"I saw her but a moment,And methinks I see her yet,With the wreath of summer flow'rsBeneath her curls of jet."
"I saw her but a moment,And methinks I see her yet,With the wreath of summer flow'rsBeneath her curls of jet."
"I saw her but a moment,
And methinks I see her yet,
With the wreath of summer flow'rs
Beneath her curls of jet."
"That must mean Agnes, for Marion's hair is brown," interrupted Sir Patrick, in a rallying tone, yet his manner betrayed the excited and exaggerated vivacity of one who evidently forced his spirits, endeavoring to banish care by ceasing to think. "Be constant for one entire week, and I shall then think Agnes has achieved a wonder indeed."
"You do me injustice, Dunbar! I must be allowed to beg your pardon! I have not been what is called 'in love' above nine times in my life! Well! you may laugh—anybody can laugh, but I consider that smile of yours exceedingly malicious!"
"When a man is on the ice, you know his best safety is to keep moving," replied Sir Patrick, drily. "People talk of two strings to their bow, De Crespigny, but you are never satisfied under two dozen!"
"Tant mieux et tant pis!As Rosamond says, 'Thou canst not tell yet, how many fathoms deep I am in love;' how concealment is preying on my damask cheek, and what violent heart-quakes I am continually enduring! The girl before last that I died for was my idol for an eternity of three months' duration. I might have continued most deplorably in love yet, if she had not imprudently appeared before me one day in an unbecoming east wind, with considerably more color in her nose than in her cheek!"
"You are the most observant of men, De Crespigny! If you only pass a young lady at full speed on a staircase, you can describe her eyes, complexion, figure, and expression, before I could be certain whether she has one eye or two! But what is this Irish story I heard about you! Some lady with seven brothers, and you threatened to shoot them all that she might become an heiress! What were the particulars?"
"You seem to know more than I do, or anybody else!" replied Captain De Crespigny, hastily tossing off a bumper to conceal his confusion. "There are so many girls whose peace of mind I annihilate, that it is next to impossible for me to remember them, but I can think of nothing now except my cousin Marion, who always promised to be beautiful, and has more than fulfilled her promise. Tell me, Dunbar! when does that pearl come out of the shell?"
"If you please, sir!" said a servant, entering, "the hackney coachman is waiting to be paid seven shillings for bringing Miss Dunbar from Dartmore House!"
"Let him wait all night if he chooses!" replied Sir Patrick, angrily frowning away his footman, "as the Irishman said, 'may he live till I pay him!' Tell the man to come again to-morrow—and next day—and the next—to come back in short, whenever he has nothing else to do! Perhaps in a delirium of generosity I may some day think of paying him."
"At our usual rate of payment, seven shillings from you would be equal to £7!" said Captain De Crespigny, laughing, "let him put it down to your account!"
"Yes! I have already more creditors than pence, therefore one more less can be of no consequence! That fellow of mine is the most officious rascal!—and he begins every sentence the same, 'If you please, sir, the plate-chest has been robbed!' or, 'If you please, sir, the bay mare is dead!' But I am never pleased to pay when it can be avoided, and especially now. This is one of my moneyless days! My banker's bulletins continue unfavorable! I cannot raise another shilling! The handle of the pump is chained. All my relations have made wills in my favor, but not one of them will die! As Falstaff says, 'What money's in my purse? seven groats and twopence!'"
"I shall set up a hackney coach, and drive one myself if it pays so well!" exclaimed Captain De Crespigny indignantly, "What an extortioner the fellow is! up to snuff and a pinch above it! He deserves to be executed!"
"Don't speak of executions in this house! we have had enough of them already," replied Sir Patrick, forcing a laugh that sounded very like a stage laugh. "What brings me here, if I am to be dunned in the very sanctuary by a set of rascally creditors! You can take the hackney coach home, if the man waits a few hours longer, De Crespigny, and pay him off! It would be difficult generally to say which of us is best off for ready money, but as Jeremy Diddler says, 'You don't happen to have such a thing as ten-pence there, have you?'"
"No! I make it a principle never now to patronize the paper currency or bullionca m'est egal. Scotch notes are so atrociously filthy, and gold is too heavy for the pocket. I am hastening as fast as possible to my last shilling! Money is a bore! As for you, Dunbar, if you wished to borrow a glass of water, I shall not be the man to lend it! I would not for worlds be included among your 'rascally creditors!'"
"They beset my door so incessantly the week before we came here," said Sir Patrick, laughing, "that I played the fellows an admirable trick by connecting a strong galvanic battery with the knocker of the door, so that the more angrily they grasped it, the stronger was the shock they received. I sat with Wigton for an hour at the window in perfect fits, when we saw the look of astonishment and terror with which, one after another, they staggered away. One impudent rascal absolutely succeeded in serving a writ on me for £200, but happening to have as much in the house, I thought it best for once to pay him off, and——"
"This is a most remarkable story! almost incredible!" exclaimed Captain De Crespigny, laughing; "not so much your being arrested, for that might happen to any of us, any day, but your having £200 in the house, Dunbar! Excuse me there! I have as much credulity as most people, but you should keep to probabilities!"
