Young Harry Warrington's act of revolt came so suddenly upon Madame de Bernstein, that she had no other way of replying to it, than by the prompt outbreak of anger with which we left her in the last chapter. She darted two fierce glances at Lady Fanny and her mother as she quitted the room. Lady Maria over her tambour-frame escaped without the least notice, and scarcely lifted up her head from her embroidery, to watch the aunt retreating, or the looks which mamma-in-law and sister threw at one another.
“So, in spite of all, you have, madam?” the maternal looks seemed to say.
“Have what?” asked Lady Fanny's eyes. But what good in looking innocent? She looked puzzled. She did not look one-tenth part as innocent as Maria. Had she been guilty, she would have looked not guilty much more cleverly; and would have taken care to study and compose a face so as to be ready to suit the plea. Whatever was the expression of Fanny's eyes, mamma glared on her as if she would have liked to tear them out.
But Lady Castlewood could not operate upon the said eyes then and there, like the barbarous monsters in the stage-direction in King Lear. When her ladyship was going to tear out her daughter's eyes, she would retire smiling, with an arm round her dear child's waist, and then gouge her in private.
“So you don't fancy going with the old lady to Tunbridge Wells?” was all she said to Cousin Warrington, wearing at the same time a perfectly well-bred simper on her face.
“And small blame to our cousin!” interposed my lord. (The face over the tambour-frame looked up for one instant.) “A young fellow must not have it all idling and holiday. Let him mix up something useful with his pleasures, and go to the fiddles and pump-rooms at Tunbridge or the Bath later. Mr. Warrington has to conduct a great estate in America: let him see how ours in England are carried on. Will hath shown him the kennel and the stables; and the games in vogue, which I think, cousin, you seem to play as well as your teachers. After harvest we will show him a little English fowling and shooting: in winter we will take him out a-hunting. Though there has been a coolness between us and our aunt-kinswoman in Virginia, yet we are of the same blood. Ere we send our cousin back to his mother, let us show him what an English gentleman's life at home is. I should like to read with him as well as sport with him, and that is why I have been pressing him of late to stay and bear me company.”
My lord spoke with such perfect frankness that his mother-in-law and half-brother and sister could not help wondering what his meaning could be. The three last-named persons often held little conspiracies together, and caballed or grumbled against the head of the house. When he adopted that frank tone, there was no fathoming his meaning: often it would not be discovered until months had passed. He did not say, “This is true,” but, “I mean that this statement should be accepted and believed in my family.” It was then a thing convenue, that my Lord Castlewood had a laudable desire to cultivate the domestic affections, and to educate, amuse, and improve his young relative; and that he had taken a great fancy to the lad, and wished that Harry should stay for some time near his lordship.
“What is Castlewood's game now?” asked William of his mother and sister as they disappeared into the corridors. “Stop! By George, I have it!”
“What, William?”
“He intends to get him to play, and to win the Virginia estate back from him. That's what it is!”
“But the lad has not got the Virginia estate to pay, if he loses,” remarks mamma.
“If my brother has not some scheme in view, may I be——.”
“Hush! Of course he has a scheme in view. But what is it?”
“He can't mean Maria—Maria is as old as Harry's mother,” muses Mr. William.
“Pooh! with her old face and sandy hair and freckled skin! Impossible!” cries Lady Fanny, with somewhat of a sigh.
“Of course, your ladyship had a fancy for the Iroquois, too!” cried mamma.
“I trust I know my station and duty better, madam! If I had liked him, that is no reason why I should marry him. Your ladyship hath taught me as much as that.”
“My Lady Fanny!”
“I am sure you married our papa without liking him. You have told me so a thousand times!”
“And if you did not love our father before marriage, you certainly did not fall in love with him afterwards,” broke in Mr. William, with a laugh. “Fan and I remember how our honoured parents used to fight. Don't us, Fan? And our brother Esmond kept the peace.”
“Don't recall those dreadful low scenes, William!” cries mamma. “When your father took too much drink, he was like a madman; and his conduct should be a warning to you, sir, who are fond of the same horrid practice.”
“I am sure, madam, you were not much the happier for marrying the man you did not like, and your ladyship's title hath brought very little along with it,” whimpered out Lady Fanny. “What is the use of a coronet with the jointure of a tradesman's wife?—how many of them are richer than we are? There is come lately to live in our Square, at Kensington, a grocer's widow from London Bridge, whose daughters have three gowns where I have one; and who, though they are waited on but by a man and a couple of maids, I know eat and drink a thousand times better than we do with our scraps of cold meat on our plate, and our great flaunting, trapesing, impudent, lazy lacqueys!”
“He! he! glad I dine at the palace, and not at home!” said Mr. Will. (Mr. Will, through his aunt's interest with Count Puffendorff, Groom of the Royal {and Serene Electoral} Powder-Closet, had one of the many small places at Court, that of Deputy Powder.)
“Why should I not be happy without any title except my own?” continued Lady Frances. “Many people are. I dare say they are even happy in America.”
“Yes!—with a mother-in-law who is a perfect Turk and Tartar, for all I hear—with Indian war-whoops howling all around you and with a danger of losing your scalp, or of being eat up by a wild beast every time you went to church.”
“I wouldn't go to church,” said Lady Fanny.
“You'd go with anybody who asked you, Fan!” roared out Mr. Will: “and so would old Maria, and so would any woman, that's the fact.” And Will laughed at his own wit.
