Belinda. A novel

Front matter

BELINDA % £ctul BY RHODA BROUGHTON AUTHOR OF ( COMETH UP AS A FLOWER,' ' RED AS A ROSE IS SHE,' 'SECOND THOUGHTS,' ' GOOD-BYE. SWEETHEART,' ' NANCY,' ETC. A NEW EDITION LONDON RICHARD BENTLEY & SON, NEW BURLINGTON ST. Publishers in ©roinarg ta ?^tr fHajcstg tfjc ©uttn 1884 [A/t Rights Reserved.} Printed by R. & R. Clark. Edinburgh. PERIOD I. ' Mignonne, allons voir si la rose Qui ce matin avait disclose Sa robe de pourpre au soleil A point perdu ceste vespree, Les plis de sa robe pourpree Et son teint au vostre pareil. Las ! voyez comme en peu d'espace, Mignonne, elle a dessus la place ! Las ! Las ! ses beautez laisse cheoir ! O vrayment marastre Nature Puis qu'une telle fleur ne dure Que du matin jusques au soir ! Done si vous me croyez, Mignonne, Tandis que vostre age fleuronne En sa plus verte nouveaute, Cueillez, cueillez vostre jeunesse, Comme a ceste fleur, la vieillesse Fera ternir vostre beaute.' I BELINDA.

Chapter I

' Along the crisped shades and bowers Revels the spruce and jocund Spring.' Not less lustily than elsewhere is the spruce and jocund Spring revelling in the Grosse Garten at Dresden on this May Day. And though there is still in her very frolic a disposition to pinch sharply, a certain tartness in her green smile, yet many glad subjects have come forth to do homage to her new Queendom. Yes, many ; for to-day the Dres deners — as I am told is their custom on each fresh May Day — have issued out on foot and in carriage to welcome the year's new sovereign. They are holding a sort of flower-feast ; everybody is throwing bouquets to everybody else. Above their heads the trees are breaking into little leaf; upon the side-paths throng the foot-passengers ; along the drives the carriages gaily roll.

Here is a very smart turn-out. Surely this must be the King and the Queen ? Not at all ! It is only Graf von S. reclining with a self satisfied air alone in a barouche, richly filled with choice nosegays, and drawn by four chestnut horses, with a crimson velvet postillion jigging up and down in front, and a crimson velvet outrider trotting bravely behind. An Englishman would feel a fool in such a position, but far indeed from a BELINDA. 2 like frame of mind is that of this splendid and happy German. Well, here come the King and Queen really now, with their mouse-coloured liveries ; come, bowing and smiling with as much affability as if they were real big royalties ; no one troubling himself to get out of their way ; not a police man to be seen ; no open space imperatively cleared, as when the Princess of Wales comes trotting serenely down the drive.

Here are soldiers in plenty; but soldiers thinking for the most part neither of war nor beer; soldiers with their martial hands full of innocent daffodillies and fresh sweet Nancies. Gardereiters in their light blue uniforms and flat blue caps, pricking hither and thither on their sleek horses, carrying bouquets of roses, azaleas, deutzias, hyacinths, and seeking here and there with grave gray eyes for the happy fair ones for whom they are destined. Two bands are clashing merrily out ; a great booming thump on the big drum makes the horses start and fidget. Now, for a change, comes a real English turn-out. One need not look twice to decide its nationality. The square sitting, bolt-upright servants in their quiet liveries ; the plain but shining harness ; the great glossy-coated bays stepping together like one horse — who can doubt con cerning them ?

Now more English in hired carriages ; but do not judge us by these, O kind Saxons ; these are not our best ! And yet it is in one of these very hired carriages that are sitting a pair of young women, of whom their England has no need to be ashamed, and who are not at all ashamed of themselves. Not that the present is their happiest moment, for the expression of one face is cross, and of the other anxious. 'Shall we go home, Belinda?' asks the cross one morosely. ' Why, we have only just come ! ' objects Belinda. BELINDA. 3 A Russian carriage passes ; a coachman with a hat like a beefeater and a long cloth frock pulled in with gathers at the waist. Then more Germans, with bunches of nar cissus at their horses' ears and in their servants' breasts. Now a Gardereiter perched on the box of a coach, driving six-in-hand, and with a confiding lady in a pink bonnet beside him tranquilly enjoying her position, nor any wise disturbed by the hopeless muddle into which her hero has got his innumerable reins.