"If one could pay people off with golden opinions," observed Sir Patrick conceitedly, "I flatter myself in that case, that all my creditors might be more than satisfied."
"When are those fellows to have their next meeting?"
"I wish we knew, that I might give them a harangue on agricultural distress!" replied Sir Patrick, carelessly plunging his whole hand into his luxuriant hair. "It gives me no scruple to disappoint the shop-keeping world! None whatever! These rascals have not the slightest hesitation in making punctual customers pay their bills twice, therefore it is quite fair that others should not pay at all. I could point out a dozen of my tradespeople who, knowing they risk only a sheet of paper by re-sending their bills a year after they are paid, make a practice of doing so. If the ill-used customer produces a receipt, why then, an angry bow and a sulky apology are all the satisfaction to be got; but if the receipt, by good chance, be lost, then he becomes perfectly cheatable, and no remedy can be had but to pay over again! I have seen the thing happen fifty times, long ago, when I really did sometimes pay my debts, and of course never took the trouble to keep any receipts."
"On such occasions," said Captain De Crespigny, "the offending shopkeeper, when proved in the wrong, should be fined double the amount of his bill, to be expended for the benefit of meritorious men like you and me, Dunbar, who cannot pay once. The sight of every poor man I meet gives me a moral to avoid poverty,coute qui coute; but as for you, Dunbar, prudence and economy are not certainly to be enumerated in the catalogue of your many virtues! As sure as your name is Patrick, if £1000 dropped into your pocket now, it would be squandered with the liberality of a prince before you walked to the next street."
"Most uncommonly true, De Crespigny!" replied Sir Patrick, ringing to order a fresh bottle of claret. "But in these days of bankruptcies, revolutions, robberies, sudden deaths, and murders, the only way to make sure of enjoying my own is, to spend it immediately. In that case there can be no mistake! I long ago discovered that it is impossible to be both merry and wise; therefore give me joy at any price. Happiness is to be bought, like everything else, if people have only the heart to pay for it. In my opinion a long face and a short purse are the two great evils of existence, both to be avoided at the risk of one's life."
"Perfectly unanswerable, Dunbar! Money is the patent sauce for giving a relish to everything! It throws dust in the eyes of all the world, till they can observe none of our faults, and yet see all our perfections magnified and enlarged, as we see them ourselves. Misers make money the end of life, but we make it the only means of enjoying existence; a sure ticket to pleasure of every kind and of every degree!"
"One of these years, De Crespigny, your grave will be dug with a golden spade! You are growing mercenary! But every man living is, in one way or other, deranged about money;—those who have much, hoarding as if their lives depended on amassing another shilling."
"I wish, Dunbar, you would write a treatise on the art of living well, after we have been obliged to calculate that difficult sum in arithmetic, 'take nothing from nothing, and nothing remains!'"
"Why, really, as a shillingless spendthrift, I could say enough to make all of you misers during life; but for my own part, as long as I possess a guinea, the first man who wants it may get the half. Hoarding is the only enjoyment which increases, I am told, with increasing years; but it is the only enjoyment of life I never intend to taste. I mean always to live rich, that I am determined on; and if I die rich, I shall out-hospital every fool who ever left a will, by endowing a 'Dunbar Dispensary for superannuatedbon-vivants!'"
"How well the world would get on if everybody were of your way of thinking!"
"Thinking! my dear fellow—I never think! What do you take me for?"
"For a strange being, certainly, and for my own particular friend. Besides, as the poet beautifully expresses it, in speaking of such friendship as ours:—
"We have lived andlaughedtogether,Through many changing years;We have smiled each other's smiles.And—and paid each other's bills."
"We have lived andlaughedtogether,Through many changing years;We have smiled each other's smiles.And—and paid each other's bills."
"We have lived andlaughedtogether,
Through many changing years;
We have smiled each other's smiles.
And—and paid each other's bills."
"Thank you, De Crespigny! I shall send a file of mine to you to-morrow! Do you remember the memorable hour at old Brownlow's long ago, when my first bright guinea glittered in our hands, while he detained us to enumerate all the various uses it might and ought to be put to. I never forgot his oration—that is to say, I have thought of other things certainly during the intervening ten years; but it has often occurred to me, that if I had, as he proposed, hoarded my treasure till another came, I should have been a miser for life. I did, however, squander it then, with the spirit of a gentleman; and ever since, whenever any one lectures on economy, I put cotton in my ears. Wigton, the wine stands with you!"
"Capital claret this, Dunbar! My uncle Doncaster would not have quarrelled with Crockford, if he had given him such a bottle as this. Claret is certainly the poetry of wine, and I should like to have a cascade of this pouring down my throat all day and every day! Your own importation, I suppose? It does your cellar great credit."
"It has been, at any rate, placed to my credit in Morton's books. I am very fastidious now, and owe it to myself to have the best."
"I can't tell what you may owe to yourself," said Captain De Crespigny, laughingly turning his dark keen eyes on Sir Patrick; "but you certainly owe a great deal to other people."
