Chapter XVIII
Viscount Berwick, in a magnificent equipage drawn by four milk white horses, or four of raven black, I forget which, led the way towards Brighton, followed by the more humble vehicles containing his cook, his plate, his frying-pans, and other utensils. Soon afterwards Julia and Sophia started in a neat little chariot drawn by two scraggy black horses, parce que Mademoiselle Sophie voulait faire paraître les beaux restes de sa vertu chancelante. Lord Worcester I sent down alone, that he might hire a house and have everything in readiness.
"But, if I once join my regiment I shall not be allowed to return," Worcester observed.
"No matter," said I, "my maid and myself can find our way to Brighton with perfect safety."
"I can ride ten or fifteen miles to meet you," Worcester said, and having made me promise again and again that he might expect me at a certain hour on a certain day, he took his leave and also set off for Brighton.
"I have a great mind not to go," said I to myself after Worcester had left me. However, my word was passed and my maid had already begun to pack my trunks.
"Pray do not go," said my wild, young tormentor, Augustus Berkeley, who came upstairs without permission, just as we were ready to start. "I have so sworn to Worcester that he would not be successful."
I laughed.
"What do you laugh at, you tiresome creature?" asked Augustus.
"At your vanity, in supposing that none but the most immaculate could refuse you."
"Why, I am a better-looking fellow than Worcester, at all events," said Augustus.
"True," I replied, "but then you do not like me half as well."
"All nonsense, nobody loves you better than I do, only I have the misfortune not to be a lord."
"I have been at least as civil to you, as I ever was to the Marquis of Sligo, the Prince Esterhazy, and many others."
"Well," said Augustus, "however that may be, I will never forgive you for going to Worcester."
"It is a very hard case," I observed, "but I cannot help it."
Augustus left me sulkily, and we were soon on our way to Brighton. I was just growing tired of my journey and of the society of my maid, who, probably, was as much bored with mine, since she had fallen fast asleep, when I observed the figure of an officer or private wearing some uniform, which looked at a distance like that of the Tenth Hussars, galloping towards us. As it approached it grew a little more like the young marquis, and yet, somehow or other, I could not reconcile it to my mind that he should wear regimentals. I had forgotten that circumstance and felt disappointed. A gentleman always looks so much better in plain clothes. I was soon put out of suspense by his kissing his hand to me.
Love is sharp-sighted. In another minute or two the Marquis of Worcester was blushing and bowing by the side of my carriage. He told me that he had got a house for me in Rock Gardens, where he had left his footman, Mr. Will Haught, to get all square, that being the man's favourite expression. The said Mr. Will Haught was a stiff, grave, steady person of about forty. He always wore the Beaufort livery, which was as stiff as himself, and used to take his hat off and sit in the hall on a Sunday, with a clean pocket-handkerchief tied about his head, reading the Bible, offering thus to the reflecting mind these two excellent maxims: "Respect God, but do not catch cold." I enter into all these particulars, by way of recommending him to Alderman Goodbehere, I think it was, who promulgated similar sentiments about a cold church, though I have from a sense of propriety omitted his first expletive epithet.
This Mr. Will was commander-in-chief of Worcester's servants. He had indeed been bred in the family and was, I believe, the Duchess of Beaufort's footman before his lordship was born, and though he wore a livery he had since been raised to the rank of under butler by the Duke of Beaufort. Why he was dismissed from that most honourable post, to follow the fortunes of his noble young master, I cannot tell, unless indeed, Her Grace, touched and deeply impressed by the pious and respectful manner in which Will Haught was in the habit of binding up his temples on a Sunday with his clean pocket-handkerchief, while reading the Bible, had employed him as a spy, to watch over the morals of her hopeful first-born. Be that as it may, we found Will quite as busy in settling everything for my comfort, as though I had been the duchess's chosen daughter-in-law, for whom he was making all square, upon the square, which means, I believe, in the way of honesty.
The coachman, Mr. Boniface, had also had the honour of driving the duchess in auld lang syne. We found him by no means so officiously polite and attentive as Mr. Will Haught: on the contrary, he was fast asleep, with his nice little vielle cour cotton wig all awry. We found a groom in the Beaufort livery at the door, waiting for his lordship's horse, which he handed over by the bridle to the under-groom, and the under-groom sent a soldier with it to the stable.
"What a bore it will be to have all these lazy porter-drinking men in one's house," thought I, with very unmarchioness-like humility: but then I never set up for anything at all like a woman of rank.
Will Haught introduced my maid to a female servant, whom he had himself hired, and whom he desired to show her mistress's apartments to my woman. As to Lord Worcester, he was so excessively overjoyed at finding all his fears and dread of losing me at an end, that the moment he could contrive to get rid of Will Haught, he pressed my hand, first to his trembling lips and next to his heart, and then he burst into tears, which he however, from very shame, dried up as soon as he possibly could, and with the genuine feelings of affection and hospitality, he asked me if, after the fatigue of my little journey, I should prefer passing the night alone.
"And where are you to sleep?" said I.
His lordship informed me that he had a good bed in his dressing-room.
I then told him that, if he would permit me to pass this night alone, he would see me in excellent temper and spirits to-morrow. "At present everything is strange here, therefore, if I am a little melancholy, you must not, my dear Worcester, fancy it proceeds from want of regard for you."
It was impossible not to be reconciled to Worcester, while he thus acceded to all my wishes, reasonable or unreasonable. A good lesson this, for many a fool who thinks to win a woman's heart by crossing all her desires.
An excellent dinner was well served, and, while we partook of it, his lordship informed me that Lord Berwick, whom he always called Tweed, wished to have dined with us accompanied by Sophia and Julia; but he had not ventured to invite them without first ascertaining whether it would be agreeable to me.
Lord Worcester's fine person looked remarkably well in the elegant evening uniform of the Tenth, and I was so touched and won, by being allowed to have my own way with such perfect liberty, in the house of another person, that, when he handed me to the door of my bed-chamber, and there took a most tender and affectionate leave of me for the night, I was almost tempted to regret that I had expressed a desire to pass it in solitude.
"It is a nice room," said I, "and the fire burns cheerfully. Do you think there are any ghosts in this part of the world?"
Worcester however was too modest in his idolatry, and had too great a dread of giving offence to me, to take my hint.
He merely reminded me that he was close at hand; and I had but to touch my bell, to bring him in an instant to my side.
The next morning I was awakened by Lord Berwick's odd voice calling to Worcester.
"I have brought you some prime apples, which came from my country house this morning, and Sophia wants you both to dine with me to-day. In short, she will not come unless you do."
I hurried on my dressing-gown, and assured Lord Berwick that I should meet her with pleasure.
Lord Worcester said that he ought to be at parade; but declared, no matter what might be the consequence, that he could not and never would leave me again.
After breakfast, his two grooms rode up to the door with three horses: one of them was a delightfully quiet-looking lady's horse.
"Who is to ride that one which is without a saddle?" I inquired.
Worcester made Will Haught bring down from his dressing-room one of the most beautiful, easy side-saddles I ever beheld, richly embroidered with blue silk.
"Will you ride, Harriette?" asked Worcester. "If so, I hope you will approve of this saddle of my choosing, which shall always be kept in my dressing-room, that no one may use it for an instant, except yourself."
We took a very long ride, and were joined by my former acquaintance Colonel Palmer, who pressed me very politely to accompany Lord Worcester to dine at the mess-room.
"Not to day," said I; "certainly next week, with Worcester's permission."
Colonel Palmer fixed on an early day in the week, and kindly assured us he would get the mess-dinner kept back for an hour, knowing how fond Worcester was of late hours. He then ventured gently to hint something about Colonel Quintin's displeasure at his having failed to attend parade that morning.
"I shall scold you," continued the colonel, addressing me, "if this happens again."
Worcester and I rode about the country together till it was nearly time to dress: the under-groom, who was waiting at my door for my horse, held out his hand for my foot, to assist me in dismounting, while his master was taking leave of Colonel Palmer; and I was just going to accept his assistance when Worcester, in much agitation, desired him to desist, and never attempt such presumption again.
I assured his lordship that I should not like him a bit the better for dirtying his hands or his gloves with my muddy shoes: but he was peremptory.
Lord Berwick treated us most magnificently; but Sophia, the gentle, dovelike Sophia, was become so very cross and irritable to his lordship, that it was disagreeable to everybody present.
After dinner we played at cards; and, when we had concluded one of the most stupid evenings possible, Worcester and I took our leave.