“Pray, good folks, what is all your merriment about?” here asked Madame Bernstein, peeping in on her relatives from the tapestried door which led into the gallery where their conversation was held.
Will told her that his mother and sister had been having a fight (which was not a novelty, as Madame Bernstein knew), because Fanny wanted to marry their cousin, the wild Indian, and my lady Countess would not let her. Fanny protested against this statement. Since the very first day when her mother had told her not to speak to the young gentleman, she had scarcely exchanged two words with him. She knew her station better. She did not want to be scalped by wild Indians, or eat up by bears.
Madame de Bernstein looked puzzled. “If he is not staying for you, for whom is he staying?” she asked. “At the houses to which he has been carried, you have taken care not to show him a woman that is not a fright or in the nursery; and I think the boy is too proud to fall in love with a dairymaid, Will.”
“Humph! That is a matter of taste, ma'am,” says Mr. William, with a shrug of his shoulders.
“Of Mr. William Esmond's taste, as you say; but not of yonder boy's. The Esmonds of his grandfather's nurture, sir, would not go a-courting in the kitchen.”
“Well, ma'am, every man to his taste, I say again. A fellow might go farther and fare worse than my brother's servants'-hall, and besides Fan, there's only the maids or old Maria to choose from.”
“Maria! Impossible!” And yet, as she spoke the very words, a sudden thought crossed Madame Bernstein's mind, that this elderly Calypso might have captivated her young Telemachus. She called to mind half a dozen instances in her own experience of young men who had been infatuated by old women. She remembered how frequent Harry Warrington's absences had been of late—absences which she attributed to his love for field sports. She remembered how often, when he was absent, Maria Esmond was away too. Walks in cool avenues, whisperings in garden temples, or behind clipt hedges, casual squeezes of the hand in twilight corridors, or sweet glances and ogles in meetings on the stairs,—a lively fancy, an intimate knowledge of the world, very likely a considerable personal experience in early days, suggested all these possibilities and chances to Madame de Bernstein, just as she was saying that they were impossible.
“Impossible, ma'am! I don't know,” Will continued. “My mother warned Fan off him.”
“Oh, your mother did warn Fanny off?”
“Certainly, my dear Baroness!”
“Didn't she? Didn't she pinch Fanny's arm black-and-blue? Didn't they fight about it?”
“Nonsense, William! For shame, William!” cry both the implicated ladies in a breath.
“And now, since we have heard how rich he is, perhaps it is sour grapes, that is all. And now, since he is warned off the young bird, perhaps he is hunting the old one, that's all. Impossible why impossible? You know old Lady Suffolk, ma'am?”
“William, how can you speak about Lady Suffolk to your aunt?”
A grin passed over the countenance of the young gentleman. “Because Lady Suffolk was a special favourite at Court? Well, other folks have succeeded her.”
“Sir!” cries Madame de Bernstein, who may have had her reasons to take offence.
“So they have, I say; or who, pray, is my Lady Yarmouth now? And didn't old Lady Suffolk go and fall in love with George Berkeley, and marry him when she was ever so old? Nay, ma'am, if I remember right—and we hear a deal of town-talk at our table—Harry Estridge went mad about your ladyship when you were somewhat rising twenty; and would have changed your name a third time if you would but have let him.”
This allusion to an adventure of her own later days, which was, indeed, pretty notorious to all the world, did not anger Madame de Bernstein, like Will's former hint about his aunt having been a favourite at George the Second's Court; but, on the contrary, set her in good-humour.
“Au fait,” she said, musing, as she played a pretty little hand on the table, and no doubt thinking about mad young Harry Estridge; “'tis not impossible, William, that old folks, and young folks, too, should play the fool.”
“But I can't understand a young fellow being in love with Maria,” continued Mr. William, “however he might be with you, ma'am. That's oter shose, as our French tutor used to say. You remember the Count, ma'am; he! he!—and so does Maria!”
“William!”
“And I dare say the Count remembers the bastinado Castlewood had given to him. A confounded French dancing-master calling himself a count, and daring to fall in love in our family! Whenever I want to make myself uncommonly agreeable to old Maria, I just say a few words of parly voo to her. She knows what I mean.”
“Have you abused her to your cousin, Harry Warrington?” asked Madame de Bernstein.
“Well—I know she is always abusing me—and I have said my mind about her,” said Will.
“Oh, you idiot!” cried the old lady. “Who but a gaby ever spoke ill of a woman to her sweetheart? He will tell her everything, and they both will hate you.”
“The very thing, ma'am!” cried Will, bursting into a great laugh. “I had a sort of a suspicion, you see, and two days ago, as we were riding together, I told Harry Warrington a bit of my mind about Maria;—why shouldn't I, I say? She is always abusing me, ain't she, Fan? And your favourite turned as red as my plush waistcoat—wondered how a gentleman could malign his own flesh and blood, and, trembling all over with rage, said I was no true Esmond.”
“Why didn't you chastise him, sir, as my lord did the dancing-master?” cried Lady Castlewood.
“Well, mother,—you see that at quarter-staff there's two sticks used,” replied Mr. William; “and my opinion is, that Harry Warrington can guard his own head uncommonly well. Perhaps that is one of the reasons why I did not offer to treat my cousin to a caning. And now you say so, ma'am, I know he has told Maria. She has been looking battle, murder, and sudden death at me ever since. All which shows——” and here he turned to his aunt.
“All which shows what?”
“That I think we are on the right scent; and that we've found Maria—the old fox!” And the ingenuous youth here clapped his hand to his mouth, and gave a loud halloo.