"Very true, and I owe you a grudge for saying so. I never can forgive myself for not having been born to a larger estate! £50,000 a year would have suited me so much better than my paltry pittance of twenty! These are very hard times! The fellow who supplied this claret might have enjoyed my custom for ten years to come, if he would have waited as long for payment! It is a man's own fault always when he loses my business! The moment he takes to dunning, we part. It is a rule with me, and I told him so. He did not take warning!—actually sent in his account a second time!—a most ungentleman-like thing to do!—an offence I never pardon! So now——"
"He may retire from business at once!" added Captain De Crespigny, filling his glass. "Did I not hear that the house had failed next morning! We all know what your countenance is worth!"
"Three farthings a-year, paid at sight! We should make it a principle to discourage duns; but they do occasionally force their way upon me in some unaccountable manner, like a draught of air through the key-hole, and then I can look as grand and immovable as George the Fourth's statue; but fortune will be in good-humor with us again some day, and take me under her especial patronage, when I shall pay everybody thirty shillings in the pound, and——"
"Hear! hear! and a laugh! as they say in the House of Commons!" exclaimed Lord Wigton. "Well done, Sir Patrick, the Great——"
"The great what? Your speech is a fragment," said Sir Patrick, in his liveliest accents; "besides which, it was an interruption to mine, Wigton; and I intended to have said something particularly amusing, if you had not broken the thread prematurely. It is lost to you for ever now! I am dumb as a flounder; and you may pity all the present company, as they have really missed a very good thing."
"We shall place it to your credit accordingly, Dunbar," said Captain De Crespigny, laughing. "It was rather annoying to have perhaps the only good thing you ever could have said in your life nipped in the bud. I hate sometimes to see a joke of mine standing with its back to the wall, and struggling in vain for existence."
"Dunbar has talked himself into such a fit of parsimony," said Lord Wigton, laughing, "that he is ever economizing his words."
"N'importe," replied Sir Patrick, gaily circulating the bottles. "You are all mistaken, and you particularly, Wigton. I can economize my way up the hill of life as well as any of you, and shall yet live upon an income of nothing per annum. My plan is, to keep only five hunters—to stay but one month at Melton—to feed upon sunshine—to fill my head with the rule of three—in short, to become actually quite a pauper in my style of life; and, if all things else should fail, I can, as a last resource, turn patriot, and subsist upon liberalism and mob-popularity!"
"That sounds vastly prudent and proper, Dunbar; but all I say is, whatever desperate schemes you arrive at in the way of retrenchment, give me the income you spend, rather than the income you have!" replied Captain De Crespigny. "I took a fit of arithmetic one day, and discovered, upon accurate calculation, that scattering £20,000 a-year on an income of ten, gradually drains off the whole!"
"You are a perfect Babbage, my good fellow; but you know I have expectations from three uncles in Australia, and one in the West Indies!"
"Uncles! except the brave old Admiral, you scarcely possess a relation besides myself in the world; but as long as Sir Arthur lives, you have something to be proud of. The only thing I envy you on earth is for being his nephew. I reverence him. I never pass him, hail, rain, or sunshine, without taking off my hat. He is quite a jewel of a man."
"You shall have him very cheap!" replied Sir Patrick, assuming a careless tone, to conceal a great deal of irritation. "What will you bid? I wish he were 'going! going! and gone!' I never knew such an old bore as he is, always interfering about my sisters, and fussing about my debts. The world ought to be entirely peopled with uncles, aunts, and grandmothers, for they all know so much better how to act than anybody else."
"It is setting a very bad example for old people to live very long. My uncle Doncaster took a twenty years' lease of his house in Belgrave Square lately, and told me afterwards, he thought of having the term 'extended' to the period of his natural life! I am sure his life is perfectly supernatural already! What would the old fellow have!"
"Those superannuated people who outlive themselves have nothing else to do but to sit in their arm chairs and find fault! The world is good enough if they would only think so; but all their world-before-the-flood ideas are picked up in a different state of existence from ours. Everything changes in half a century—customs, dress, modes of thinking, notions of honor, ideas of pleasure, habits of society—all are turned upside down; so there can be no use in your uncle or mine prosing about the past and the future. There is neither past nor future in my plans of existence now."
"Why, really, if men would neither look backwards nor forwards, there is scarcely a moment of any man's life which is not very tolerably agreeable. The rule that carries me joyously forward through life, is to make the best of everything. We borrow all our annoyances from anticipation of the future, which often turns out perfectly groundless, or from regret of the past. We cannot alter the stream of events; therefore I am for floating along the tide with my arms folded, and looking neither to the right hand nor to the left."
"Quite right; and take my word for it, that in this little trumpery world of ours, ruined men enjoy the best of it. We have nothing to lose—our estates are managed for us—we care not the toss of a farthing about politics—we have no fear of a reverse—we are always the most liberal of what we have—and in short, it is true enough, that 'menage sans souciis themenage six sous——'"
"I have generally got through all the difficulties of life hitherto with a hop-skip-and-a-jump; so I mean always to keep myself in practice; but after all, Dunbar, money has its merits, and the best profession for a ruined man is to marry an heiress. They always select the greatest roue who makes them an offer! Why do you not propose to Miss Crawford and her £60,000?"