Another blue Gardereiter flings her a bouquet, but it is ill-aimed, falls upon the road, and the wheels pass over it. This sight is too much for the fortitude of Belinda's sister. ' I must take some desperate step to attract attention,' she says crossly, yet with a vein of humour streaking her ill-temper ; ' what do you recommend ? Shall I be fright ened at the big drum, and give a loud shriek, or will you?' 'Certainly not I !' ' I cannot think what has happened to them ! They must be wrong in their heads. Are you aware that not one of them has thrown us a single bouquet?' 'Why should they?' answers Belinda; 'we know none of them.' ' Even though they do not know us, they might toss us a handful of flowers,' says Sarah grumblingly. ' I am sure we look wistful enough, and that requires no great amount of acquaintance !' ' I should think it extremely impertinent if they did ! ' replies Belinda loftily.

The other pouts. ' For my part, then, I wish that they would begin to be impertinent at once !' But for such insolence the Saxon army appears to have no sort of bent. In silence the neglected girls drive on. And the sun shines, and the east wind blows, and the big BELINDA. 4 drum booms, and the great brass instruments blare, and still they trot round the bit of dull water, up the straight drives, past the Museum of Antiquities. A rain of spring nosegays falls around them, but not one is aimed at their humble landau ; not one drops, even by accident, into their empty laps. Here come the King and Queen again ; the mouse coloured and silver outriders ; the suave and middle-aged pair of little royalties. The gloom on Sarah's face deepens, and even in Belinda's eyes the anxious, seeking look has grown intensified.

If they know no one in this gay foreign throng, whom is she seeking ? 'After all,' she presently says, 'you knew, Sarah, when you were so anxious to come, that we should meet no acquaintance here except Professor Forth, and ' ' Well, and why is not he here, pray ? ' cries Sarah, with a burst of genuine ill-humour that seems sensibly to ease her. ' Did not I order him to be punctual to the moment ? Even he would be better than nothing ! ' Belinda smiles ironically. ' That is an enthusiastic form of encomium upon the man that you are going to marry ! ' But Sarah does not heed. Her eyes are directed to the side-walk, where the brisk foot-passengers pass and re-pass. ' There he is ! ' she cries in a disgusted voice ; ' certainly there is no mistaking him ! Did you ever see such a gait in your life?

Look at him slouching along on his great flat feet ! ' Belinda looks as directed ; and sure enough, amid the strapping soldiers erect and tall, detects without difficulty a slovenly middle-aged figure, clerical, if you judge by its coat ; scholarly, if you decide by its spectacles. With his hands behind him, and his hat set somewhat on the back of his head, he is mooning absently along. BELINDA. 5 ' Is it possible ? ' cries Sarah, half-rising from her seat, and in a tone that is almost awful from its ire. ' Yes ; it is monstrous ; it is unbelievable ! but it is nevertheless true that he has not brought me a bouquet after all ! ' ' Yes, he has,' replies Belinda quietly, ' only it is so small that it requires a keen sight to perceive it.' As they speak, the object of their observation becomes aware of their vicinity, and turning his moony scholar's gaze towards them, awkwardly aims at them a tiny bunch of not particularly fresh violets.

It falls into his betrothed's lap, but not long does it remain there. With an angry gesture, and before Belinda can stop her, she has tossed it out into the road ; and the Gardereiter, with his six black horses, and his confiding companion, who are just in the act of again passing, drive over it, and grind it into the dust. Thanks, however, to his near-sight the donor is saved from witness ing this humbling spectacle. ' I am afraid that my aim was not good,' he says innocently, as the carriage draws up at the side-walk, exploring, as he speaks, the interior through his spectacles in search of his missing posy. ' I fear that the nosegay I directed towards you must have fallen short, and never reached you.' ' Oh yes, it did,' replies Sarah, with a sort of ferocious playfulness ; ' but, as it was too large for me to carry, I put it outside.' ' How late you are ! ' cries Belinda hastily, trying by a rapid change of subject, and a sweet, good-natured smile, to erase the traces of this suave speech. ' After playing us so false, you cannot expect to find us in a very good humour.' ' I was delayed by an accident,' replies the lover irritably. ' I found the east wind so very much keener than I was aware of — shivering a little, and buttoning his coat more tightly over his narrow chest — ' that, as I am extremely sus ceptible to cold, I was compelled to return to my lodgings BELINDA. for a second overcoat.