How far had this pretty intrigue gone? now was the question. Mr. Will said, that at her age, Maria would be for conducting matters as rapidly as possible, not having much time to lose. There was not a great deal of love lost between Will and his half-sister.
“Who would sift the matter to the bottom? Scolding one party or the other was of no avail. Threats only serve to aggravate people in such cases. I never was in danger but once, young people,” said Madame de Bernstein, “and I think that was because my poor mother contradicted me. If this boy is like others of his family, the more we oppose him, the more entete he will be; and we shall never get him out of his scrape.”
“Faith, ma'am, suppose we leave him in it?” grumbled Will. “Old Maria and I don't love each other too much, I grant you; but an English earl's daughter is good enough for an American tobacco-planter, when all is said and done.”
Here his mother and sister broke out. They would not hear of such a union. To which Will answered, “You are like the dog in the manger. You don't want the man yourself, Fanny”
“I want him, indeed!” cries Lady Fanny, with a toss of her head.
“Then why grudge him to Maria? I think Castlewood wants her to have him.”
“Why grudge him to Maria, sir?” cried Madame de Bernstein, with great energy. “Do you remember who the poor boy is, and what your house owes to his family? His grandfather was the best friend your father ever had, and gave up this estate, this title, this very castle, in which you are conspiring against the friendless Virginian lad, that you and yours might profit by it. And the reward for all this kindness is, that you all but shut the door on the child when he knocks at it, and talk of marrying him to a silly elderly creature who might be his mother! He shan't marry her.”
“The very thing we were saying and thinking, my dear Baroness!” interposes Lady Castlewood. “Our part of the family is not eager about the match, though my lord and Maria may be.”
“You would like him for yourself, now that you hear he is rich—and may be richer, young people, mind you that,” cried Madam Beatrix, turning upon the other women.
“Mr. Warrington may be ever so rich, madam, but there is no need why your ladyship should perpetually remind us that we are poor,” broke in Lady Castlewood, with some spirit. “At least there is very little disparity in Fanny's age and Mr. Harry's; and you surely will be the last to say that a lady of our name and family is not good enough for any gentleman born in Virginia or elsewhere.”
“Let Fanny take an English gentleman, Countess, not an American. With such a name and such a mother to help her, and with all her good looks and accomplishments, sure, she can't fail of finding a man worthy of her. But from what I know about the daughters of this house, and what I imagine about our young cousin, I am certain that no happy match could be made between them.”
“What does my aunt know about me?” asked Lady Fanny, turning very red.
“Only your temper, my dear. You don't suppose that I believe all the tittle-tattle and scandal which one cannot help hearing in town? But the temper and early education are sufficient. Only fancy one of you condemned to leave St. James's and the Mall, and live in a plantation surrounded by savages! You would die of ennui, or worry your husband's life out with your ill-humour. You are born, ladies, to ornament courts—not wigwams. Let this lad go back to his wilderness with a wife who is suited to him.”
The other two ladies declared in a breath that, for their parts, they desired no better, and, after a few more words, went on their way, while Madame de Bernstein, lifting up her tapestried door, retired into her own chamber. She saw all the scheme now; she admired the ways of women, calling a score of little circumstances back to mind. She wondered at her own blindness during the last few days, and that she should not have perceived the rise and progress of this queer little intrigue. How far had it gone? was now the question. Was Harry's passion of the serious and tragical sort, or a mere fire of straw which a day or two would burn out? How deeply was he committed? She dreaded the strength of Harry's passion, and the weakness of Maria's. A woman of her age is so desperate, Madame Bernstein may have thought, that she will make any efforts to secure a lover. Scandal, bah! She will retire and be a princess in Virginia, and leave the folks in England to talk as much scandal as they choose.
Is there always, then, one thing which women do not tell to one another, and about which they agree to deceive each other? Does the concealment arise from deceit or modesty? A man, as soon as he feels an inclination for one of the other sex, seeks for a friend of his own to whom he may impart the delightful intelligence. A woman (with more or less skill) buries her secret away from her kind. For days and weeks past, had not this old Maria made fools of the whole house,—Maria, the butt of the family?
I forbear to go into too curious inquiries regarding the Lady Maria's antecedents. I have my own opinion about Madame Bernstein's. A hundred years ago people of the great world were not so straitlaced as they are now, when everybody is good, pure, moral, modest; when there is no skeleton in anybody's closet; when there is no scheming; no slurring over old stories; when no girl tries to sell herself for wealth, and no mother abets her. Suppose my Lady Maria tries to make her little game, wherein is her ladyship's great eccentricity?
On these points no doubt the Baroness de Bernstein thought, as she communed with herself in her private apartment.
As my Lady Castlewood and her son and daughter passed through one door of the saloon where they had all been seated, my Lord Castlewood departed by another issue; and then the demure eyes looked up from the tambour-frame on which they had persisted hitherto in examining the innocent violets and jonquils. The eyes looked up at Harry Warrington, who stood at an ancestral portrait under the great fireplace. He had gathered a great heap of blushes (those flowers which bloom so rarely after gentlefolks' springtime), and with them ornamented his honest countenance, his cheeks, his forehead, nay, his youthful ears.
“Why did you refuse to go with our aunt, cousin?” asked the lady of the tambour frame.
“Because your ladyship bade me stay,” answered the lad.
“I bid you stay! La! child! What one says in fun, you take in earnest! Are all you Virginian gentlemen so obsequious as to fancy every idle word a lady says is a command? Virginia must be a pleasant country for our sex if it be so!”