"I never answer questions in the dog-days! My dear fellow! £60,000 would not be a breakfast to me! It would scarcely supply copper-caps to my gun! Besides which, I cannot make a low marriage, and pick money out of the puddle! An heiress at best always seems to me a personification of all my creditors! A person one should marry to please them! but the only thing on earth I would not sell is—myself!"
"Being beyond all price, of course, Dunbar! I am still insufferably bored at Beaujolie Castle to marry that cousin of mine with a purse as long as her nose, and both I believe are miraculous, but we have not met in the memory of man! Perhaps I may some day yet be obliged to welcome gold from whatever pocket it comes, but I am not very impatient to see Miss Howard at the head of my table!"
"My dear fellow! you would be sitting at the bottom of her table, if Miss Howard Smytheson accepted you! It is unlucky that a fairy-like fortune and a fairy-like person are so seldom united in one individual."
"I have no objection to marry for money as soon as they are. Love among the roses would not be in my line at all, but when I see gold in a beautiful enough casket, then 'les beaux yeux de sa casette pour moi!' 'Mammon wins its way, where seraphs might despair!'"
"But if we must choose between them, give me love, and let money take care of itself!"
"Splendidly said! you are growing magnanimous, Dunbar. What has happened to you since we met last? Did I not hear some romantic tale of true love lately, connected with yourself and Granville's pretty sister, Clara! 'a portionless lass wi' a land pedigree!' I vehemently contradicted the whole affair, as Lady Towercliffe's entire story was so very unlike you, but——"
Captain De Crespigny paused suddenly—filled his glass—averted his eye—and pushed the bottles hastily round, for he had observed with astonishment that Sir Patrick's under lip became violently compressed, his white forehead became visibly paler, a bright flash was emitted from his eye, and his agitation became so obvious to every one around, that a deep silence fell over the whole party, which soon after dispersed.
One of the greatest pleasures in life is derived from the unexpectedness of events, without which existence would lose much of its interest, and finding herself thus emancipated from school, settled at home, and relieved from her worst fears respecting Sir Patrick, Marion no sooner escaped from her unexpected glimpse of the jovial party in the dining-room, than, lightly carolling some snatches of a popular song, she flew up stairs the happiest of the happy, to find the scene of Agnes' toilette, whom she discovered at last all joy and flutter at the prospect of a ball at Lady Towercliffe's in the palace.
The softening effect of happiness on stern and rugged natures has been often remarked, but selfishness never slumbers, and the reception Agnes bestowed on Marion partook more of astonishment than of pleasure, and was mingled much more with censure than with approbation. Still, after expressing more wonder than the occasion called for, what could possibly have brought her home, and the most unbounded censure of Mrs. Penfold for her "unjustifiable conduct" in sending her, Agnes, having no one better, or rather no one else to talk to, though not violently delighted at the unexpected meeting, gave some fragments of her attention to Marion, whose deep tender eyes were sparkling with affectionate pleasure on again seeing her sister, while her countenance, from recent agitation, looked like an April face of smiles and tears.
"What a storm in a tea-cup you have had at Mrs. Penfold's! tiresome old cat! I am glad it teased her! Dixon! pin that wreath more to the right:—not quite so far! there!—oh! how perfect!" said Agnes, gazing with exultation at her own extraordinary beauty. "Pat must find out some other school for you, Marion! It would never do to stay idling here! Dixon! never shew me that dress again! Wear it yourself or burn it, but blue always looks vulgar! I have lucky and unlucky gowns! Some in which I meet with all the friends I wish to meet, and dance with all the partners I prefer, but that dress is a happy riddance. I remember once being obliged, when wearing it, to dance three times and go to supper with stupid, tiresome Lord Wigton! Dixon! fetch my bouquet! not that withered old thing, but the one Captain De Crespigny brought me to-night. Fetch it from the drawing-room."
"So that horrid Dixon is still with you!" whispered Marion, as soon as the abigail's last frill disappeared. "I very seldom dislike anybody, Agnes, but she is very odd. There is a strange gleam about her eyes, which look so sharp and penetrating, they have prongs that pierce when they are turned on me."
"Yes!" said Agnes, laughing, "she does sometimes look through me till I feel myself nailed to the wall."
"Moreover, she has such a flattering, fawning, cunning manner, that I wonder you can tolerate her for an hour," continued Marion. "We know so little of her, too, that she is like a person fallen from the clouds!"
"Oh! there you are wrong, for Lady Towercliffe says she is 'a perfect treasure!' Consider, too, what low terms she accepts, merely from her desire to serve me! I never saw a creature so preternaturally anxious to be taken, and now, after two years' practice, she really is excellent. Do you remember at the time I engaged Dixon, what a perfect romance her history was! Pat did not believe a word of it; but to do her justice, she made it very entertaining. I hope, at least, the greater part was founded on fact!"
"Why does she wear widow's weeds,—she did not mention at first having ever been married!"