Sarah knows ' — with a rather resentful glance at his fiancee — 'that I am extremely susceptible to cold.' But Sarah heeds him no more than she does the east wind of which he complains. ' Ah ! Bravo ! ' she is crying joyfully, as another bouquet — a real one this time — large as a Cheshire cheese, fragrant as a hot-house, choice and costly as should be young Love's tribute, comes flying into the carriage. She has stretched out both hands to grasp it ; no doubt as to its destination troubling her triumph, although to a looker-on it would have seemed as if it were aimed more at the other sister, at Belinda, who has also half-stretched out her hands, but has quickly withdrawn them, and turned with patient attention, though with something of a blank look on her face, to the Professor's fretful sarcasms on tlie absurdity of an alfresco entertainment in such weather.

But though he misses nothing in her civil listening, though her head is turned towards him, and quite averted from her sister, yet her ears miss no one syllable of that sister's exuberant thanks. ' Come near, that I may bless you ! ' she hears her cry coquettishly. ' You see I have not a hand to give you ; but you must blame yourself for that. What a giant it is ! How fresh ! How good ! ' — evidently smelling it. ' It has quite put me into good-humour again with this odious enter tainment. I assure you I never was so flouted in my life. What boors they are ! How different it would have been if they had been Frenchmen ! ' etc. etc. Perhaps it is that her volubility leaves no space for answers from the person she addresses. Certain it is that he is strangely silent. Is it not odd to accept gratitude so bounteous with so entire a dumbness ?

In pondering on this problem, Belinda presently loses the thread of the Pro fessor's plaints ; awakes from her musing to find him first BELINDA. 7 gazing at her with surprised offence, then gone ; then succeeded in his station at the carriage-door by some one ; some one else who has no spectacles, who does not stoop nor cower before the east wind ; some one young, in short — word of splendid compass ! He is young : not with the conventional youth loosely assigned by society to any unmarried male under eighty, but really young ; some one who three-and-twenty years ago did not exist. Who that was not young and callow would be staring at her with all his eyes, and saying aggrievedly under his breath : ' Why did you not catch it ? You knew I meant it for you !' She looks back at him : a happy, red smile warming the face that men have often blamed as chill and high. ' I did my best ! ' ' What are you two gabbling about ?' cries Sarah restlessly, cutting ruthlessly short a sentence of her betrothed's. 'Are you saying anything about me ?

Ah ! I see you both look guilty ! ' Neither undeceives her. A quarter of an hour later the two girls are bowling homewards to their grandmamma and their apartment in the Liittichau Strasse, leaving behind them the King, the Queen, the Graf von S. in his barouche, and the brave soldiers, both blue and green. Belinda has bent her delicate head, and is laying her cheek most tenderly against the blossoms' in her sister's lap. ' Let me beg of you not to mumble them,' cries Sarah politely, interposing a prohibitory hand. ' You always seem to have an idea that flowers ought to be eaten.' Then, seeing a quite unaccountable flash of indignation in her sister's eyes, adds generously : ' If they were not all wired, as I see they are, I would spare you an orchid or two.' ' Would you indeed ! ' replies Belinda ironically. But further than this her magnanimous silence does not give way. BELINDA. 8