“You said—when—when we walked in the terrace two nights since,—O heaven!” cried Harry, with a voice trembling with emotion.
“Ah, that sweet night, cousin!” cries the Tambour-frame.
“Whe—whe—when you gave me this rose from your own neck,”—roared out Harry, pulling suddenly a crumpled and decayed vegetable from his waistcoat—“which I will never part with—with, no, by heavens, whilst this heart continues to beat! You said, 'Harry, if your aunt asks you to go away, you will go, and if you go, you will forget me.'—Didn't you say so?”
“All men forget!” said the Virgin, with a sigh.
“In this cold selfish country they may, cousin, not in ours,” continues Harry, yet in the same state of exaltation—“I had rather have lost an arm almost than refused the old lady. I tell you it went to my heart to say no to her, and she so kind to me, and who had been the means of introducing me to—to—O heaven!”
(Here a kick to an intervening spaniel, which flies yelping from before the fire, and a rapid advance on the tambour-frame.) “Look here, cousin! If you were to bid me jump out of yonder window, I should do it; or murder, I should do it.”
“La! but you need not squeeze one's hand so, you silly child!” remarks Maria.
“I can't help it—we are so in the south. Where my heart is, I can't help speaking my mind out, cousin—and you know where that heart is! Ever since that evening—that—O heaven! I tell you I have hardly slept since—I want to do something—to distinguish myself—to be ever so great. I wish there was giants, Maria, as I have read of in—in books, that I could go and fight 'em. I wish you was in distress, that I might help you, somehow. I wish you wanted my blood, that I might spend every drop of it for you. And when you told me not to go with Madame Bernstein...”
“I tell thee, child? never.”
“I thought you told me. You said you knew I preferred my aunt to my cousin, and I said then what I say now, 'Incomparable Maria! I prefer thee to all the women in the world and all the angels in Paradise—and I would go anywhere, were it to dungeons, if you ordered me!' And do you think I would not stay anywhere, when you only desired that I should be near you?” he added, after a moment's pause.
“Men always talk in that way—that is,—that is, I have heard so,” said the spinster, correcting herself; “for what should a country-bred woman know about you creatures? When you are near us, they say you are all raptures and flames and promises and I don't know what; when you are away, you forget all about us.”
“But I think I never want to go away as long as I live,” groaned out the young man. “I have tired of many things; not books and that, I never cared for study much, but games and sports which I used to be fond of when I was a boy. Before I saw you, it was to be a soldier I most desired; I tore my hair with rage when my poor dear brother went away instead of me on that expedition in which we lost him. But now, I only care for one thing in the world, and you know what that is.”
“You silly child! don't you know I am almost old enough to be...?”
“I know—I know! but what is that to me? Hasn't your br...—well, never mind who, some of 'em-told me stories against you, and didn't they show me the Family Bible, where all your names are down, and the dates of your birth?”
“The cowards! Who did that?” cried out Lady Maria. “Dear Harry, tell me who did that? Was it my mother-in-law, the grasping, odious, abandoned, brazen harpy? Do you know all about her? How she married my father in his cups—the horrid hussey!—and...”
“Indeed it wasn't Lady Castlewood,” interposed the wondering Harry.
“Then it was my aunt,” continued the infuriate lady. “A pretty moralist, indeed! A bishop's widow, forsooth, and I should like to know whose widow before and afterwards. Why, Harry, she intrigue: with the Pretender, and with the Court of Hanover, and, I dare say, would with the Court of Rome and the Sultan of Turkey if she had had the means. Do you know who her second husband was? A creature who...”
“But our aunt never spoke a word against you,” broke in Harry, more and more amazed at the nymph's vehemence.
She checked her anger. In the inquisitive countenance opposite to her she thought she read some alarm as to the temper which she was exhibiting.
“Well, well! I am a fool,” she said. “I want thee to think well of me, Harry!”
A hand is somehow put out and seized and, no doubt, kissed by the rapturous youth. “Angel!” he cries, looking into her face with his eager, honest eyes.
Two fish-pools irradiated by a pair of stars would not kindle to greater warmth than did those elderly orbs into which Harry poured his gaze. Nevertheless, he plunged into their blue depths, and fancied he saw heaven in their calm brightness. So that silly dog (of whom Aesop or the Spelling-book used to tell us in youth) beheld a beef-bone in the pond, and snapped at it, and lost the beef-bone he was carrying. O absurd cur! He saw the beefbone in his own mouth reflected in the treacherous pool, which dimpled, I dare say, with ever so many smiles, coolly sucked up the meat, and returned to its usual placidity. Ah! what a heap of wreck lie beneath some of those quiet surfaces! What treasures we have dropped into them! What chased golden dishes, what precious jewels of love, what bones after bones, and sweetest heart's flesh! Do not some very faithful and unlucky dogs jump in bodily, when they are swallowed up heads and tails entirely? When some women come to be dragged, it is a marvel what will be found in the depths of them. Cavete, canes! Have a care how ye lap that water. What do they want with us, the mischievous siren sluts? A green-eyed Naiad never rests until she has inveigled a fellow under the water; she sings after him, she dances after him; she winds round him, glittering tortuously; she warbles and whispers dainty secrets at his cheek, she kisses his feet, she leers at him from out of her rushes: all her beds sigh out, “Come, sweet youth! Hither, hither, rosy Hylas!” Pop goes Hylas. (Surely the fable is renewed for ever and ever?) Has his captivator any pleasure? Doth she take any account of him? No more than a fisherman landing at Brighton does of one out of a hundred thousand herrings.... The last time. Ulysses rowed by the Sirens' bank, he and his men did not care though a whole shoal of them were singing and combing their longest locks. Young Telemachus was for jumping overboard: but the tough old crew held the silly, bawling lad. They were deaf, and could not hear his bawling nor the sea-nymphs' singing. They were dim of sight, and did not see how lovely the witches were. The stale, old, leering witches! Away with ye! I dare say you have painted your cheeks by this time; your wretched old songs are as out of fashion as Mozart, and it is all false hair you are combing!