"No more she did! how strangely beautiful she looks in them, like the abbess of a convent! Her husband, if ever she had one, which I doubt, is said to have died, abroad, and her only wish is never to see strangers. Pat insists she has had someaffaire du cœur, but I tell him it must positively have been with old Sir Arthur, for she started so visibly one day long ago, and became redder than red, when I said he was coming to dinner."
Seeing Agnes in so unusually gracious and communicative a mood, Marion ventured now to inquire into the state of her brother's affairs, saying, she supposed he must inevitably sell his estate, go abroad, or retrench, as the expedient of planting half-pence, to grow into guineas, had not yet been brought to perfection, even by Sir Patrick, though it had so long been a subject of wonder how he contrived to get on.
"This has been a horrid business!" exclaimed Agnes peevishly; "as for Pat himself, he will do very well! Trust him for taking care of that. He has always money enough and to spare for his own amusement, though sometimes he would hardly even pay the postage of a letter to save my life. Only think of his bringing me here, out of everybody's way, during the most beautiful years of my existence! Our friends will scarcely imagine that I think it worth chair hire to travel from this burying-place to the inhabited world! What can one do. We shall give some quadrille parties ourselves, but scarcely a living soul is within reach except the Towercliffes, and those odious Granvilles!"
"The Granvilles!" exclaimed Marion, in a blaze of joy and astonishment; "dear Clara! is she here."
"Yes; but she cuts this house entirely, and we are hardly on speaking terms, therefore let me beg you not to attempt any violent missyish, boarding-school friendships in that quarter. I cannot enter into particulars, but rest assured that the less you see of Clara the better for me,—and the better, too, for Patrick. Never, for your life, mention her name before him."
"Why?" asked Marion with a look of bewildered disappointment. "Agnes, I cannot give up Clara Granville!"
"Perhaps, then, she may give you up! She abhors the whole family now! If I must not veto her without rendering a reason, let me tell you that there is a very awkward pecuniary quarrel between Mr. Granville, Pat, and Mr. De Crespigny. It is merely one of their madcap tricks, but extremely annoying. You have often heard Sir Arthur tell of three Yorkshire baronets, who signed a mutual contract sixty years ago, that the first of them who married should forfeit £10,000 to both the others."
"Yes; and not one of them ever ventured to dispose of himself at so great a sacrifice."
"Well! some years afterwards, the subject was discussed one day in public conclave, at the Harrowgate ordinary, and what should the late Mr. Granville do, in company with Major De Crespigny and our father, but, like a set of madmen, as they must have been at the moment, drew up, for a frolic, precisely such an agreement for themselves, which they signed and sealed, making some of the 150 strangers present act as witnesses. The whole affair had been long forgotten, when Mr. Granville married some fright of a girl, all nose and freckles, merely because of her being amiable, or some such whim. She lived long enough to make saints of the whole family, and died after her son and daughter were only a few years old."
"Then how is your quarrel with Clara tacked on to this affair, I cannot quite trace the connexion."
"Why! Pat has been very angry at Mr. Granville lately about some unexplainable affront; so, having accidentally found the old Harrowgate document, and being very hard up for money, he and Captain De Crespigny are threatening to levy the fine of £10,000 due to each of them, and poor Mr. Granville is, as you may suppose, rather indignant, having been all his life stringing halfpence together, to pay off his father's debts, though no one could legally oblige him. As Pat says, 'more fool he!' You know our brother's favorite expression of contempt is, to describe any one as 'the sort of man who would lock up his money!'"
"What a shocking affair!" exclaimed Marion, coloring with shame and indignation. "As uncle Arthur says, Patrick would do anything for money short of a highway robbery! Surely, Agnes, he cannot be in earnest."
"Pshaw! never mind being amiable now," replied Agnes impatiently; "we need not act to empty benches! I am already aware that you, Marion, are on the exact pattern of what Mrs. Hannah Moore would bespeak to order for a sister or daughter; but with all you learn at school, pray learn to keep that goodyism out of sight, for I can fancy nothing more intolerable than a young lady turned out on the model of those horrid sententious books, filled with advice to young ladies. Mrs. Ellis writes to the 'Women of England,' but she luckily leaves the 'Women of Scotland,' to their own devices, without troubling us to be exorbitantly amiable."
"I shall be in no hurry to see Clara now!" continued Marion, dejectedly. "I suppose Patrick will be cut by all gentlemen for such unjustifiable conduct."
"Oh dear, no! Nobody is ever cut for anything now as long as he has money! I can scarcely tell the thing upon earth, except cheating at cards, that a man of £10,000 a-year may not do, and yet be as well received as ever,—and ladies ditto! Any woman who can afford a court plume, and many even who cannot afford, may fit on her ostrich feathers, and go to court with as proud a step and as lofty a carriage, as either you or I. Your uncle, Sir Arthur, complains that there is no such as 'moral indignation' in the world now, and so much the better. What good would it do to anybody? If a gentleman once gets into a fashionable club, he is made for life, and may ever afterwards defy the world to look askance at him."
"Then nobody takes any notice of Patrick's affairs?" asked Marion doubtfully.