Chapter II

A night has passed since the Professor's damaged violets bit the dust. It is now morning, and at the window of her bedroom in the Liittichau Strasse, with the sash flung high (to the deep astonishment of the German Dienstmadchen, to whom the smell of an unaired room, further flavoured with departed sausages and old beer, is as dear as to the rest of her nation), Belinda sits, the sun warming her hair, and the tart air freshening her face. She is looking fixedly out on the pear-tree in the garden-scrap below — the pear-tree that a week ago was pinchedly struggling into flower, that has been daily whitening ever since, and now seems to stagger under its burden of blossom-snow. Yet I doubt whether she sees it. 'Is it possible?' she is saying to herself, almost with awe — the awe that a great joy gives — ' is it possible ?' A slight noise makes her turn her head and see the tall white door open to admit her sister. 'Are you alone?' says the latter, cautiously peeping. ' Of course I am alone,' replies Belinda crossly. ' Am I in the habit of receiving in my bedroom?' This not particularly gracious answer is, however, quite enough for Sarah, who forthwith enters, and steps friskily across the sunshiny parquet, looking as clean as a cherry, as pink and white as a May-bush.

BELINDA. 9 ' The moment is apparently not a propitious one,' she says, laughing, and drawing a chair close up to her sister's knees ; ' but as my need is sore, I am afraid I cannot afford to wait for a better. I have come, my Belinda, to ask a favour of you.' ' Then you may go away again at once,' replies Belinda with surly decision, ' for I tell you, once for all, I will not grant it ! ' 'What ! refuse even before you hear what it is?' cries the other, lifting those brows which nature, slightly abetted, perhaps, by a pair of tweezers, has drawn in the thinnest straight line across her wrinkleless forehead. 'Do you think I do not recognise that well-known formula?' asks Belinda severely. 'I am sure that I have heard it often enough. It means that you expect me to tell Professor Forth that you have every intention of jilting him !' ' You word it coarsely,' replies Sarah composedly ; ' but I have heard worse guesses.' ' Then I absolutely and flatly refuse the office !' rejoins Belinda firmly. 'Why you engaged yourself to him in the first instance ' 'Why indeed?' interrupts the other, casting up both eyes and hands to heaven. 'You may well ask !' ' And yet,' pursues Belinda, regarding her sister with an air of stern wonder, ' when you wrote to announce your en gagement to me, you said that you did not know what you had done to deserve such happiness ! ' 'I did not — I did not !' cries Sarah, reddening for once with genuine shame, and putting her fingers before her face. ' Do not say it ; it is not true !

It was not about him ; it was one ofthe others !' ' One of the others!' echoes Belinda, scornfully curling up her fine nose. ' How pleasant and dignified to be bandied about ! One of the others !' BELINDA. 10 ' It may not be dignified,' replies Sarah impudently, though under the lash of her sister's words even her throat has crimsoned, 'but it is not so very unpleasant !' 'You know,' continues Belinda sternly, 'that I took a solemn oath to wash my hands of your affairs last time, when I had that painful scene with poor young Manners, and he walked round the room on his knees after me, clutching my skirts and sobbing !' 'He always sobbed!' interjects Sarah hard-heartedly. ' I have seen him cry like a pump !' ' I have already told six men that you had only been making fools of them,' continues the elder sister, contemptuously passing by her junior's lame attempt at palliation. 'Six !

Come now, gently.' ' I repeat, six ! In fact, I think I am rather understating it ; and I will fiot tell a seventh ! ' ' A seventh ! ! ! ' ' If you imply that I am exaggerating, I am quite willing to count. First ' — checking off on her long white fingers, beginning with the thumb — ' first, young Manners !' 'We have had him once already !' 'Second' — travelling on to the forefinger — 'Colonel Greene. Poor fellow ! he sobbed too !' ' More shame for him !' — brazenly. ' Third, the young clergyman whom you picked up at the sea-side, and whose name I never can remember.' ' No more can I!' cries Sarah, with animation. 'How strange ! Pooh ! What was it again ? Did it begin with aB?' ' Fourth,' continues Belinda relentlessly, arriving at her third finger — 'fourth, old Lord Blucher, who was so deaf that I could not get him to understand what I meant' But Sarah's light mind is still on the track of her lover's lost initial.