In the last sentence you see Lector Benevolus and Scriptor Doctissimus figure as tough old Ulysses and his tough old Boatswain, who do not care a quid of tobacco for any Siren at Sirens' Point; but Harry Warrington is green Telemachus, who, be sure, was very unlike the soft youth in the good Bishop of Cambray's twaddling story. He does not see that the siren paints the lashes from under which she ogles him; will put by into a box when she has done the ringlets into which she would inveigle him; and if she eats him, as she proposes to do, will crunch his bones with a new set of grinders just from the dentist's, and warranted for mastication. The song is not stale to Harry Warrington, nor the voice cracked or out of tune that sings it. But—but—oh, dear me, Brother Boatswain! Don't you remember how pleasant the opera was when we first heard it? Cosi fan tutti was its name—Mozart's music. Now, I dare say, they have other words, and other music, and other singers and fiddlers, and another great crowd in the pit. Well, well, Cosi fan tutti is still upon the bills, and they are going on singing it over and over and over.
Any man or woman with a pennyworth of brains, or the like precious amount of personal experience, or who has read a novel before, must, when Harry pulled out those faded vegetables just now, have gone off into a digression of his own, as the writer confesses for himself he was diverging whilst he has been writing the last brace of paragraphs. If he sees a pair of lovers whispering in a garden alley or the embrasure of a window, or a pair of glances shot across the room from Jenny to the artless Jessamy, he falls to musing on former days when, etc. etc. These things follow each other by a general law, which is not as old as the hills, to be sure, but as old as the people who walk up and down them. When, I say, a lad pulls a bunch of amputated and now decomposing greens from his breast and falls to kissing it, what is the use of saying much more? As well tell the market-gardener's name from whom the slip-rose was bought—the waterings, clippings, trimmings, manurings, the plant has undergone—as tell how Harry Warrington came by it. Rose, elle a vecu la vie des roses, has been trimmed, has been watered, has been potted, has been sticked, has been cut, worn, given away, transferred to yonder boy's pocket-book and bosom, according to the laws and fate appertaining to roses.
And how came Maria to give it to Harry? And how did he come to want it and to prize it so passionately when he got the bit of rubbish? Is not one story as stale as the other? Are not they all alike? What is the use, I say, of telling them over and over? Harry values that rose because Maria has ogled him in the old way; because she has happened to meet him in the garden in the old way; because he has taken her hand in the old way; because they have whispered to one another behind the old curtain (the gaping old rag, as if everybody could not peep through it!); because, in this delicious weather, they have happened to be early risers and go into the park; because dear Goody Jenkins in the village happened to have a bad knee, and my lady Maria went to read to her, and gave her calves'-foot jelly, and because somebody, of course, must carry the basket. Whole chapters might have been written to chronicle all these circumstances, but A quoi bon? The incidents of life, and love-making especially, I believe to resemble each other so much, that I am surprised, gentlemen and ladies, you read novels any more. Psha! Of course that rose in young Harry's pocket-book had grown, and had budded, and had bloomed, and was now rotting, like other roses. I suppose you will want me to say that the young fool kissed it next? Of course he kissed it. What were lips made for, pray, but for smiling and simpering, and (possibly) humbugging, and kissing, and opening to receive mutton-chops, cigars, and so forth? I cannot write this part of the story of our Virginians, because Harry did not dare to write it himself to anybody at home, because, if he wrote any letters to Maria (which, of course, he did, as they were in the same house, and might meet each other as much as they liked), they were destroyed; because he afterwards chose to be very silent about the story, and we can't have it from her ladyship, who never told the truth about anything. But cui bono? I say again. What is the good of telling the story? My gentle reader, take your story: take mine. To-morrow it shall be Miss Fanny's, who is just walking away with her doll to the schoolroom and the governess (poor victim! she has a version of it in her desk): and next day it shall be Baby's, who is bawling out on the stairs for his bottle.