The next morning Lord Berwick called on me, to entreat that I would consider my sister's welfare and persuade her to place herself under his protection.
"The annuity I propose giving her," continued his lordship, "of £500, shall be derived from money in the funds."
"And so you really are at last caught, my lord," said I, "fairly caught in love's trap? Now I am rather curious to learn what particular happiness you expect to enjoy with a girl who, though she is my sister, I may say, as you and everybody know it as well as myself, never showed any character but once in her whole life; and that was in her unequivocal dislike of you?"
"I do not mind that," answered his lordship, "and, by giving her whatever she wants, she may perhaps get over her dislike."
"Is it her beauty then which has won your heart?"
"In part," answered Berwick; "but chiefly the opinion I have formed of her truth. I could never live with a woman whom I must watch and suspect. Now, I am disposed to believe implicitly every word Sophia utters."
"And with good reason," I interrupted him, "for I am convinced that Sophia seldom, if ever, tells an untruth; and certainly there is something very candid and fair in her unqualified acknowledgment of dislike towards you, since she is evidently fond of all the good things your money can buy, and I think she particularly likes a good dinner."
"And therefore," Lord Berwick resumed, "as her friend you ought to advise her to come to me."
I told his lordship that I really could not overcome my reluctance to interfere in such matters.
"I want her to decide," said his persevering lordship, "that I may give orders about buying the lease of a house for her in town, and furnishing it."
In the evening we all went into Lord Berwick's private box at the theatre, and were very merry, with the exception of his lordship, who sat down quietly at the very back of the box, where he could neither see nor hear. Sophia did not once take the slightest notice of him. For my part, I asked him several times, if he would not exchange places with Lord Worcester; but he assured me that he disliked seeing a play more than sitting in the dark.
"Sophia ought to chat with you then, since she chooses to favour you with her company."
"Oh, I do not like to be talked to," said Lord Berwick.
Every morning of my life I was entertained with his lordship's prosing about Sophia.
"I do not think," said he, "that Sophia will ever willingly deceive me."
END OF VOL. 1
* * * * *
THE MEMOIRS OF HARRIETTE WILSON
WRITTEN BY HERSELF
VOLUME TWO
LONDON
EVELEIGH NASH
FAWSIDE HOUSE
1909
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
VOLUME TWO
SOPHIA, SISTER OF HARRIETTE WILSON Frontispiece GEORGE BRYAN BRUMMELL *LORD ALVANLEY *THE MARQUIS OF WORCESTER
N.B.--The illustrations marked with an asterisk (*) are reproduced, facsimile, from the famous Deighton portraits
Chapter XIX
On the morning of the day fixed on for our dining at the mess-room, Lord Worcester received a severe reprimand from Colonel Quintin for neglecting the drill.
We sat down at least thirty at table, and I was the only lady in company. However, as I had my station near Colonel Palmer, and was not presented to any strangers, I enjoyed the same sort of liberty as I might have done at any table-d'hôte.
I was already acquainted with the present Duc de Guiche and several other officers. A very fine young man who had joined only a month previous was present, and, I remember, that nobody said a single word to him; but I have entirely forgotten his name. I inquired his history, and was told that he was a man of good fortune but of no family, as they denominate those who cannot boast recorded ancient blood in their veins. However, instead of complaining to the Prince, or calling out the colonel, he put a good face on the thing, and always came into the mess-room whistling. He was a very fine young man and, while he carefully avoided any appearance of making up to his proud brother-officers, was ever ready to prove, by his politeness in handing them salt, bread, wine or whatever happened to be near him at table, that he was not sufficiently wounded by their cutting to be sulky with them, neither was his appetite at all impaired by it. Of this fact nobody in their senses could entertain the smallest doubt.
The Duke of Clarence's and poor Mrs. Jordan's eldest son, Captain FitzClarence, I remember had a forfeit or a fine to pay, for coming to dinner in dirty boots, or something of that kind. He was indeed voted by the whole mess a very dirty fellow in his person, and one who evidently conceived himself so much better than his brother officers, from being the bastard of the Duke of Clarence. Everybody acknowledges him to be brave; but I certainly should take him to be about as heartless as any man need be in order to make his way in the world. He had a trick or two which used to make the officers sick, and he ate so voraciously that he well nigh bred a famine in the mess-room. On one occasion poor Captain Roberts, who happened to come in later than FitzClarence, got nothing but bubble-and-squeak in the dog-days.
Colonel Palmer scolded me very much indeed about Worcester's missing parade of a morning. I assured him that I had done and would do all I possibly could to make him more attentive. The colonel declared that, if he again missed the drill, he feared Colonel Quintin would act in a way to disgust Lord Worcester with the army altogether, and he should regret much his going out of the regiment.
As soon as we had left the mess-room, I told Worcester that he really must be at parade by eight o'clock to-morrow.
Worcester again promised, and again broke his word, for which he was immediately put under arrest, and desired not to wear his sword.
"By G--, if he vas de king's son, I vould put him honder arrest," exclaimed Quintin.
This was reported to Lord Worcester, who said it was the most vulgar and disgusting speech he had ever heard, adding: "What has a king's son or a duke's son to do with the usual discipline observed towards lieutenants in the army?"
When Colonel Palmer came to condole with Worcester, his lordship was a good deal agitated and confused. I passed my word to the colonel, that, if he would get Worcester's sword restored to him, I would accompany him to drill rather than he should miss it. The next morning I actually accomplished being up, dressed, and on my road to the barracks by half-past eight o'clock, accompanied by Worcester.
Will Haught, who was in a terrible bustle on this occasion, asked, "Where is Miss Wilson to wait during parade, my lord?"
"In my barrack-room," said the marquis.
"Why, my lord, there is nothing at all in it but a large trunk, and, you see, the room has never been put square like, and I should have wished to have got Miss Wilson a neat comfortable breakfast."
"Well, do your best," said Worcester, as we drove off.
I found Lord Worcester's barrack-room in a dismal state. However, though it was quite impossible for Mr. Will Haught to make all square, yet he procured absolute necessaries for my breakfasting every morning at the barracks. It was quite as much as we could possibly do to get dressed in time for parade; and breakfast at home was wholly out of the question.
Behold me now, regularly attending parade like a young recruit, dressed in a blue riding habit and an embroidered jacket or spencer worn over it, trimmed and finished after the fashion of our uniform, and a little grey fur stable-cap with a gold band.
From the window of Worcester's barrack-room I used to amuse myself reviewing our troops, but not after the fashion of Catharine of Russia. Sergeant Whitaker, teaching the sword exercise, used to amuse me the most. It began thus:
"Tik nuttiss! the wurd dror is oney a carshun. At t'wurd suards, ye drors um hout, tekin a farm un possitif grip o'th'hilt! sem time, throwing th'shith smartly backords thus! Dror!" Here the men, forgetful of the caution which had just been given them, began to draw. "Steady there! Never a finger or a high to move i'th'hed. Dror suards!"
This said Sergeant Whitaker was a highly respectable man no doubt, only rather solemn-looking or so; but that was all the better perhaps, as it inspired more respect among his motley pupils.
I fancy it was the sight of Worcester and me together, so Darby and Joan-like, that first put the good soldier in mind of matrimony. He certainly did cast many a longing glance after us, as we used to drive out of the barrack-yard. One morning in particular, he made a full stop when close to us, and his lips moved as though he had been about to address us, if Worcester's haughty glance had not frightened away his speech and made him, on second thoughts, honour us with no more favours than a mere military salute.
"There is something on Sergeant Whitaker's mind," said I, and Worcester laughed heartily at the idea.
We continued punctual at parade for more than a fortnight. Some of Worcester's friends generally joined us on our way from the barracks, to which place I frequently rode on horseback when the weather would permit.
Young Edward Fitzgerald, who is a cousin of the Duke of Leinster, on one occasion galloped after us, and addressed Worcester: "What do you think? there is a d----d old gallipot-fellow has been gossiping about you, and tells everybody he meets the story of your being put under arrest, and having your sword taken away from you for making such a fool of yourself about Harriette."
Worcester, reddening with indignation, said, "I must take the liberty of acquainting you, Fitzgerald, that the lady you call Harriette I consider as my wife; and, when I assure you that you will wound and offend me if ever you treat her with less respect than you would show to the Marchioness of Worcester, I am sure you will desist from the familiarity of calling her by her christian name."