BELINDA. 1 1 ' I am almost sure that it began with an L ! ' she says thoughtfully. ' Fifth ' — extending her little finger — ' Mr. Brabazon.' 'You counted him before !' ' I did not ! ' ' I think you did.' ' I am sure I did not ; but, to make certain, we will begin all over again. First ' — returning to her thumb — ' poor young Manners ' 'Stop!' cries Sarah loudly, putting her fingers in her ears, and abandoning the search for the young clergyman's name. ' I will grant that there were six, sixteen, sixty — anything to put an end to that intolerable arithmetic of yours ! ' Belinda is preparing to begin on her other hand, but at this concession she lets them both drop in her lap, and ceases counting. There is a silence.

Sarah's roving eyes are despondently fastened on the white earthenware stove, and Belinda's large grave gaze is straying through the window, taking in at once the poetry of the blooming pear-tree and the prose of the Bohemian railway, and the ugly straight stuccoed houses beyond it. 'What could have been your inducement in this case,' she says presently, turning with a judicial air to the offender, ' I am quite at a loss to conjecture ; it certaintly could have been neither pleasure nor profit !' ' It certainly could not,' answers Sarah, sighing profoundly and wagging her head from side to side ; ' anyone who saw him would exonerate me from the suspicion of either motive ! ' 'Such a conquest could not have even gratified your vanity !' pursues Belinda relentlessly. 'Yes, but it did !' replies Sarah, abandoning her dispirited pose, and speaking with an animation which shows that she does not altogether relish this wholesale depreciation of BELINDA. 12 her latest victim ; 'you may not think much of him, but I can assure you that he is considered a great luminary at Oxbridge.

At the house where I met him they could not make enough of him ; it seems he has written a book upon the Digamma !' 'And what is the Digamma?' asks Belinda curtly, totally unmoved by this evidence of erudition. 'You do not know what the Digamma is?' cries Sarah, lifting her eyebrows, and speaking with an air of pompous astonishment. 'Well, then,' breaking into a laugh, and even demeaning herself so far as to be guilty of the faintest possible shadow of a wink, ' to tell you a secret, no more do I!' 'You cannot live upon the Digamma, I suppose!' says Belinda grimly, not much infected by her sister's mirth. ' I should be very sorry to try !' still laughing. 'Then I am quite as much in the dark as ever !' rejoins the other, inexorably grave. ' Well, it was not only the Digamma, of course,' says Sarah, frowning in reluctant retrospect ; ' though, as far as I could make out, that appeared to be his cheval de battaille ; but he was looked upon as a genius generally.

You should have seen how they all sat at his feet — such feet ! — and hung on his words. There was one girl — she was at Girton ■ — who waited on him hand and foot ; she always warmed his great-coat for him, and helped him on with his goloshes !' 'Well?' ' Well, you know,' impatiently, as if stating something too obvious to be contradicted, 'one would not have been human if one could have stood calmly by, and looked on. I rushed into the fray. I too warmed his great-coat and put on his goloshes. ■ Ugh ! what a size they were ! I could have lived roomily and commodiously in one of them !' 'Well?' BELINDA. 13 ' Well, indeed ! I do not call it at all well ! I call it very ill!' ' There I have the good fortune thoroughly to agree with you.' 'Well, as I was saying,' resuming the thread of her narra tive with a heavy sigh, ' I rushed into the fray.

I was successful, dreadfully successful ! You know the sequel, as they say in books.' ' I do not know the sequel,' replies Belinda sternly ; ' all I know is that I will have neither part nor lot in it ! ' ' No ? and yet,! fawningly, ' it would come so much better from you.' ' Better or worse, it will not come from me.' ' When you break it to them,' sidling up with a cajoling air, ' it does not hurt them nearly so much ! I declare I think they almost like it !' No answer. A silence cut into only by the uncouth shriek of a departing engine. 'Why at least did you drag him here?' asks Belinda presently, still opposing a front of granite to her sister's blandishments. ' I am afraid I cannot quite defend it,' replies Sarah, in a small voice, and again hanging her head ; ' but, to tell the truth — which indeed I always try to do — times were slack !