Maria might like to have and exercise power over the young Virginian; but she did not want that Harry should quarrel with his aunt for her sake, or that Madame de Bernstein should be angry with her. Harry was not the Lord of Virginia yet: he was only the Prince, and the Queen might marry and have other Princes, and the laws of primogeniture might not be established in Virginia, qu'en savait elle? My lord her brother and she had exchanged no words at all about the delicate business. But they understood each other, and the Earl had a way of understanding things without speaking. He knew his Maria perfectly well: in the course of a life of which not a little had been spent in her brother's company and under his roof, Maria's disposition, ways, tricks, faults, had come to be perfectly understood by the head of the family; and she would find her little schemes checked or aided by him, as to his lordship seemed good, and without need of any words between them. Thus three days before, when she happened to be going to see that poor dear old Goody, who was ill with the sore knee in the village (and when Harry Warrington happened to be walking behind the elms on the green too), my lord with his dogs about him, and his gardener walking after him, crossed the court, just as Lady Maria was tripping to the gate-house—and his lordship called his sister, and said: “Molly, you are going to see Goody Jenkins. You are a charitable soul, my dear. Give Gammer Jenkins this half-crown for me—unless our cousin, Warrington, has already given her money. A pleasant walk to you. Let her want for nothing.” And at supper, my lord asked Mr. Warrington many questions about the poor in Virginia, and the means of maintaining them, to which the young gentleman gave the best answers he might. His lordship wished that in the old country there were no more poor people than in the new: and recommended Harry to visit the poor and people of every degree, indeed, high and low—in the country to look at the agriculture, in the city at the manufactures and municipal institutions—to which edifying advice Harry acceded with becoming modesty and few words, and Madame Bernstein nodded approval over her piquet with the chaplain. Next day, Harry was in my lord's justice-room: the next day he was out ever so long with my lord on the farm—and coming home, what does my lord do, but look in on a sick tenant? I think Lady Maria was out on that day, too; she had been reading good books to that poor dear Goody Jenkins, though I don't suppose Madame Bernstein ever thought of asking about her niece.
“CASTLEWOOD, HAMPSHIRE, ENGLAND, August 5, 1757.
“MY DEAR MOUNTAIN—At first, as I wrote, I did not like Castlewood, nor my cousins there, very much. Now, I am used to their ways, and we begin to understand each other much better. With my duty to my mother, tell her, I hope, that considering her ladyship's great kindness to me, Madam Esmond will be reconciled to her half-sister, the Baroness de Bernstein. The Baroness, you know, was my Grandmamma's daughter by her first husband, Lord Castlewood (only Grandpapa really was the real lord); however, that was not his, that is, the other Lord Castlewood's fault, you know, and he was very kind to Grandpapa, who always spoke most kindly of him to us as you know.
“Madame the Baroness Bernstein first married a clergyman, Reverend Mr. Tusher, who was so learned and good, and such a favourite of his Majesty, as was my aunt too, that he was made a Bishop. When he died, Our gracious King continued his friendship to my aunt; who married a Hanoverian nobleman, who occupied a post at the Court—and, I believe, left the Baroness very rich. My cousin, my Lord Castlewood, told me so much about her, and I am sure I have found from her the greatest kindness and affection.
“The (Dowiger) Countess Castlewood and my cousins Will and Lady Fanny have been described per last, that went by the Falmouth packet on the 20th ult. The ladies are not changed since then. Me and Cousin Will are very good friends. We have rode out a good deal. We have had some famous cocking matches at Hampton and Winton. My cousin is a sharp blade, but I think I have shown him that we in Virginia know a thing or two. Reverend Mr. Sampson, chaplain of the famaly, most excellent preacher, without any biggatry.
“The kindness of my cousin the Earl improves every day, and by next year's ship I hope my mother will send his lordship some of our best roll tobacco (for tennants) and hamms. He is most charatable to the poor. His sister, Lady Maria, equally so. She sits for hours reading good books to the sick: she is most beloved in the village.”
“Nonsense!” said a lady to whom Harry submitted his precious manuscript. “Why do you flatter me, cousin?”
“You are beloved in the village and out of it,” said Harry, with a knowing emphasis, “and I have flattered you, as you call it, a little more still, farther on.”
“There is a sick old woman there, whom Madam Esmond would like, a most raligious, good, old lady.
“Lady Maria goes very often to read to her; which, she says, gives her comfort. But though her Ladyship hath the sweetest voice, both in speaking and singeing (she plays the church organ, and singes there most beautifully), I cannot think Gammer Jenkins can have any comfort from it, being very deaf, by reason of her great age. She has her memory perfectly, however, and remembers when my honoured Grandmother Rachel Lady Castlewood lived here. She says, my Grandmother was the best woman in the whole world, gave her a cow when she was married, and cured her husband, Gaffer Jenkins, of the collects, which he used to have very bad. I suppose it was with the Pills and Drops which my honoured Mother put up in my boxes, when I left dear Virginia. Having never been ill since, have had no use for the pills. Gumbo hath, eating and drinking a great deal too much in the Servants' Hall. The next angel to my Grandmother (N.B. I think I spelt angel wrong per last), Gammer Jenkins says, is Lady Maria, who sends her duty to her Aunt in Virginia, and remembers her, and my Grandpapa and Grandmamma when they were in Europe, and she was a little girl. You know they have Grandpapa's picture here, and I live in the very rooms which he had, and which are to be called mine, my Lord Castlewood says.
“Having no more to say, at present, I close with best love and duty tomy honoured Mother, and with respects to Mr. Dempster, and a kiss forFanny, and kind remembrances to Old Gumbo, Nathan, Old and Young Dinah,and the pointer dog and Slut, and all friends, from their well-wisher“HENRY ESMOND WARRINGTON.”
“Have wrote and sent my duty to my Uncle Warrington in Norfolk. No anser as yet.”
“I hope the spelling is right, cousin?” asked the author of the letter, from the critic to whom he showed it.
“'Tis quite well enough spelt for any person of fashion,” answered Lady Maria, who did not choose to be examined too closely regarding the orthography.
“One word 'Angel,' I know, I spelt wrong in writing to my mamma, but I have learned a way of spelling it right, now.”
“And how is that, sir?”
“I think 'tis by looking at you, cousin;” saying which words, Mr. Harry made her ladyship a low bow, and accompanied the bow by one of his best blushes, as if he were offering her a bow and a bouquet.
