helen--so shy herself, and so hard to coax into more than gentle monosyllables. And Lady Lansmere's favorite talk was always of Harley. Helen had listened to such talk with respect and interest. Violante listened to it with inquisitive eagerness--with blushing delight. The mother's heart noticed the distinction between the two, and no wonder that the heart moved more to Violante than to Helen. Lord Lansmere, too, like most gentlemen of his age, clumped all young ladies together, as a harmless, amiable, but singularly stupid class of the genus-Petticoat, meant to look pretty, play the piano, and talk to each other about frocks and sweethearts. Therefore this animated, dazzling creature, with her infinite variety of look and play of mind, took him by surprise, charmed him into attention, and warmed him into gallantry. Helen sat in her quiet corner, at her work, sometimes listening with mournful, though certainly unenvious, admiration at Violante's vivid, yet ever unconscious, eloquence of word and thought--sometimes plunged deep into her own secret meditations. And all the while the work went on the same, under the small noiseless fingers. This was one of Helen's habits that irritated the nerves of Lady Lansmere. She despised young ladies who were fond of work. She did not comprehend how often it is the resource of the sweet womanly mind, not from want of thought, but from the silence and the depth of it. Violante was surprised, and perhaps disappointed, that Harley had left the house before dinner, and did not return all the evening. But Lady Lansmere, in making excuse for his absence, on the plea of engagements, found so good an opportunity to talk of his ways in general--of his rare promise in boyhood--of her regret at the inaction of his maturity--of her hope to see him yet do justice to his natural powers, that Violante almost ceased to miss him.

And when Lady Lansmere conducted her to her room, and kissing her cheek tenderly, said, "But you are just the person Harley admires--just the person to rouse him from melancholy dreams, of which his wild humors are now but the vain disguise"--Violante crossed her arms on her bosom, and her bright eyes, deepened into tenderness, seemed to ask, "He melancholy--and why?"

On leaving Violante's room, Lady Lansmere paused before the door of Helen's; and, after musing a little while, entered softly.

Helen had dismissed her maid; and, at the moment Lady Lansmere entered, she was kneeling at the foot of the bed, her hands clasped before her face.

Her form, thus seen, looked so youthful and childlike--the attitude itself was so holy and so touching, that the proud and cold expression on Lady Lansmere's face changed. She shaded the light involuntarily, and seated herself in silence, that she might not disturb the act of prayer.

When Helen rose, she was startled to see the Countess seated by the fire; and hastily drew her hand across her eyes. She had been weeping.

Lady Lansmere did not, however, turn to observe those traces of tears, which Helen feared were too visible. The Countess was too absorbed in her own thoughts; and as Helen timidly approached, she said--still with her eyes on the clear low fire--"I beg your pardon, Miss Digby, for my intrusion; but my son has left it to me to prepare Lord Lansmere to learn the offer you have done Harley the honor to accept. I have not yet spoken to my lord; it may be days before I find a fitting occasion to do so; meanwhile, I feel assured that your sense of propriety will make you agree with me, that it is due to Lord L'Estrange's father, that strangers should not learn arrangements of such moment in his family, before his own consent be obtained."

Here the Countess came to a full pause; and poor Helen, finding herself called upon for some reply to this chilling speech, stammered out, scarce audibly--

"Certainly, madam, I never dreamed of--"

"That is right, my dear," interrupted Lady Lansmere, rising suddenly, and as if greatly relieved. "I could not doubt your superiority to ordinary girls of your age, with whom these matters are never secret for a moment. Therefore, of course, you will not mention, at present, what has passed between you and Harley, to any of the friends with whom you may correspond."

"I have no correspondents--no friends, Lady Lansmere," said Helen, deprecatingly, and trying hard not to cry.

"I am very glad to hear it, my dear; young ladies never should have. Friends, especially friends who correspond, are the worst enemies they can have. Good night, Miss Digby. I need not add, by the way, that, though we are bound to show all kindness to this young Italian lady, still she is wholly unconnected with our family; and you will be as prudent with her as you would have been with your correspondents--had you had the misfortune to have any."

