thought Edward, as they sought for his book.``I thought it better when we were at Glennaquoich; but certainly the Baron is no great performer, and Shakespeare is worth listening to.''
Romeo and Juliet was selected, and Edward read with taste, feeling, and spirit, several scenes from that play.All the company applauded with their hands, and many with their tears.Flora, to whom the drama was well known, was among the former; Rose, to whom it was altogether new, belonged to the latter class of admirers.``She has more feeling, too,'' said Waverley, internally.
The conversation turning upon the incidents of the play, and upon the characters, Fergus declared that the only one worth naming, as a man of fashion and spirit, was Mercutio.``I could not,'' he said, ``quite follow all his old-fashioned wit, but he must have been a very pretty fellow, according to the ideas of his time.''
``And it was a shame,'' said Ensign Maccombich, who usually followed his Colonel everywhere, ``for that Tibbert, or Taggart, or whatever was his name, to stick him under the other gentleman's arm, while he was redding the fray.''
The ladies, of course, declared loudly in favour of Romeo;but this opinion did not go undisputed.The mistress of the house, and several other ladies, severely reprobated the levity with which the hero transfers his affections from Rosalind to Juliet.Flora remained silent until her opinion was repeatedly requested, and then answered, she thought the circumstance objected to not only reconcilable to nature but such as in the highest degree evinced the art of the poet.``Romep is described,'' said she, ``as a young man, peculiarly susceptible of the softer passions; his love is at first fixed upon a woman who could afford it no return; this he repeatedly tells you,---From love's weak childish bow she lives unharmed;and again,---
She hath forsworn to love.
Now, as it was impossible that Romeo's love, supposing him a reasonable being, could continue to subsist without hope, the poet has, with great art, seized the moment when he was reduced actually to despair, to throw in his way an object more accomplished than her by whom he had been rejected, and who is disposed to repay his attachment.I can scarce conceive a situation more calculated to enhance the ardour of Romeo's affection for Juliet, than his being at once raised by her from the state of drooping melancholy in which he appears first upon the scene, to the ecstatic state in which he exclaims--------------- come what sorrow can, It cannot countervail the exchange of joy That one short moment gives me in her sight.''
``Good, now, Miss Mac-Ivor,'' said a young lady of quality, ``do you mean to cheat us out of our prerogative? will you persuade us love cannot subsist without hope, or that the lover must become fickle if the lady is cruel? O fie! I did not expect such an unsentimental conclusion.''
``A lover, my dear Lady Betty,'' said Flora, ``may, I conceive, persevere in his suit, under very discouraging circumstances.
Affection can (now and then) withstand very severe storms of rigour, but not a long polar frost of downright indifference.
Don't, even with _your_ attractions, try the experiment upon any lover whose faith you value.Love will subsist on wonderfully little hope, but not altogether without it.''
``It will be just like Duncan Mac-Girdie's mare,'' said Evan, ``if your ladyships please; he wanted to use her by degrees to live without meat, and just as he had put her on a straw a-day, the poor thing died!''
Evan's illustration set the company a-laughing, and the discourse took a different turn.Shortly afterwards the party broke up, and Edward returned home, musing on what Flora had said.
``I will love my Rosalind no more,'' said he: ``she has given me a broad enough hint for that; and I will speak to her brother, and resign my suit.But for a Juliet---would it be handsome to interfere with Fergus's pretensions?---though it is impossible they can ever succeed: and should they miscarry, what then?---why then _alors comme alors._'' And with this resolution, of being guided by circumstances, did our hero commit himself to repose.