There was nobody else much just then, and I thought I could at least make him fetch and carry !' Then, with an acute change of key and access of emotion : ' I was grossly deceived ; he is too disobliging to fetch, and too much afraid of over-fatiguing himself to carry ! ' Another pause. A quick wind-whiff tosses through the window a little storm of pear-petals, and throws them on Belinda's lap. ' Now if the cases were reversed,' says Sarah, kneeling down at her senior's elbow, and folding her hands with an BELINDA. 14 extremely insinuating gesture of supplication, ' if you were in difficulties ' ' I never am in difficulties.' ' I do not see much to brag of in that, for my part ! ' springing to her feet again. ' No more do I,' replies Belinda drily. ' I am never in difficulties, as you call them, because I never have any temptation to be ; perhaps if I had I might ; but as you are well aware,' stifling a sigh, ' I have not, and never had, any charm for men !' ' It is very odd, is not it?' says Sarah, not attempting to combat this assertion, but looking at her sister with an expression of compassionate curiosity. ' I cannot think why it is.

I have often wondered what the reason could be ; sometimes I think it is your nose !' ' My nose ?' repeats Belinda hastily, involuntarily glancing round in search of a mirror, and putting up her hand to her face ; 'what is the matter with my nose ?' ' There is nothing the matter with it,' rejoins Sarah, still speculatively gauging her sister's attractions ; ' perhaps it would be better for you if there were ; it is only too good ! I cannot fancy any man venturing to love such a nose ; it looks too high and mighty to inspire anything short of veneration !' ' It is not so very high either !' cries Belinda hurriedly, drawing from her pocket a very fine handkerchief, and applying a corner of it in careful measurement to her tra duced feature. ' There ! ' marking off a small portion with her thumb ; ' only that much.' ' It is not a case of measurement,' says Sarah gravely ; ' I have seen noses several hands higher that were not nearly so alarming.

It is a case of feeling ; somehow yours makes them feel small. Take my word for it,' with a shrewd look, ' the one thing that they never can either forgive or forget is to be made to feel small.' BELINDA. 15 Belinda laughs, a little bitterly. ' It is clear, then, that nothing short of amputation could make me attractive, and I am afraid even that might fail ; but I do not know why we digressed to me at all.' ' I had a little plan,' says Sarah, her airy gaiety giving sudden place again to gloom at the returning thought of her own sorrows ; ' but you have frightened it away.' ' What is it ? ' very shortly. 'Well, you know,' instantly resuming her wheedling air and her coaxing posture at her sister's knees, ' that we are going to drive to Moritzburg to-day, you and I. Of course Professor Forth,' with a slight grimace, 'will be on duty there to meet us ; equally of course, young Rivers, who seems to have contracted a not altogether reprehensible habit of dogging our steps, will be there too.' 'Well?' averting her head a little. ' Well, I thought — but you are not a pleasant person to unfold one's little schemes to — I thought that for once you might be obliging, and pair off casually with my dear, and take an opportunity of softly breathing to him that nobody — I least of all — will try to stop him if he effects a graceful retreat to Oxbridge and the Digamma ! ' 'And meanwhile you?' in a rather low and suppressed voice, and with face still turned away. 'And meanwhile I,' replies Sarah, jovially, 'killing two birds with one stone — keeping the coast clear, that is to say, and marking my gratitude for that haystack of gardenias — shall be straying hand-in-hand through the vernal woods with ' But that sentence is destined never to be ended.

Belinda has risen from her seat with a gesture so sudden and violent as almost to destroy the equilibrium of the girl so caressingly propped against her, and has thrust head and neck out of the window, as if, even in this fresh room, she gasped for air. BELINDA. It is a moment before she speaks; and even then her voice sounds odd. 'I have already told you that I utterly decline to be mixed up in your entanglements. I forbid you to mention the subject to me again.' ' Whew-w-w-w !' says Sarah by and by, in a low key, when she has recovered the breath reft from her by stupefaction at her sister's procedure, enough to speak at all ; remaining seated meanwhile in stunned isolation on her lonely stool. ' Forbid ! What an ugly word ! After all,' speculatively, ' I am not much surprised that men are frightened at you.