Lady Lansmere said the last words with a smile, and pressed a reluctant kiss (the step-mother's kiss) on Helen's bended brow. She then left the room, and Helen sat on the seat vacated by the stately unloving form, and again covered her face with her hands, and again wept. But when she rose at last, and the light fell upon her face, that soft face was sad indeed, but serene--serene, as if with some inward sense of duty--sad, as with the resignation which accepts patience instead of hope.

FOOTNOTES:

[21] Continued from page 411.

[22] Translation of _Charron on Wisdom_. By G. Stanhope, D.D., late Dean of Canterbury (1729). A translation remarkable for ease, vigor, and (despite that contempt for the strict rules of grammar, which was common enough amongst writers at the commencement of the last century) for the idiomatic raciness of its English.

From Household Words.

CHOICE SECRETS.

"Light a room with spermaceti, anoint your face with the same substance, and you will seem to all beholders to have the head of a sperm whale upon your shoulders." "When you would have men in the house seem to be without heads: take yellow brimstone with oil, and put it in a lamp and light it, and set it in the midst amongst men, and you shall see a wonder." These are two out of a large mass of facts which form a compact body of ancestral wisdom. They lie before us in a venerable volume, whose grave frontispiece is adorned with the portraitures of Alexis, Albertus Magnus, Dr. Reade, Raymond Lully, Dr. Harvey, Lord Bacon, and Dr. John Wecker. John Wecker, Doctor in Physic, first compiled the book, and Dr. R. Read augmented and enlarged it. "A like work never before was in the English tongue." It was printed in the year 1661, for Simon Miller, at the Starre in St. Paul's Church Yard, and it is entitled, "Eighteen Books of the Secrets of Art and Nature, being the Summe and Substance of Naturall Philosophy, Methodically Digested." The book is one of considerable size and pretension, written by wise doctors in the good old time, two hundred years ago. Let us not be conceited and harp only on the strings provided to our fingers in the nineteenth century. For a few minutes, at least, it will not do us harm to get a little scientific information from our ancestors. We shall glean, therefore, some random facts out of the harvest-field of Doctors Mead and Wecker, selecting, of course, most characteristic, those which our forefathers may call exclusively their own.

The volume opens with scientific information on the subject of Angels and Devils, including, of course, the fact that "Witches kill children, and divers cattle, which we find by various experience, and by relation of others that are worthy to be believed. But if you will say they are mere delusions of the Devil, whereby he makes foolish women mad that are entangled by him, that they believe they do those things which neither they nor the devil can do; if we can so avoid it, we may as well deny any thing else, be it never so evident. "--If you deny that, you may deny any thing--is a phrase not yet dead. Applied two hundred years ago to the experience concerning witches, it has been industriously employed to the present day, and is employed still on behalf of a great many fresh delusions. As for the gentleman, whom truth is said to shame, he claimed his distinct chapter in the minds of old physicians, because, as the book before us has it, he "can cause many diseases, of the reasons whereof we are ignorant. Also he can do this, or that; being subtile, he can easily pass through all parts of the body, which he can bind, pull back, or torment otherwise."

Passing on now, as we follow the march of high philosophy, to secrets of the sun and moon; it may be worth while to understand, as our forefathers taught, that "it is easie to guess at the fortune of every year by the stars, if a man consider twelve, nineteen, eight, four, and thirty." Somebody wants to know what luck he will have in 1853. Let him consider 1841 (twelve years back), let him consider 1834 (nineteen years back), and, for the eight, four, thirty, let him look back to the years 1845, 1849, and 1823. Let him reflect on the nature of his fortune in each of those years, look up his old diaries, combine their results, and that will give him the character of his fate in 1853. Jupiter is somehow at the bottom of this, but we are too modern and ignorant to understand the author's explanation.