Fitzgerald good-naturedly assured him he had spoken with his usual thoughtlessness.
Worcester now inquired who had been making so free with us.
"Why that stupid old Doctor Tierney is the man," answered Fitzgerald.
Worcester said he should call on him to desire he would hold his tongue.
"And," interrupted Fitzgerald, "confine his attention to his draughts and pills."
Worcester asked what sort of a man Tierney was, and if at all like a gentleman.
Fitzgerald did not recollect to have seen him.
I assured them I had known him of old, and that he attended me when I lived on the Marine Parade. He was a pedantic, disagreeable, affected fool, who visited his patients in leather breeches and topped boots. He had formerly made sentimental love to my sister Amy when she came over from France. She passed herself off on the amorous doctor, comme une grande vertu, on purpose to laugh at him. As to his vulgar wife, she was ugly and unattractive enough to disgust a man with the whole fair sex, since such unfair things formed part of it.
Lord Worcester, on that very day I think, accompanied by the Duc de Guiche--but I am not certain whether it was His Grace or another officer of the Tenth--paid his visit of ceremony to Doctor Tierney. I cannot repeat the conversation which passed, but I know the substance of it was that Worcester requested that he would not make his actions the subject of conversation, but mind his own business, supposing he had any to mind; and, if not, he had better advertise for it, instead of publishing anecdotes of persons with whom he was not likely to have the slightest acquaintance.
The doctor, as Worcester and his friend both assured me, duly apologised for having indulged himself in using the name of a marquis, in common with thousands of low-minded people who always love to talk of the great, and promised to do so no more.
Some time after this I received a long letter from my sister Fanny, to acquaint me with the absence of Colonel Palmer from Portsmouth on particular business, and of her intention of passing a month with me at Brighton: it being nearly five weeks since she had become the mother of a lovely little girl, and her physician having recommended the bracing air of Brighton for the recovery of her strength.
This was delightful news to me, and put me in high spirits as well as Julia, who loved Fanny better than ever she had before imagined it possible to love one of her own sex. Worcester also looked forward to Fanny's proposed visit with much satisfaction, as he had always, he assured me, felt the affection of a brother towards her.
Fanny's arrival was a holiday for us all. Lord Berwick hoped much from her extreme good-nature and obliging disposition. Sophia, between Julia, Fanny and myself, was the more certain of not being left tête-à-tête with her night-mare, Lord Berwick, and Julia, whose very friendship partook of passion, shed tears of joy when she pressed her friend to her heart. My affection was calm, for it was fixed, and shall be eternal, if eternity is to be mine, with memory of the past.
Fanny declared we should all become good horsewomen before she left Brighton. She was herself a most beautiful rider. Accordingly, the morning after her arrival beheld a cavalcade about to start from my door in Rock-gardens: it consisted of Lords Berwick and Worcester, Mr. Fitzgerald, two young dragoons, whose names I have forgotten, Julia, Fanny, Sophia and me. Lord Berwick was too nervous to trust himself on horseback, except on very great and particular occasions. I found much amusement in tickling up my mare a little, as I rode it close to his horse in order to put a little mettle into them both. It was rather wicked; his lordship declared he was not frightened for himself, but only for Sophia.
Lord Worcester took the opportunity to give Sophia a few instructions about holding her whip and bridle. Suddenly, when we were at least five miles from Brighton Sophia quietly walked her horse towards home, leaving us to proceed without her.
"What can be the matter with Sophia?" we all inquired at once.
Fitzgerald feared he had said something to offend her.
Lord Worcester and Fanny galloped after her, to ascertain what was the matter, and how she expected to find her way home alone.
"Oh nothing is the matter," said Sophia, very innocently, "nothing whatever is the matter, only he will go this way," alluding to her horse.
Lord Worcester's natural politeness was not proof against this, and he laughed loudly, as he led Sophia's horse towards the rest.
The whole party dined at my house, and Lord Worcester did the honours of the table with infinite grace.
When the ladies withdrew from the room they had a thousand questions to ask each other. Fanny took upon her to say to Sophia, that she conceived she was treating Lord Berwick very ill in accepting so much from him, unless she meant to live with him.
Sophia began to cry and I to laugh. Julia showed us some very romantic love-letters from Napier, whom she shortly proposed joining in Leicestershire.
Sophia, at Fanny's persuasion, now began to waver.
"Come," said Fanny, "what does it signify to you, whether your lover is old or young, handsome or ugly, provided he gives you plenty of fine things; since you know you are the coldest girl in all England?"
The gentlemen soon after came upstairs, and before the evening was over his lordship was led to hope, from what Sophia said, that, if he were to furnish an elegant house, she might probably be induced to inhabit it with his lordship sooner or later.
Some few days after this important business was decided, and Lord Berwick had written to his agent in town to engage a comfortable residence in some airy situation, as Lord Worcester and I were returning home from our ride, we met the brave Sergeant Whitaker, who this time was not to be brow-beaten from his purpose by Worcester's proud salute.
"My lord," said he, coming up close to Lord Worcester's horse, and touching his cap, "my lord, if you please, I wants to be married."
"What the devil is that to me?" Worcester observed.
"Well, my lord," continued the sergeant, looking sheepish, "you see, if you would just mention it to Colonel Quintin?"
"Very well," said Worcester, "provided it is my business, which is what I confess I was not aware of."
"Yes, my lord, it is your business I assure you, or I should not have gone for to take this here liberty."
"That is enough," said Worcester, and we rode on.
The Duc de Guiche and Fitzgerald joined us, and, while we were conversing together, the young cornet galloped past us: I allude to the one who had been universally cut ever since he joined, merely, I believe, because no one knew him, and all were certain that his birth was rather mechanical. The young man rode a very fine horse and appeared to manage him with tact and spirit. I think his name was Eversfield, or something a good deal like it.
"What a beautiful horse that lad is riding!" said the Duc de Guiche; "I wish I knew whether he would like to sell it and what he would ask for it?"
"I have a great mind to gallop after him, and inquire," observed young Fitzgerald.
"Pray do not," said Lord Worcester, "as he will certainly be offended. It will indeed be much too cool a thing to do to a stranger to whom none of us have yet spoken."
"Oh, never mind," said young Fitzgerald, "he is a good-natured fellow I dare say. I spoke to him yesterday to inquire who made his tilbury:" and off he galloped after Mr. Eversfield, who, in less than a fortnight from this time, became on excellent terms with them all: which proves that, with perfect evenness of temper and good-nature combined, a man of high independent spirit cannot fail to gain the goodwill of everybody around him.
In about a month or six weeks Lord Berwick had fitted up a very nice, comfortable house for Sophia in Montagu Square, and Sophia, after obtaining his lordship's promise that she should sleep alone, at least for the first week or two, accompanied his lordship to London.
A few days of their departure, Worcester was again addressed by the amorous sergeant: "My lord, respecting my little private affair. I should be much obliged to your lordship if you would be so good as for to take it in hand."
"Certainly," said Worcester, galloping off, to avoid laughing out loud in the man's face.
Meeting Colonel Quintin on our way home Worcester, to get the sergeant's little affair off his mind, rode up to him, and, after saluting him, he, in some confusion, mentioned that Sergeant Whitaker wanted to be married very bad, provided the colonel should not object to it.
"You moste inquire de caracter of de yong voman," said Quintin, shrugging up his shoulders.
"I, sir!" exclaimed Lord Worcester, in evident surprise, which proved his ignorance of military duties.
"Yes, my lord," continued Quintin, "I sall troble yow to make de moste strict inquiry about de yong voman; and partiguler, vor her morals."
Worcester bowed, and rode towards home.
It is impossible to do justice to all the delicate attentions I received from Lord Worcester during nearly three years. They never relaxed; but continued to the hour of our parting exactly as they had begun. One day, when I was obliged to have a back double-tooth drawn, he turned as pale as death, being absolutely sick with fright: and long afterwards he always wore the tooth round his neck. If for only ten minutes he lost sight of me, by my walking or riding on a little faster than himself, he was in such agonies, that, as I returned, I was addressed continually by private soldiers of the Tenth, who assured me my lord was running after me all over the country in much alarm; and, when at last he overtook me, his heart was beating in such evident alarm, as was, even to me who had been tolerably romantic in my time, almost incredible! He flatly refused every invitation he received, either to dinner-parties, balls or routs, and for more than six months he had not once dined away from me. His uncle, Lord Charles Somerset, who, I believe then commanded the district, was growing very angry, and threatened to inform his brother the Duke of Beaufort, as he feared we were really married. It was, as Lord Charles said, ridiculous, in a man of Worcester's high rank, to seclude himself quite like a hermit. "At all events," continued the worthy uncle, "I hope you will not fail to be here on my birthday next week." Lord Worcester promised to make an effort for the birthday, while he frankly told Lord Charles that he should be always miserable in any society without me.