At the next meal, when the family party assembled, there was not a trace of displeasure in Madame de Bernstein's countenance, and her behaviour to all the company, Harry included, was perfectly kind and cordial. She praised the cook this time, declared the fricassee was excellent, and that there were no eels anywhere like those in the Castlewood moats; would not allow that the wine was corked, or hear of such extravagance as opening a fresh bottle for a useless old woman like her; gave Madam Esmond Warrington, of Virginia, as her toast, when the new wine was brought, and hoped Harry had brought away his mamma's permission to take back an English wife with him. He did not remember his grandmother; her, Madame de Bernstein's, dear mother? The Baroness amused the company with numerous stories of her mother, of her beauty and goodness, of her happiness with her second husband, though the wife was so much older than Colonel Esmond. To see them together was delightful, she had heard. Their attachment was celebrated all through the country. To talk of disparity in marriages was vain after that. My Lady Castlewood and her two children held their peace whilst Madame Bernstein prattled. Harry was enraptured, and Maria surprised. Lord Castlewood was puzzled to know what sudden freak or scheme had occasioned this prodigious amiability on the part of his aunt; but did not allow the slightest expression of solicitude or doubt to appear on his countenance, which wore every mark of the most perfect satisfaction.
The Baroness's good-humour infected the whole family; not one person at table escaped a gracious word from her. In reply to some compliment to Mr. Will, when that artless youth uttered an expression of satisfaction and surprise at his aunt's behaviour, she frankly said: “Complimentary, my dear! Of course I am. I want to make up with you for having been exceedingly rude to everybody this morning. When I was a child, and my father and mother were alive, and lived here, I remember I used to adopt exactly the same behaviour. If I had been naughty in the morning, I used to try and coax my parents at night. I remember in this very room, at this very table—oh, ever so many hundred years ago!—so coaxing my father, and mother, and your grandfather, Harry Warrington; and there were eels for supper, as we have had them to-night, and it was that dish of collared eels which brought the circumstance back to my mind. I had been just as wayward that day, when I was seven years old, as I am to-day, when I am seventy, and so I confess my sins, and ask to be forgiven, like a good girl.”
“I absolve your ladyship!” cried the chaplain, who made one of the party.
“But your reverence does not know how cross and ill-tempered I was. I scolded my sister, Castlewood: I scolded her children, I boxed Harry Warrington's ears: and all because he would not go with me to Tunbridge Wells.”
“But I will go, madam; I will ride with you with all the pleasure in life,” said Mr. Warrington.
“You see, Mr. Chaplain, what good, dutiful children they all are. 'Twas I alone who was cross and peevish. Oh, it was cruel of me to treat them so! Maria, I ask your pardon, my dear.”
“Sure, madam, you have done me no wrong,” says Maria to this humble suppliant.
“Indeed, I have, a very great wrong, child! Because I was weary of myself, I told you that your company would be wearisome to me. You offered to come with me to Tunbridge, and I rudely refused you.”
“Nay, ma'am, if you were sick, and my presence annoyed you...
“But it will not annoy me! You were most kind to say that you would come. I do, of all things, beg, pray, entreat, implore, command that you will come.”
My lord filled himself a glass, and sipped it. Most utterly unconscious did his lordship look. This, then, was the meaning of the previous comedy.
“Anything which can give my aunt pleasure, I am sure, will delight me,” said Maria, trying to look as happy as possible.
“You must come and stay with me, my dear, and I promise to be good and good-humoured. My dear lord, you will spare your sister to me?”
“Lady Maria Esmond is quite of age to judge for herself about such a matter,” said his lordship, with a bow. “If any of us can be of use to you, madam, you sure ought to command us.” Which sentence, being interpreted, no doubt meant, “Plague take the old woman! She is taking Maria away in order to separate her from this young Virginian.”
“Oh, Tunbridge will be delightful!” sighed Lady Maria.
“Mr. Sampson will go and see Goody Jones for you,” my lord continued.
Harry drew pictures with his finger on the table. What delights had he not been speculating on? What walks, what rides, what interminable conversations, what delicious shrubberies and sweet sequestered summer-houses, what poring over music-books, what moonlight, what billing and cooing, had he not imagined! Yes, the day was coming. They were all departing—my Lady Castlewood to her friends, Madame Bernstein to her waters—and he was to be left alone with his divine charmer—alone with her and unutterable rapture! The thought of the pleasure was maddening. That these people were all going away. That he was to be left to enjoy that heaven—to sit at the feet of that angel and kiss the hem of that white robe. O Gods! 'twas too great bliss to be real! “I knew it couldn't be,” thought poor Harry. “I knew something would happen to take her from me.”
“But you will ride with us to Tunbridge, nephew Warrington, and keep us from the highwaymen?” said Madame de Bernstein.
Harry Warrington hoped the company did not see how red he grew. He tried to keep his voice calm and without tremor. Yes, he would ride with their ladyships, and he was sure they need fear no danger. Danger! Harry felt he would rather like danger than not. He would slay ten thousand highwaymen if they approached his mistress's coach. At least, he would ride by that coach, and now and again see her eyes at the window. He might not speak to her, but he should be near her. He should press the blessed hand at the inn at night, and feel it reposing on his as he led her to the carriage at morning. They would be two whole days going to Tunbridge, and one day or two he might stay there. Is not the poor wretch who is left for execution at Newgate thankful for even two or three days of respite?