"No; except uncle Arthur, who makes himself quite absurd about them; refuses to dine here; turns his back on Patrick at the club, in a most un-uncle-like manner; and performs all sorts of antics to testify his annoyance; but we are both rather glad he no longer comes prosing to this house, and that we need never enter his. The Admiral is a fitter companion for those old pictures round the wall than for us. Do not look at me with that hair-standing-on end expression! I can't help what Patrick does, and you will soon get accustomed to such things."
"Oh no, never! I hope never! but Patrick cannot surely push that claim in earnest against the Granvilles. He will refund the money, will he not, Agnes?"
"Perhaps, when all his other creditors are paid off. Now spare the whites of your eyes, and do not look at me as if I had five heads, but pray attend to my injunction, and avoid Clara, who is only fit to be a saint in a niche at her brother's chapel. You may know her at any distance now by her five-year-old dresses and country-cousin bonnets. Richard Granville has taken orders at last, and become a most superb preacher. In short, the Granvilles are good, worthy, dull, respectable people as ever lived, though the very last upon earth that would suit us."
"Do you mean to be severe, Agnes? I hope you are mistaken!" replied Marion, humbled and depressed by all she had heard. "I have sometimes felt, when with Clara, as if goodness were infectious, and never hear of any people better than myself without wishing at least to be in the same room with them."
"Take my word for it, Marion, these enormously good, sagacious persons are better to look at than to converse with. They may be admired at a distance, but the greater the distance the better; and pray never set-up in that line yourself, as nothing is more unpopular. Clara invited me, when we first arrived here, to one of her tea parties! some horrid Granville-ish affair, I have no doubt! But I knew my own value better than to go. Fancy me, Agnes Dunbar, at a good party!"
"I hope you might not be so very much out of place, Agnes!" replied Marion, with an arch and pretty smile. "Whenever I give 'good parties' you shall be the very first person invited!"
"Then take my apology now,—previously engaged! Indeed, I may perhaps consider myself an engaged person in every sense, Marion. Captain De Crespigny has already almost proposed several times, and makes no secret of his attachment. Oh, never mind Dixon! She knows who sent me this bouquet and all about it. Captain De Crespigny tells me he has planted all my favorite flowers at Kilmarnock Abbey, and often says what a resource they will hereafter become to me! Here are all the letters of my name grouped together, Anemone, Geranium, Narcissus, Everlasting, and Sweet William."
"Very ingenious," observed Marion, smiling.
"I promised not to mention whose device it was; therefore, Marion, as I am exceedingly particular about keeping my word, if any one guesses where I got this, remember to recollect that I did not tell. But, Dixon, what is the meaning of this? the geranium is broken and these flowers are so withered, they have not surely been in water."
When Marion looked accidentally at Dixon, she was startled to perceive that a mortal paleness had overspread her features, which bore a strange bewildered expression, while her hand, in which she held the flowers, trembled visibly, but she said nothing, and Agnes, in the triumphant gaiety of her spirits, rattled heedlessly on.
"One of the rooms at Beaujolie Castle, which Captain De Crespigny already calls 'myboudoir,' opens into a conservatory filled with rare exotics, but he says I shall be the brightest flower of the whole, though never born to blush unseen, if he can help it! How very droll he is, paying compliments often that would make one feel beautiful for a year. He said this morning, when Patrick complained of the room being hot, that he wished I would fan it with my eyelashes, and asked for one of them to wear as a feather in his Highland bonnet! Yesterday, when I showed Captain De Crespigny this new pearl hoop, he said I spoiled the symmetry of my hand with rings, as there was not a jewel in the world fit for me to wear, and only one ring that ought ever to be placed here! You should have seen his sentimental look on the occasion, which might have done for twenty proposals!"
"One would have been enough," said Marion, smiling.
"What he said was quite sufficiently explicit, and I only wish he would appear a little more diffident, as his look was most provoking self-satisfied, when he added, 'how fortunate will be the happy man who places a ring on that finger!' When speaking of the Admiral, too, he always now calls him 'uncle Arthur!' and yesterday, at taking leave, he said in his half jocular, half serious tone, 'I shall live upon the Bridge of Sighs till we meet again!'"
"Then, pray, let him stay here till he is a little less confident," replied Marion, laughing. "You should teach diffidence in three lessons, Agnes; he has no right to seem sure of success till he has obtained your consent point blank. You have many admirers to choose among."
"Squadrons of admirers, but not so many lovers as you think, Marion! The race of marrying men is becoming extinct in the world, so I must not be severely discouraging to poor diffident Captain De Crespigny, who has been setting his mustachios at me so long. Your notions about keeping people in suspense are quite of the old school, when ladies used all to be upon stilts, but 'nous avons change tout cela.'"
"I am sorry for it. We should all have been born when Sir Arthur was, and I wish everybody were like him."
"Spectacles, grey hair, and all! Thank you, Marion, but I am not particular, and feel quite satisfied to be a contemporary of Captain De Crespigny. If you could but have heard him this morning when he sang the 'Pirate's Serenade,'" said Agnes, warbling the words to herself,
"This night, or never, my bride thou shalt be."