When Worcester returned home and related the conversation to me, I begged and entreated him to comply with his uncle's desires, as to his birthday at least.
"My dearest Harriette," said Worcester, "having bound myself to you for my life, for better or worse, and with my eyes open, I feel that we two make but one in our faults, and I hate to go to any place where you may not accompany me."
I assured him that I had no desire to be invited; because I had no longer health to enjoy society; and, in short, I would not rest till I had obtained his promise that he would attend his uncle's engagement.
When the day arrived, Worcester said he could not endure my dining alone with that stiff Will Haught, who would not know how to serve me with what I liked, standing behind my chair.
"Well, then you shall give me my dinner first," I replied.
For this purpose I dined earlier than usual. As soon as I had finished my dinner I gave him a gentle hint.
"You have no time to lose. Your pretty new yellow boots, with the rest of your magnificent full-dress regimentals, Will Haught has spread out to great advantage in your dressing-room, et vous serez tout rayonnant!"
"And why am I to be dressed up there, while the person for whom alone I exist, or wish to live an hour, is left in solitude? Why am I to be a slave to Charles Somerset? I will not go, let the consequence be what it may," said Worcester.
Worcester's carriage now drove up to the door.
"My lord, you have not a minute to lose," eagerly spoke Will Haught.
"Put up the carriage, and bring me some cold beef," answered his lordship.
"What will you say to your uncle?" I asked.
"He be hanged!" was the reply.
At past ten o'clock Lord Charles sent down a groom on horseback to inquire for Worcester, and state that the ladies waited for him to take his part in the quadrilles, which he had studied for that night.
Worcester ran up into his bedroom, and called out from the window, after putting on his night-cap, that he was ill, and in bed, and desired he might not again be disturbed at so late an hour.
It would be tedious to attempt relating all, or even one twentieth part, of the tender proofs of love and affection which Worcester was in the daily, I may say hourly, habit of evincing towards me. His lordship has often watched my sleep in the cold, for half, nay sometimes, during the whole of the night, sitting by my bedside. On an occasion when I was induced to consult a medical man about a trifling indisposition, which was not in the least alarming, Lord Worcester wrote the doctor a most romantic letter, enclosing a fifty-pound note, and declaring that his obligation to him would be eternal if he could contrive to be of the slightest use to me. He would send fur shoes and fur cloaks after me in hot dry weather; because one could never be certain that it would not rain before my return. He took upon him all the care of the house, ordering dinner, &c., from having once happened to hear me say that I did not like to know beforehand what I was to eat.
When the Prince Regent, who then commanded the regiment, came down to the Pavilion Worcester was in despair; for he saw no possible means to avoid visiting His Royal Highness. The dinner, which was given expressly for the officers of the Tenth Hussars, he was obliged to attend. On that occasion, which was the first of his passing an evening from home, after giving me my dinner he sighed over me when he took leave, as though it had been to go to the Antipodes.
Lord Worcester's rapture on his return knew no bounds. "My dear Harriette," said his lordship, "the Prince's band at the Pavillion was so very beautiful, that it would have been impossible for me, who love music to excess, not to have enjoyed it; therefore, as I abhor the idea of enjoying anything on earth of which you cannot partake with me, I went into a corner, where I was not observed, to stop my ears and think only of you. I must now tell you that the Prince has given me a general invitation to go to him every evening, and I have settled my plan, to avoid it. I intend to sham lame, and practise it at home till I can limp very decently and naturally, and then I will wait upon His Royal Highness and tell him that I have a sprain which keeps me in constant pain, and confines me to the house."
Worcester began to practise on the spot, and being in all things a most excellent mimic, particularly when he took off Lord Charles Somerset, or his lordship's brother, whom he always called Cherry-ripe John; why, I know not, for the man is as pale as a ghost.
On the following day, Worcester limped famously, although he had nearly betrayed himself by finding the proper use of his legs from very ennui, when he was, for the third time, addressed by Sergeant Whitaker on the Steyne "respecting of his private consarn."
"How am I to inquire the character of your sweetheart, for God's sake?" Worcester asked the sergeant, with much ill-humour.
"Why, my lord," answered the man, "you will please to inquire of Dr. Tierney, as she has been living in his family, as cook, my lord."
Lord Worcester immediately paid a visit to the doctor, from whom he learned that the young woman was clean, honest and trustworthy.
"Sir," said Lord Worcester, as soon as he could find Colonel Quintin, "I have inquired the character of the young woman, and she is very good, sir."
"Good! for what, pray?" asked the colonel, forgetting all about Sergeant Whitaker's little private consarn.
"Oh, sir," continued Worcester, almost ready to laugh, yet, in some confusion, "she is good, sir, I believe, for everything; at least Doctor Tierney says she is a very steady, clean woman."
"And vat sal I do vid dis clean voman vat you talk to me about?" asked the colonel impatiently.
"Oh, sir, you are not to do anything with her; only you desired me to inquire the character of the young woman Sergeant Whitaker wishes to marry."
"Ah true--reight--vel--veri vel, I have no objecshuns; only tell him he is von grate fool to his pains."
Away galloped Worcester quite delighted to get rid of the sergeant's "little private consarn."
"My lord, I wants very bad to be married," said Sergeant Whitaker once more, a few days after Worcester had obtained the colonel's permission.
"Colonel Quintin has no objection," answered Worcester, and the sergeant respectfully begged leave to return his lordship ten thousand thanks.
"But the colonel says you are a great fool, for your pains," added Worcester.
"That is no odds, my lord," replied Whitaker, as he saluted Lord Worcester, and then hastened back to his fair one, in order to acquaint her that his little private affair was arranged, and just as it should be.
* * * * *
On s'ennui de tout! In the course of time, I grew tired of this tête-à-tête, particularly as Worcester showed symptoms of sulky displeasure, whenever any of the officers wanted to join us in our rides. On two occasions he was furious! Once was when Colonel Palmer kindly assisted me off my horse; another, when he learned that I had sent a little note to that gentleman about borrowing a book, or some such trifle. Finding that this circumstance weighed on his mind, in spite of all I could say or do, I despatched a second note to this effect:
"DEAR COLONEL PALMER,--I believe you have a real friendship for Worcester, who has taken it into his wise head to make himself perfectly miserable about the forlorn note I wrote to you. Candour I conceive to be the best cure for jealousy; so do pray come to us this evening and show Worcester my two notes.
"Yours, dear sir, very truly, "H.W."
Down came Colonel Palmer, trotting on a little ugly pony, his laced jacket covered with an old, short, brown great coat, and a shabby round hat, while the rain was dripping down his face.
"My dear fellow," said the colonel, "I would not for worlds spoil your comfort. I have loved myself, and know what jealousy is. I shall be wretched, if----"
And he bustled about to search for my notes, while his nose was so red, and the worthy man looked altogether so consolingly ugly, so like a disguised second-rate harlequin, with the silver lace occasionally glittering, as one caught a glimpse of it under his little, old brown coat, and then such a thing on his head doing duty for a hat!
Worcester burst out a-laughing, in the midst of the colonel's most energetic defence.
"I beg your pardon, Colonel Palmer, upon my honour, I do; but you really look so very eager, and so very odd and serious, in that little, tight, old coat and hat, that for the life of me I cannot help laughing."
Palmer, however, continued as energetic as ever, till he had received Worcester's assurance upon his honour and soul that he was quite satisfied.
"Then do come and ride with us, Colonel Palmer, to-morrow," said I, "since Worcester is satisfied that you have no designs against his happiness; for, really, we have had such a long tête-à-tête we have not a word more to say to each other."
Worcester still declared that his confidence in us both had never been shaken, only he was melancholy to think I grew tired of our tête-à-têtes while, for his part, he never desired nor conceived any more perfect happiness than passing every hour in the day alone with me.
In spite of my gratitude, which he yet believed in, because I proved it not only in words but by all my actions, yet I did want a little varied society, that I might not fall into a lethargy; so when Fanny went to join Colonel Parker in town, I begged hard for, and at last obtained, a week's permission of absence, from one who could refuse me nothing.