You see, we have only indicated, we have not chosen to describe, at length, Mr. Harry Warrington's condition, or that utter depth of imbecility into which the poor young wretch was now plunged. Some boys have the complaint of love favourably and gently. Others, when they get the fever, are sick unto death with it; or, recovering, carry the marks of the malady down with them to the grave, or to remotest old age. I say, it is not fair to take down a young fellow's words when he is raging in that delirium. Suppose he is in love with a woman twice as old as himself; have we not all read of the young gentleman who committed suicide in consequence of his fatal passion for Mademoiselle Ninon de l'Enclos who turned out to be his grandmother? Suppose thou art making an ass of thyself, young Harry Warrington, of Virginia! are there not people in England who heehaw too? Kick and abuse him, you who have never brayed; but bear with him, all honest fellow-cardophagi: long-eared messmates, recognise a brother-donkey!
“You will stay with us for a day or two at the Wells,” Madame Bernstein continued. “You will see us put into our lodgings. Then you can return to Castlewood and the partridge-shooting, and all the fine things which you and my lord are to study together.”
Harry bowed an acquiescence. A whole week of heaven! Life was not altogether a blank, then.
“And as there is sure to be plenty of company at the Wells, I shall be able to present you,” the lady graciously added.
“Company! ah! I shan't need company,” sighed out Harry. “I mean that I shall be quite contented in the company of you two ladies,” he added, eagerly; and no doubt Mr. Will wondered at his cousin's taste.
As this was to be the last night of cousin Harry's present visit to Castlewood, cousin Will suggested that he, and his reverence, and Warrington should meet at the quarters of the latter and make up accounts, to which process, Harry, being a considerable winner in his play transactions with the two gentlemen, had no objection. Accordingly, when the ladies retired for the night, and my lord withdrew—as his custom was—to his own apartments, the three gentlemen all found themselves assembled in Mr. Harry's little room before the punch-bowl, which was Will's usual midnight companion.
But Will's method of settling accounts was by producing a couple of fresh packs of cards, and offering to submit Harry's debt to the process of being doubled or acquitted. The poor chaplain had no more ready cash than Lord Castlewood's younger brother. Harry Warrington wanted to win the money of neither. Would he give pain to the brother of his adored Maria, or allow any one of her near kinsfolk to tax him with any want of generosity or forbearance? He was ready to give them their revenge, as the gentlemen proposed. Up to midnight he would play with them for what stakes they chose to name. And so they set to work, and the dice-box was rattled and the cards shuffled and dealt.
Very likely he did not think about the cards at all. Very likely he was thinking;—“At this moment, my beloved one is sitting with her beauteous golden locks outspread under the fingers of her maid. Happy maid! Now she is on her knees, the sainted creature, addressing prayers to that Heaven which is the abode of angels like her. Now she has sunk to rest behind her damask curtains. Oh, bless, bless her!” “You double us all round? I will take a card upon each of my two. Thank you, that will do—a ten—now, upon the other, a queen,—two natural vingt-et-uns, and as you doubled us you owe me so-and-so.”
I imagine volleys of oaths from Mr. William, and brisk pattering of imprecations from his reverence, at the young Virginian's luck. He won because he did not want to win. Fortune, that notoriously coquettish jade, came to him, because he was thinking of another nymph, who possibly was as fickle. Will and the chaplain may have played against him, solicitous constantly to increase their stakes, and supposing that the wealthy Virginian wished to let them recover all their losings. But this was by no means Harry Warrington's notion. When he was at home he had taken a part in scores of such games as these (whereby we may be led to suppose that he kept many little circumstances of his life mum from his lady mother), and had learned to play and pay. And as he practised fair play towards his friends he expected it from them in return.
“The luck does seem to be with me, cousin,” he said, in reply to some more oaths and growls of Will, “and I am sure I do not want to press it; but you don't suppose I'm going to be such a fool as to fling it away altogether? I have quite a heap of your promises on paper by this time. If we are to go on playing, let us have the dollars on the table, if you please; or, if not the money, the worth of it.”
“Always the way with you rich men,” grumbled Will. “Never lend except on security—always win because you are rich.”
“Faith, cousin, you have been of late for ever flinging my riches into my face. I have enough for my wants and for my creditors.”
“Oh, that we could all say as much!” groaned the chaplain. “How happy we, and how happy the duns would be! What have we got to play against our conqueror? There is my new gown, Mr. Warrington. Will you set me five pieces against it? I have but to preach in stuff if I lose. Stop! I have a Chrysostom, a Foxe's Martyrs, a Baker's Chronicle, and a cow and her calf. What shall we set against these?”
“I will bet one of cousin Will's notes for twenty pounds,” cried Mr. Warrington, producing one of those documents.
“Or I have my brown mare, and will back her red against your honour's notes of hand, but against ready money.”
“I have my horse. I will back my horse against you for fifty,” bawls out Will.
Harry took the offers of both gentlemen. In the course of ten minutes the horse and the bay mare had both changed owners. Cousin William swore more fiercely than ever. The parson dashed his wig to the ground, and emulated his pupil in the loudness of his objurgations. Mr. Harry Warrington was quite calm, and not the least elated by his triumph. They had asked him to play, and he had played. He knew he should win. O beloved slumbering angel! he thought, am I not sure of victory when you are kind to me? He was looking out from his window towards the casement on the opposite side of the court, which he knew to be hers. He had forgot about his victims and their groans, and ill-luck, ere they crossed the court. Under yonder brilliant flickering star, behind yonder casement where the lamp was burning faintly, was his joy, and heart, and treasure.