While Agnes continued singingsotto vocefor some minutes, her whole heart and thoughts occupied with agreeable retrospections, the eye of Marion again accidentally wandered towards Dixon, and she was startled out of a reverie into something almost approaching alarm, by observing her attitude and expression. With features as pale and rigid as those of a corpse, she gazed at Agnes, and there was an intensity in her look perfectly unaccountable, while a dazzling and terrible light glittered in her eyes. Marion with difficulty suppressed an exclamation of astonishment, when she perceived the extraordinary change in Dixon's countenance, but with a private resolution to watch more narrowly than before, what such evident agitation could mean, she determined as yet to make no remark, but allowed Agnes to rattle on undisturbed, while her own thoughts were filled with perplexity and surprise.
"Yesterday, Marion, Captain De Crespigny actually made me read over with him that proposal scene in the new novel, 'Matrimonial Felicity.' I nearly died of confusion when he doubled down the page, saying, he hoped this was not the last time we should study it together. The story has but one fault, that the hero makes rather a low marriage, and of that Captain De Crespigny expressed an utter abhorrence. I remember ages ago, his making me laugh so excessively with a description of some school-boy attachment he had in Yorkshire. Such a burlesque upon love! It was exquisite! The silver thimbles and wall-flowers he presented to a fair damsel in prunella shoes, and no gloves, while hisgages d'amourwere accompanied with verses borrowed from the Irish Melodies, and passed off as his own. I forgot always to ask what became of the poor deluded girl at last—probably married before this time to some fat farmer or thriving shopkeeper, but for my own part, the misery of an unrequited attachment is what I never can know. Captain De Crespigny really is the only person one could possibly have fancied."
A loud and startling crash at this moment interrupted Agnes' delightful reminiscences. Marion instinctively sprang from her seat with alarm, and looked hastily round, when she perceived that Dixon had tripped over and thrown down a table covered with china ornaments, on which Miss Dunbar had frequently squandered half her income, even at times when she could scarcely afford a dress. The etiquette being now established that all young ladies, of whatever means, shall cultivate a passion for china and hot-house plants, Agnes had made a collection of second-rate vases and third-rate tea cups, interspersed with stunted hyacinths and drooping camellias, at so great an expense that Sir Patrick often recommended her to take a wing of the bazaar and sell off all her trumpery again. The whole assortment now lay in fragments on the floor, while Agnes delivered herself up to agonies of lamentation, scolding, and wondering, over the ruin of her hoarded treasures, while she pointed out with consternation how nearly the table had fallen with its edge upon her own foot, which might have lamed her for life. The "fall of china" is a proverbial trial of temper, and that of Agnes did not prove on this occasion invulnerable, while the epithets, "awkward wretch!" and "stupid idiot!" were audibly lavished on the offending abigail.
Marion appeared exclusively occupied in gathering up the scattered fragments of china, and arranging them together, but her eye was secretly observing Dixon, the strange wild expression of whose features filled her with indefinite apprehension. In her countenance there gleamed, certainly, for an instant, a dark smile of malignant satisfaction. Marion felt sure that it was so. Could the poor creature's mind be shipwrecked? Was she insane? Her look had become fierce and haggard, her forehead of a deadly paleness, and when she caught the eye of Marion earnestly fixed upon her, she started up, with a frown of angry defiance, and hurried out of the room.
"This is a most calamitous catastrophe!" exclaimed Agnes, disconsolately. "How could Dixon be so intolerably stupid?"
"Are you quite certain it proceeded from stupidity? The accident is altogether very strange," observed Marion, going close up to her sister, and relating all she had observed during that evening in the very lowest whisper, for Marion felt a nervous consciousness that Dixon was not far off, and might attempt to overhear them. A stealthy step was heard on the stair after she concluded, but Marion, thoroughly engrossed with the subject, reiterated once more her conviction that there had been something more than common in the manner of Dixon, whom she advised Agnes to watch very carefully, if she did not part with her soon.
"You were always prejudiced against Dixon, poor stupid fool that she is, Marion. I wish I had sent her adrift before she broke all the china, but it is very unlike you to be so severe! How can you fancy the creature did it on purpose? That is too bad, when you might have seen how ghastly pale she became!"
"I did see, Agnes! and that makes me wonder only the more! No one ever looked like that surely, for breaking a few china gewgaws!"
"Marion! speak respectfully of my treasures! But you are in a most censorious mood this evening: very different from common, when you are generally a knight-errant in all our conversations, defending everybody. But nothing pleases you to-night. My admirer first, then my maid, my china, and even Patrick, who certainly behaved exceedingly ill to-day, in not asking me to preside at his party. The pretext was, that we had no chaperon, but I had the greatest mind, in a fit of offended dignity, to leave his house."
"Your dignity would have been rather put out of countenance, by having to borrow my carriage if you did go!" said Sir Patrick, who had laughingly entered the room unobserved. "Lady Towercliffe may perhaps receive you in time for her six o'clock breakfast to-morrow morning, Agnes, but unless you make more haste, the supper and dancing will be quite out of the question. Past twelve o'clock, and a rainy night!"