"You shall go at all events, and I know I can confide in your honour," said Lord Worcester; "but I will not despair of obtaining leave from the colonel to accompany you."
The better to effect his purpose he went to Quintin with a box of cigars under his arm. Quintin accepted the cigars with perfect good-will; but, in answer to his lordship's next request, for leave to pass a week in town, the answer was,--
"No! no! my lord, you must drill."
Worcester had a great mind to have asked him to return the cigars. Nevertheless, he kept his promise of permitting me to accompany my sister Fanny to London.
We found Sophia established in a nice house in Montagu Square, which Lord Berwick, or rather his upholsterer, had furnished with much taste.
Nous lui demandâmes si elle faisait, encore, lit à part?
Elle répondit que non.
"And what sort of a man is Lord Berwick?"
"Oh, he is a very violent man indeed."
Sophia insisted on Fanny remaining her visitor for a week, which invitation, as Parker had no fixed residence in town, she gladly accepted. Sophia had at her command a very handsome equipage, in which we all three drove out on the day after my arrival.
We called on sister Paragon, whom we found greatly agitated.
"What is the matter?" we both asked at once.
"Oh," said Paragon, "do you hear the screams of that infant?"
"Yes, how shocking! It is not one of yours, however," said I, as I counted her pretty little family, who, as usual, were all seated close to her side.
"They proceed from my landlady's child, whose mother insists I have half killed it, and that it never was in such pain before. In short, she declares she apprehends a convulsion fit."
"Why, what can you have done to the poor child?" Fanny inquired.
"I merely administered one of Inglish's excellent aperient Scott's pills to the dear infant," Paragon replied, calmly.
"That perfectly accounts for all these cries," Fanny observed, and further declared that she had herself been put in perfect torture by the only one she had ever swallowed.
"Do you presume to judge of Inglish's Aperient, who have swallowed but one?" said Paragon, with dignified contempt; "why, it requires at least fifty boxes of it to pass downwards before you can properly decide on the merits of this invaluable medicine! In the meantime, the bowels must be severely pinched into obedience. Everything depends on the force of habit. Now there is my little Mary for instance; the dear little child has become so accustomed to a pain in her bowels that, if by any accident I put her to bed without a Scotchman, she always awakes in low spirits."
"Nevertheless, you must excuse my ever swallowing another to the end of my natural life," said Fanny.
Paragon advised her to make her will, assuring her her that she would answer for the life of no person who had not learned by habit to digest a Scotchman. "Read what King Charles said of them," continued Paragon; but Fanny declared that not even King George himself, with the opinions of all the Spartans and philosophers to boot, should make her believe that pain was no evil, however people might be accustomed to it.
From Paragon's we drove to Julia's. She told us that she had made Lord Berwick pay her down several hundred pounds in ready money, for having interceded with Sophia and persuaded her to live with him.
"Well," said I, sighing, "you have a large family, and, I suppose, it is what we must all come to. However, I conceive myself, as yet, rather too young to take up this new profession of yours, Julia."
Julia defended her conduct, by assuring me she had not taken it up but for my sister's real interest: as a proof of which she declared that she had strong reason to believe it was Lord Berwick's intention to marry Sophia.
Sophia said she would not have him.
"And why, pray?" we asked.
"Because" said Sophia, "because--I think it will be very shocking to swear never to love but one man."
We all dined in Montagu Square. Lord Berwick appeared to be perfectly happy, although he scarcely ever opened his lips; but the little he did say was chiefly on the subject of cuckolds and cuckolding. He wondered how many men had been cuckolded that season in London without knowing it.
I assured him I neither knew nor cared.
"What has become of Lord Deerhurst's valuable jewels?" said I to Sophia, by way of changing the conversation.
"Oh, dear me, I entirely forgot my jewels."
Lord Berwick earnestly entreated to have a sight of them, and was greatly amused at the charming proof of simplicity his beloved had evinced, in mistaking such leaden trumpery for valuable trinkets. Sophia begged to be allowed to return them to Lord Deerhurst with a polite note, and Lord Berwick having presented her with writing materials she wrote as follows:
"Sophia presents her compliments to Viscount Deerhurst. Has the honour of returning him his valuable jewels with due thanks, and all the gratitude that he has a right to expect from her.
"Montagu Square."
The jewels and letter were sealed up, and despatched to the noble viscount on that very evening.
After dinner, his lordship's discourse turned on marriage: the pith, meaning, and spirit of which was to show cause why Sophia ought to become Lady Berwick. He could never rest till he had made the excellent, deserving Sophia his lawful wife.
Sophia again declared she would not have him: but before I left the house she was graciously pleased to say that she would give the subject due consideration.
"This house is so beautifully fitted up, even to the very attics, that it would be quite a pity to leave it," said Fanny.
"It cannot be helped," replied Lord Berwick, "we must sell it; for, of course, Lady Berwick must inhabit my family-house in Grosvenor-square."
Chapter XX
The next morning, I received a very long letter from Lord Worcester.
He abused his uncle, Lord Charles Somerset, for his malice in having written to His Grace of Beaufort on the subject of our connection, in a way to alarm him excessively. Worcester, in consequence, received very severe letters both from his father and mother, insisting on his immediately leaving me unprovided for and without the smallest ceremony. These harsh unfeeling letters excited in Worcester a spirit of defiance, such as mild remonstrance never could have produced. He repeated his solemn assurances to me that no power on earth, not even my inconstancy, could destroy his everlasting attachment, or induce him, however it must destroy his repose, to leave me. He deeply regretted his not being of age, that he might immediately make me his wife, and then naught could separate us save death. He reminded me that the period of his becoming of age was not very far distant, and in the meantime if they pressed him our marriage was not impossible. He begged his most affectionate regards to his sisters, Fanny and Sophia, and implored me, unless I would for ever destroy his happiness on earth to promise to become his wife, and remain with him for ever, &c.
I immediately answered Lord Worcester, begging him not to irritate his parents unnecessarily. I did not touch on the subject of our marriage; but desired him to rest satisfied with my faith, and that I would never willingly cause him a moment's pain, while I had reason to believe in his affection.
In conclusion, I informed him that he might expect me at Brighton without fail, in three days from the date of my letter.
* * * * *
Amelia was now living very near my house in town, and, as I really wanted to see the handsome young Campbell, I availed myself of her invitation to a small party before I left town. I ventured to return home from her house at about eleven o'clock at night, alone, because the distance was very trifling; but the moment I had left my sister's door I observed a tall, dark, and somewhat, as I thought, wild-looking young man following me. I felt unusually alarmed, and trusting to the lightness of my heels I began to run as fast as I possibly could. The man kept up to me, by running also. I had not felt so frightened for some years, and dared not look back till, absolutely breathless and ready to sink on the steps, I knocked loudly at my own door.
The man who was close behind me had never once opened his lips. His dress was respectable, and his features were rather handsome. He had an immense quantity of curly, wild, black hair, which fell remarkably low about his eyes and throat. His countenance was very dark and as pale as death. It was impossible to observe the expressive singularity of his eyes without terror: they seemed to look straight forwards at something beyond what others could see. It struck me that he possessed supernatural quickness of sight, while, at the same time, he appeared blind to the objects immediately surrounding him. When I first observed him he stood beneath a bright lamp, and I shall never forget the impression his countenance made on me. I had no man-servant in town: my femme de chambre was the only human being I had left in the house.
No sooner was the door opened, than I was closely followed by this horrible man, who closed it after him without having spoken a single word. I apprehended that he might be a robber, who proposed cutting my throat on my very first attempt to give alarm or call for assistance.
I am a notorious coward while looking forward to any danger; but I will do myself this justice, that, whenever it is, or appears, actually before me, and past all remedy except such as I have to hope from my own exertions or presence of mind, I then become armed with such a decided character of courage as would not disgrace my friend Wellington himself.
When my dumb tormentor had forced himself into my house and banged-to the street-door, my nerves became all braced by desperation, and my ideas were clear and collected. "If I am to die, God forgive all my faults," said I mentally; "but I will live on if I can:" and I fixed my eyes for an instant on the man of terror, to try to read his designs. The odd, quick, black eye, fixed on nothing but air, however, left me doubtful. One thing only I had decided upon from the very first moment, that to accomplish an intrigue was not his object in following me. He did not attempt to pass upstairs without me, but stood waiting my decision, with his back leaning against my street-door. "He is either a maniac escaped from confinement, or a robber," thought I, "and, in either character, I take it for granted he conceals a sharp knife or dagger about him. If a robber, he will stab me, if I make a noise, or desire my maid to call for help. Madmen, on the other hand, are generally cowards to those who act with firm courage.