Among secrets concerning fire, are those two facts connected with spermaceti and brimstone already stated. Any one living in the country, whom the croaking of the frogs may trouble of a night, will doubtless be glad to hear of a remedy: "Take the fat of a crocodile, and make it up with wax while in the sun, and make a candle of it, and light it in the place where frogs are, and when they see that they will presently cease crying." Where crocodile's fat cannot be had, "the fat of a dolphin" will do. Prescriptions abound, by the use of which men may appear to wear the heads of asses, horses, dogs, or to resemble elephants. There is a receipt also for making "a faire light, that the house may seem all full of serpents so long as the wick doth burn." But we pass over these pleasant methods of illumination, simply remarking, that if our wise ancestors were right, the volume now before us would procure a sudden fortune to the lessees of Vauxhall. By the use of some dozen kinds of cunningly prepared lamps, the Royal Gardens might in good faith be chronicled in its bills as a "scene of enchantment." At one turn of a walk, all visitors would show their heads, and at another, none; in another grove they would be elephants, and in another they would look like angels. The Rotunda might be lighted for a diabolical effect, and the Dark Walk illuminated brilliantly with dolphin's fat, funeral cloth and Azemat, whose light makes every body invisible. This, again, is no bad hint for a country tallow-chandler, who supplies light to the ladies of a solemn village, where he is annoyed by the neglect of any gayeties that would create large orders for composite or sperm: "_To make women rejoice mightily._ Make candles of the fat of hares, and light them, and let them stand awhile in the middle where women are: they will not be so merry as to dance; yet sometimes that falls out also."

"It is a wonder that some report how that the tooth of a badger, or his left foot bound to a man's right arm will strengthen the memory." Boys, who have lessons to learn, may like to know that fact; and teachers, who have idle pupils, must not flog, but feed them upon cresses. "Cresses eaten make a man industrious." Young ladies, who believe in their ancestors, will thank us for repeating their opinion that the use of a ring, which was lain for a certain time in a sparrow's nest, will procure love. Nor need any dread the penalties of matrimony, since the man who carries with him a hartshorn "shall alwaies have peace with his wife:" and also, "the heart of a male quail, carried by the man, and the heart of a female quail, by the woman, will cause that no quarrels can ever arise between them." The man who carries a quail's heart in his pocket may face his wife, and never have to feel his own heart quailing underneath his ribs.

Old Parr dined probably upon serpents, not, as is commonly reported, upon pills. "It is known that stags renew their age by eating serpents; so the phoenix is restored by the nest of spices shee makes to burn in. The pelican hath the same virtue, whose right foot, if it be put under hot dung, after three months a pelican will be bred from it. Wherefore some physicians, with some confections, made of a viper and hellebore, and of some of the flesh of these creatures, do promise to restore youth, and sometimes they do it." If the Zoological Society has proper respect for our ancestors, they will not delay to sow a hot-bed with pelicans' feet. Young shoots of pelican would be much more appropriate beside the gravel-walks than your mere vegetable pelargonium.

In the way of practice of medicine, we moderns say that any thing like scientific principles, on which one can depend, have only been attained in our own lifetime. "Doctors differed," and bumped against each other, only because all alike were feeling through the dark. In our own day there is light enough to keep doctors from differing very grossly,--gross difference springing generally more from the want of knowledge in an individual, than in the profession generally. Although there is yet a vast deal to be learned. In the first century, Asclepiades dubbed the medical system of Hippocrates, "a cold meditation of death." Under Nero there arose a Dr. Thessalus, who taught that Nature was the guide to follow and obey in all diseases; and, therefore, under his system patients were simply to be liberally and rapidly supplied with every thing they fancied. Paracelsus, in the sixteenth century, looked for a patient's symptoms in the stars; so we must not be surprised if the "Secrets in Physic and Surgery," published among the other secrets in this volume now before us, contain odd information. Here is a nice cure for a quartan ague, which might tickle a patient's stomach sooner than his fancy: "Seven wig-lice of the bed, wrapped in a great grape husk, and swallowed down alive before the fit." Another cure is effected when the patient eats the parings of his nails and toes, mingled with wax. There are many remedies against the Plague; but that one which is recommended as "_The Best Thing against the Plague_," is for a man to wash his mouth with vinegar and water before he goes out, drinking also a spoonful of the liquor; then to press his nose and stop his breath, so that "by the vapor and steam held in your mouth, the brain be moistened." In the following prescription we believe entirely: "_For Melancholy._ It is no small remedy to cure melancholy, to rub your body all over with nettles."