Sir Patrick was a good-natured, selfish man, willing that everybody should be happy, provided it put him to no personal inconvenience, and when Marion took this opportunity to explain the circumstances of her very unexpected return, he merely bestowed a contemptuous whistle on the description of Mrs. Penfold's wrath, laughed at Marion's evident anxiety about his embarrassments, and then desired her to set about being happy at home the best way she could, as he thought she might make the rest of her life a holiday now. "And," added he, in his usual gay rallying tone, "forget for ever all your grievances at Mrs. Penfold's, or rather, Mrs. Tenfold's, on account of the breadth of her person and the length of her bills!"
Sir Patrick, like most men who are gifted with more head than heart, disbelieved in all such generous emotions and exalted affections as he had not himself experienced. With a lively defiance of received opinions, his vivacity was unchecked by the fear of giving pain or of causing offence, being perfectly reckless on that score, provided only he could enliven the dull routine of ordinary society. Marion's mingled expression of shyness and animation, her light laughter and ardent feelings, were refreshing to a mind so hackneyed as his, and though he often checked her sensitive spirit in its full flow of affectionate confidence, by a retort courteous, or rather discourteous, he was nevertheless vain of the admiration she invariably excited, and read, in the eyes of others, the value he ought to place on her beauty and talents.
Agnes' whole mind was so frothed over with folly, and encrusted with selfishness, that unless the wheel of fortune touched upon her personal comforts, she was as impervious to all external impressions as a tortoise beneath the shell, and it was a useless waste of generous sentiments and kind emotions, whenever the heart of Marion was laid open to her. Agnes, who had long since adopted a company manner, and even a company voice, persuaded herself that Marion also had very cleverly "got up" a character on some imaginary model of excellence, which she acted over to the very life. It seemed to her a naked certainty that the refinement and delicacy natural to Marion's mind were in reality artificial; and though the radiance of her intellect, and the sensibility of her eye, were but in harmony with her actions, all testifying disinterested self-denial and invariable affection, still Agnes convinced herself that Marion lived "for effect."
If Marion ever acted a part at all, it was only in concealing from those who might have ridiculed her, the unfathomable depth of her feelings, since she might as well have asked for sympathy from an ice-berg as from Agnes. Knowing that every evidence of sensibility would be received with scepticism, she silently and hopefully waited till some scope might be afforded her for testifying that all which she might have wished to profess was nothing to what she would do or suffer for those she loved; and if ever Marion repined at any one circumstance in her lot, it was, that she might perhaps pass through life unknown to those she loved the best, because she dared not express, even by a few insignificant words, that affectionate attachment to Agnes and Sir Patrick, which she would have thought any sacrifice a pleasure, to evince in its full and heartfelt measure.
One privilege of friendship Marion enjoyed in unbounded measure with both her brother and sister. She became the usual depositary of their many grievances and disappointments. Marion had the art,—or rather the instinct, for to her all art was unknown,—of listening in perfection. If Agnes received a dress from her London milliner which did not fit, or if Sir Patrick did not obtain an invitation to some jovial party which he had expected to enliven, Marion became of immediate importance. The annoyance he felt on such occasions could scarcely be exceeded—the death of his nearest relation, or of all his relations together, would have been nothing to it; but Marion could always administer some gentle anodyne to the irritated sufferer, and displayed a wonderful ingenuity in turning up the best side of everything, for the advantage and comfort of others. Nothing melted Marion's heart so entirely as to see Sir Patrick for a moment depressed, as the very pride and haughtiness of his spirit rendered it, in her estimation, the more affecting when he seemed at all subdued, and on the evening of Lady Towercliffe's ball, she could not but fancy, before he set off with Agnes, that there was a forced vivacity in his spirits which she had never perceived before, and that the tone of his voice had a melancholy modulation when he bid her good night, accompanied by an unusual degree of kindness, always the very worst indication of Sir Patrick's spirits, the consciousness of which, and a thousand conjectures respecting its cause and extent, dismissed her to bed with an anxious mind and a prayer, even more fervent than usual, for his happiness.
In one house, Marion was understood and loved as she wished to be, and all her young enthusiasm found its best refuge and welcome in the aged heart of Sir Arthur, who felt refreshed and cheered by the companionship of thoughts and feelings as fresh and natural as the flowers in spring, while they reminded him of the time when his own had been as buoyant and untrodden, as hopeful and gay, as full of kind intentions and generous wishes.
The morning after Marion's arrival at St. John's Lodge, she arose by the peep of the day, intent on surprising her uncle with a visit during his early breakfast, and gayly anticipating the look of joyful surprise and perplexity with which she would be welcomed, while she rehearsed in her own happy mind, how best to increase Sir Arthur's astonishment. The day was indeed one of matchless beauty, the sunshine perfectly superb, and all around resplendent with light, gayety, and happiness, the white clouds skimming along like swans on the blue sky, the air perfumed with blossoms, every leaf spangled with dew, the painted butterflies, like winged flowers, hovering over the meadows, and the country people exhibiting looks full of mirth, hilarity, and good humor, as they hastened past to their tasks of daily toil, enjoying those common gifts of a bountiful Providence, the light breeze, the balmy sunshine, the music of birds, the perfume of flowers, and the joy of natural, unfevered spirits.