"Now to decide," thought I, fixing my eyes on the man once more. "It must end in a guess after all." This glance took in the man's whole person as well as his face. The latter appeared to be of wonderful muscular strength; but his bones were well covered with fat, which methought did not look much as though he had been leading the vagabond life of a house-breaker. His clothes were good, and seemed to have been fairly worn. From his person I once more raised my eyes to his face. The cunning fearful expression of those wild black orbs decided me--he is a madman, and about to strangle me: and my only chance is in affecting to be one of his keepers.
"Follow me, Sir!" said I, fiercely.
The man followed slowly and meekly into the drawing-room, where he stationed himself near the fire-place with an air of indecision, nor once attempted to approach me.
"The gentlemen who are here to attend on you will be downstairs in half a second," said I, seating myself quietly near him, and taking up a book, as if, God help me, I could distinguish a line of it.
Then I addressed him in a whisper, "They are coming; you have perhaps yet time if you wish to escape them; the street-door is unbarred; but you have not a second to lose; they are going to put on the chain." The man, without having uttered a single word, darted furiously downstairs and, when I heard the street door slammed with violence after him, joy, or I know not what, overcame me, and I fainted.
This adventure hastened my departure for Brighton, where I arrived a day sooner than the one on which I had led Lord Worcester to expect me. Worlds could not have tempted either me, or my femme de chambre, to have passed another night alone in that house. Lord Worcester was overjoyed beyond description at my unexpected return. He would not enter into my idea as to the man who had frightened me away from London being mad.
"Why then, was he so awfully dumb?" I asked, "and why did he not approach me?"
Worcester declared if he could once find him he would make him speak, and holloa too; but this, from the muscular strength of the stranger, I much doubted. However there was little probability of his lordship's discovering who or what the man was; and in a few days the subject was not spoken of, though for years I remembered it with feelings of horror.
Chapter XXI
The next day, as we were riding together over the Downs, I saw a deserter taken; and was so affected with the poor wretch's look of distress as to have burst into tears; at which Worcester and Fitzgerald laughed heartily.
This however did not prevent my writing a laboured letter, which had cost me three copies, to try to melt Colonel Quintin's heart in his favour. I could not help fancying, as the man was led past us handcuffed, that the expression of his countenance might be interpreted thus, when he fixed his eyes on my face:
"Lord Worcester will sit on the court-martial which will decide my fate. You can do much with him; so have pity on me."
I saw a tear in the corner of the poor youth's eye. He could not brush it off with his hands poor fellow, they being pinioned. It was a fine clear day; and the sun shone brightly on the sorrowful captive's face, as though in mockery of his distress: and I am to be pampered, and indulged in every wanton luxury of life, while my miserable fellow creature, merely for having sought that liberty so dear to all, is to be bound and lashed till he faints under the cruel torture; and Worcester, the tender, soft, luxurious Worcester, shall have a voice against him!
Worcester appeared to indulge me, in what he evidently considered my excess of weakness, merely because he was passionately in love with me, though he did not in the least sympathise in my feelings: and yet he had seen no war to harden his heart against the sufferings of his fellow creatures! I remembered to have heard told in the regiment, of the young cornet, whom everybody had cut, having nearly fainted the first time he saw a man flogged, yet nobody ever accused this youth of want of spirit or mettle. I had never liked Worcester so little as on that day. Not being personally acquainted with Colonel Quintin, and knowing that he was rather unfavourably disposed towards me from an idea that I prevented Worcester from attending to his military duties, the letters I addressed to him were anonymous. I of course entertained few hopes from an anonymous epistle; but it was the best I could do for the deserter, I never acquainted Lord Worcester with the circumstance of my having addressed Colonel Quintin on this subject.
As soon as I had secretly despatched my letter, it was time to go to the barracks, where I had received a particular invitation from Colonel Roberts to dine, Palmer being absent. It was on a Sunday, and as we passed through the hall we saw Will Haught, dressed up in his usual sabbath-costume, with a yellow handkerchief bound tight round his head, à l'ordinaire, whenever he read the Bible.
"Good heavens," said I to Worcester, "what a fright the man makes of himself! Why I should think God would like him better in his pretty silver-laced hat." This was very wicked perhaps; but, as the sin of such a harmless little remark does not strike me, I am not ashamed of repeating it.
Cornet Eversfield looked exactly as usual: the only difference I observed in him was that he had left off whistling, and for a very simple reason I imagine, that of having discovered amusing companions in men who had previously thrown him entirely on his own resources, pour passer le temps.
The next morning, Monday, Worcester was obliged to attend the court-martial, which sat to try the poor deserter. I absolutely refused to leave my bed on that morning.
Lord Worcester informed me that he, the Duc de Guiche, and----but, as I am not certain, I will not name the third, had sentenced the man to receive five hundred lashes!
"And what says Colonel Quintin?" I asked eagerly.
"I have just seen the colonel," answered Worcester, "and acquainted him with the sentence."
"Well," I exclaimed in much anxiety.
"Why, Colonel Quintin has astonished us all, by declaring that he should not inflict one quarter of the sentence pronounced by the court-martial against the young soldier."
"What reason did he give?"
"Merely," answered Worcester, "that the man was young in the first place, and, in the second, that he hated the system of flogging altogether, believing it to be a punishment most of all calculated to harden the men."
"I will forgive Colonel Quintin his dislike of me for that one sentiment," said I.
In order to quiet the anxiety of the Duke of Beaufort, I absolutely insisted on Lord Worcester going occasionally into society; but, when he did comply with my earnest desire to this effect, he always left me with the reluctance of a school-boy, on setting off to his dull, dry, daily school.
One day, when Worcester dined with Lord Charles Somerset, he said that several carriages would be passing my door on their way from his uncle's, so that he should not require any equipage of his own to return in. It was a rainy, wretched night, and I was greatly surprised when Worcester, in his full dress regimentals, without a cloak or a great coat, came home on foot absolutely wet to the skin!
"Lady Aldborough offered me a seat in her barouche," said Worcester, "and we were altogether six, just about to drive from the door, when that widow, Lady Emily ----, I forget her other name, who, everybody says, is dying for a husband, begged that we would make room for her too, and she got into the coach without waiting for an answer. 'I must not crowd you all,' said her ladyship; 'indeed I prefer sitting on Lord Worcester's knee, to putting the ladies to the least inconvenience.'"
Worcester's virtue having taken the alarm, he insisted on its being quite impossible for him to intrude an instant longer, and rather than submit to such contamination as to consent that a fine woman should sit on his knee, he preferred submitting his best and gayest uniform to the pelting storm; for which want of gallantry he was rated by Lady Aldborough for the next fortnight.
We continued some time longer at Brighton. The duke appeared somewhat appeased at learning that Worcester went a little more into Society; perhaps, from an idea that he was growing tired of me, or, may be, he had discovered that mild measures had most effect on his son.
In spite of all I could say or do to prevent it Lord Worcester got horridly in debt. He was naturally extravagant, and everybody cheated him. As for myself, I might have been welcome to have brought away, in his lordship's name at any time, as many diamonds as either Wirgman or any other jeweller would have given him credit for; and yet, I can say with truth, that I never accepted a single trinket from him in my life, except a small chain and a pair of pink topaz ear-rings, the price of which was altogether under thirty guineas. I even did my best to prevent his buying these, which were brought to me, as the man said, by the desire of Lord Worcester, merely to inquire if I liked them. His lordship being from home, the man said he would call for them when he returned.
When I saw Worcester, believing it was not too late to return the trinkets, and knowing him to be very poor, I told him that I never wore such things, and should esteem it a favour if he would not buy them. His lordship assured me that it was now too late to return these; but I never suffered him to buy any more.
With regard to our house-expenses, I could have regulated them for, at least, half the cost; but Worcester absolutely refused to allow me to trouble my head about them. Once I did venture to remark when he was about to borrow a thousand or two at enormous interest, that, since the pious Will Haught always carried out of our house daily provision, not only for himself, but his wife, and put down, in his pious accounts, more porter than any man could drink in his sober senses, I did not exactly perceive the fun or amusement of paying him very high weekly board-wages; but Worcester having slightly hinted this circumstance to the holy man, he cried and blubbered till he was almost in hysterics, and I declared myself quite unable to contend with a footman of such fine nerves. Still it provoked me to see the man to whom I was bound by gratitude, for his apparent devotions to me, teased and dunned to death, when I knew everything might have been all square by proper economy, but it is really incredible how young, careless noblemen are used between their tradespeople and their servants.
When the Duke of Beaufort discovered at what interest Lord Worcester was borrowing money, he threatened the money-lender with prosecution for fraud on a minor, if he did not sign a receipt in full for the bare sum lent; and these terms were accepted.
All this might be very pretty and very fair; still my own opinion is that a bargain is a bargain. A man tells Worcester that he may have a thousand or two on certain terms, or he may apply elsewhere, or go without it, whichever he pleases. Lord Worcester, who was nearly of age, and of very mature manners, obtained the sum, to take up a bill, on which, as he declared to me, his father's credit depended. We cannot take upon ourselves to say that the lender did not put himself both to trouble and inconvenience, in order, at a very short notice, to put the desired amount into Lord Worcester's hands; then, when His Grace of Beaufort's credit has been preserved by his son's punctuality, His most honourable Grace takes advantage of the mere accident of his son wanting a few months to be of age, to make him break his solemn word of honour, pledged to one who had relied on that honour. Yet the Duke of Beaufort passes for a very honourable man!
Now, as we are upon honour, I cannot avoid mentioning the very dead set which was made upon Lord Worcester about this time by the Honourable Martin Hawke, to induce him to play. As well might he have endeavoured to move rocks and mountains and make them dance quadrilles at Almack's! Which proves to us that, where one passion is strong enough in the breast of a man or a woman to occupy his whole soul, he becomes dead of course to every other.
The opera-season had begun six weeks before, and I had engaged a very desirable opera-box; but nobody cares for the opera the first six weeks of the season, and we, who are very fine, generally lend our boxes to our creditors, or our femmes de chambre, till about March or April. We were however tired to death of Brighton and old Quintin, and Worcester was waiting and watching for a good opportunity to address Quintin on the subject of leave of absence, having predetermined to cut the army altogether in case he was a second time refused.
"I never meant to make the army my profession," said Worcester to me one day, "neither did my father desire it; but he conceives that every young man is the better for having seen a year or two of service. I had no decided objection to a little active service, as I hope, sooner or later, to prove, with your permission: for again and again I swear to be governed by that only, for ever and ever, so help me God! &c. My object, in teasing and hurrying my father as I did, to purchase a commission, I frankly tell you was, because, since my figure is better than my face I hoped the becoming uniform of the Tenth would render me a little, though a very little, more to your taste!"
"There!" said Worcester, one morning to me, as we were riding past the barracks, "look at that young soldier: if you pleaded for him and shed tears at the idea of his being flogged, jealous and mad as I should have been, I must have applauded your taste."
I assured Lord Worcester that his sarcasms could not wound me on a subject where my heart so entirely and decidedly acquitted me: and I set about my examination of the man, whose beauty was to wash away all the sins any of our frail sex might be inclined to commit with him. He wore the dress of a private of the Tenth Hussars; his age might be three or four-and-twenty; his height full six feet; and he was just as slight as it was possible to be without injury to his strength, or the perfect manliness of his whole appearance. His person appeared to me, at the first glance, what Lord Worcester afterwards assured me it was generally allowed to be by the whole regiment--faultless, and moulded in the most exact symmetry. It reminded one of strength, activity, and lightness, all at once. His feet and hands were peculiarly small, taper, and beautiful. In short, persons, at first sight, were generally too much struck with this young man's person to pay any particular attention to the beauty of his countenance, taking it, I suppose, for granted, that nature had not been so peculiarly lavish of her kind favours as to have awarded such a head to such a body. The man was so much accustomed to see people stop and look at him, that he merely smiled, not affectedly, but with an appearance of good-nature, joined to some little degree of archness.
Worcester called the man to his side, that I might judge of this celebrated model who had even attracted the admiration of majesty. His Royal Highness the commander having taken much notice of him, and Colonel Quintin being really proud of having such a magnificent-looking being in his regiment, always made him come forward alone, before the troops, that he might be the more conspicuous. The soldier, by his deep blushes, I fancy, rather guessed Lord Worcester's motive in speaking to him.
Nature, determined, for once in her life, to show the world what a man ought to be, had given the soldier the finest, full rich, soft tone of voice which could well be imagined. He could neither read nor write, yet, either this man was naturally a gentleman, or his perfect beauty made one fancy so; for it was impossible to think him vulgar. His hair, which absolutely grew in full ringlets, was of the very finest silken quality. It was not quite black, for there was a rich glow of dark reddish brown on it; then for his eyes--it was almost impossible to ascertain their exact trait, they were so bright and staglike. I pronounced them decidedly purple, and was laughed at for my pains; but there was nothing equivocal about the colour of his teeth--two even rows of pearls, not too small. His mouth, around which many a dimple played, was large enough to add to that manliness of expression, for which he was so celebrated. There was a peculiar character about the upper lip; one might have imagined that it quivered with the ardour of some warlike command, just delivered; but then the under lip was so brightly red and pouting, it ought to have been a woman's. His skin, of the very finest and most delicate texture, was pale, clear and olive coloured; but he was always blushing. His moustachios, of which he was not a little proud, were like the hair of his head. There was much about the face of this young man, which reminded one of Lord Byron: and yet, beautiful as he was, like his lordship, supposing him to have been of the same rank in life, he would never have inspired me with passion. This however, was very far from being the case, generally speaking. Many stories of his prowess and of his conquests were in circulation.
The Duc de Guiche mentioned to us one day at dinner having met the handsome Hussar, unusually smart and much perfumed, just as he was stepping into a post-chaise. His dukeship insisted on knowing where he was going. The man hesitated, and appeared in much confusion; but the duke was peremptory.
"My lord,--a lady--" said the soldier, at last, deeply blushing.
"If that is the case," said De Guiche, "remember to bring back some positive proof of the lady's approbation; the honour of the regiment is concerned, mind."
The man on his return produced a twenty-pound note!
This Hussar spared no pains to set off his beauty. He had often been accused of curling his moustachios, but he steadily denied it, and referred his accusers to the persons most likely to have discovered the secrets of his toilette. Rouge he certainly did not wear, for he was always pale, save when he blushed. He was an idle fellow, and often neglected his business in the stable. Once, the officer of his troop threatened him with a court-martial; but, when Colonel Quintin heard of what was in agitation, he lifted up his hands and eyes, as he said,--"Oh, mine Got! How voud it be in possibility to flock such fine fellow as dat? and such goot-tempert fellow too!"
* * * * *
One morning, about a week after our meeting with the handsome soldier, I was a good deal affected by witnessing from my window the simple procession which was passing.
The atmosphere was dense and heavy, while the rain fell in torrents on the heads of the mourners, and the wind whistled mournfully among the trees.
"There goes a poor soldier to his last home," said my maid, who happened to be sitting in the room with me.
"He hears it not, poor fellow!" said I, "nor wind nor weather can disturb him more!"
As they passed on slowly by my window, I observed that the funeral was attended by one of the officers of the Tenth Hussars, to which regiment the dead soldier had been attached. I looked again. It was the Marquis of Worcester, and then I recollected his having mentioned something to me, in the morning, about having a soldier's funeral to attend. His lordship looked unusually melancholy, and for my part, though I always considered this a mournful sight, I had never been so affected by a soldier's funeral until now.
"It is the dull weather which disorders our nerves," said I, brushing away a tear. "What is all this to me? Men must die, and worms will eat them."
I was going from the window, when my attention was arrested by the sight of a wild, beautiful, young female, who rushed on towards the coffin. Her hair was dishevelled, and her eyes so swollen with tears, that one could but guess at what might, perhaps, be their natural lustre.
Will Haught at this moment brought in my breakfast.
"Do you know anything about this funeral, or that poor young female who has just followed it?" said I to him.
"It is the beautiful young soldier, who died two days ago of a brain fever, madam. That girl's name is Mary Keats. She was his sweetheart, and he loved her better than any of them great ladies as used to make so much fuss of him."
This man had stood before me, with all his god-like beauty but a few days past! Methought I yet saw that mantling blush, and the fine expressive curve of that quivering lip!
Feeling the tears again rushing to my eyes, I ran out of the room.
When I returned to the drawing-room, Lord Worcester was sitting in a very melancholy attitude, leaning on his hand.
"What are you thinking about?" I asked.
"Why, I was considering, suppose it were my next turn to be cut off thus suddenly in the flower of my youth, that I should not like it!"
There was something so very comical and natural about what Worcester said that, melancholy as I was, and little as his speech seems of the risible kind, it certainly much amused me for an instant.
His lordship looked at me in surprise, and declared that he was astonished at my want of feeling.
I assured him, with truth, that I had been most particularly shocked by Will Haught's account of the young soldier's death.
The man, as I learned from Worcester, while in the stable two days after we had seen him, complained of a pain in his head, and applied for leave to go immediately to the hospital. From his unusual paleness he was admitted at once. Worcester visited him on the following evening, and found him raging under the influence of a brain fever. The muscles and veins of his finely turned throat were all swollen, every nerve was agitated, and his heart and pulse were beating so violently, that the former was visible at a distance. The man, one might have fancied, was endued with a double portion of life, energy, and animal strength. His late pale cheek was now flushed with a bright crimson glow, and the disorder of his fine, dark, auburn ringlets seemed but to increase that beauty which could not easily be disfigured. As the poor young maniac struggled and wrestled in the arms of the men, who vainly endeavoured to confine him by means of a strait waistcoat, he offered some of the finest models for the statuary's art which could well be conceived. His beauty, as I have been told by several who witnessed this poor youth in his last moments, acquired a character of more sublimity from the disorder of his brain; and all that supernatural, glowing ardour, that immense bodily strength,--the youthful fire of that sweet countenance--the eye which flashed such wild indignation on his tormentors--that frame, like quicksilver, sensitive in every nerve and fibre--the boiling blood rushing through those veins--all this was to become a mass of cold senseless clay before the next revolving sun!
Chapter XXII
In a few days after this event we were on our road to London, where I soon learned all the most minute particulars of my sister Sophia's marriage with Lord Berwick from Fanny, who, with Colonel Parker, was still in town. Sophia, I am sure, never had it really in her contemplation to refuse so excellent a match; yet she had for several weeks delayed the ceremony, merely as I imagine for the honour and glory of having it said of her afterwards that Lord Berwick had obtained her fair hand not without difficulty. The thing had struck Fanny in the same light; and therefore, in view of hastening what certainly was a desirable event, she one day remarked to Sophia that she had observed a degree of coolness in his lordship's manner for several days past, and that she really fancied he was considering how he should get off the marriage honourably.
Sophia reddened in evident alarm.
Fanny affected not to have remarked her sister's anxiety. "It is lucky, my dear Sophia," she went on, "that you do not wish to be Lady Berwick, otherwise this change in my lord's sentiments might have caused you the greatest misery."
"Oh, no; not at all; not in the least, I assure you," hastily answered Sophia.
"My dear," continued Fanny, "why do you take such pains to convince me of what you know I have never had cause to doubt? On the contrary, since I have now such good reason to believe that the match has become equally disagreeable to both parties, I propose, in order to spare your pride the slightest wound, that you commission me to declare off for you in the most decidedly unequivocal terms, declaring in your name, that you will leave him for ever, on the very first moment that he renews the disagreeable subject."
"Why no,--I think--you had better--better say nothing about it," said Sophia, with ill-disguised anxiety and evident confusion.
"Why, pray?" inquired Fanny, affecting surprise.
"Why--why--the fact is, it would seem----"
"What would it seem?"
"Seem--seem--so very ungrateful."
"Ingratitude is to be sure a heinous sin," said Fanny shaking her head, and laughing incredulously.
The next day, Lord Berwick received Sophia's permission to write to her father, stating his wish to become his son-in-law, and further begging my father to be present at the ceremony which, with his permission, was to take place on the following day, for the purpose of giving his daughter away, that fair lady being under age.
My father was a proud Swiss, rather unpopular, and a deep mathematician. We were never in our youth either allowed to address him or speak in his presence, except in low whispers, for fear of driving a problem out of his head. He valued his sons according to the progress they made in that science. For the girls, he felt all the contempt due to those who voted plus x minus y a dead bore.
He was remarkably handsome, with white teeth, expressive eyes, and eyebrows which used to frighten us half out of our senses.
Lord Berwick, as well as many more, has often declared himself to have been much struck with that noble air for which my father was particularly distinguished.
The good gentleman was of course flattered on his own account, and probably thought, with the man in Bluebeard, that,--
'Tis a very fine thing to be father-in-law To a rich, and magnificent, three-tailed Bashaw.
But I do not mean to say he did not rejoice in his daughter's welfare for his daughter's sake too, as that would be to decide harshly of any father, much less of my own. We will therefore take it for granted, that, on this day at least monsieur mon papa se trouvait d'une forte belle humeur; nay, my little sisters have since informed me that, when one of them, having had the misfortune to upset a box full of playthings, which made a violent noise in the room where he was, as usual, puzzling over a problem, just as they expected little short of broken heads, and were all running into the most remote corners of the room, until of the opposite wall they seemed a part, he surprised them to the greatest possible degree, by saying, "n'importe, petites imbéciles, viennes m'embrasser!"
Sophia was to be married at St. George's church.
My father had a neighbour, who once insulted him with remarks about the profligacy of his daughters, and, though the man had made very humble apologies, and my father had shaken hands with him, yet he never forgot it. This neighbour was a tradesman in a large way of business, who lived in a very respectable style of comfort. He had several daughters, the ugliest perhaps that could possibly come of one father. There was no such thing as getting these off anyhow, by hook or by crook, by the straight paths of virtue, or the intricate road of vice. Not that I mean to say the latter had been attempted; but of this I am certain, if it had been, it must have been ineffectual.
On the eve of Sophia's marriage, as soon as my father had received Lord Berwick's polite invitation, he went to pay his good neighbour a visit.
"How do you find yourself this evening, my very excellent neighbour?"
"Purely, purely, thank you."
"And your amiable daughters? Any of them married yet? Any of them thinking of it, hey?"
G---- shook his head. "Husbands, as you well know, are not so easily procured for girls of no fortune."
"Indeed, sir, I am not aware of any particular difficulty. You know my daughter Paragon has long been respectably married to a gentleman of family; and, as for my daughter Sophia, I shall, please God I live, witness her wedding to-morrow morning before my dinner."
"Who is she to marry, pray?" asked G---- with eager curiosity; and which, my father answered, by putting Lord Berwick's letter into his hands, to his utmost astonishment; and, before he had at all recovered from his fit of envy and surprise, my father took his leave, saying that he had many preparations to make for the approaching marriage.
Next morning, as my father was stepping into the carriage which was to convey him to Lord Berwick's house in Grosvenor Square, well-dressed and in high spirits, he was gratified by the sight of his neighbour, who happened to pass his door at that very moment.
This man, naturally envious, and having hitherto looked down with pity on my father's misfortunes in having such handsome daughters, or, at least, he affected to do so, although, in his heart perhaps he had not despised his children the more, supposing it had been the will of heaven to have bestowed on them countenances less forbiddingly ugly, this man, I say, could not, under the pressure of existing circumstances, help giving some vent to his spleen, exclaimed, "Don't hurry! don't break your neck!" and then passed on, ashamed as well he might be at the littleness of his envy.
Just before Sophia's marriage, Lord Berwick spoke to her, to this effect:
"My beloved Sophia, you are about to become an innocent, virtuous woman, and therefore you must pass your word to cut your sisters dead for ever and at once. I allude particularly to Fanny and Harriette."
"Yes--certainly--very well;" was Sophia's warm-hearted answer.
"And you will oblige me by neither writing to them nor receiving any letters from them."
"Very well; then I will give them up altogether," said Sophia, with much placidity; and yet we had never been, in the slightest degree, deficient in sisterly affection towards her; and Lord Berwick expected to inspire with affection this heartless thing, who, for a mere title, conferred on her by a stranger she disliked, could at once forget the ties of nature, and forsake for ever without an effort or a tear her earliest friends and nearest relations; and not because she was more virtuous than they were, since, on the contrary, she had begun her career before other girls even dream of such things. She had intruded herself on a cobbler at thirteen, thrown herself into the arms of the most disgusting profligate in England at fourteen, with her eyes open, knowing what he was; then offered herself for sale at a price to Colonel Berkeley, and, when her terms were refused with scorn and contempt by the handsome and young, she throws herself into the arms of age and ugliness for a yearly stipend, and at length, by good luck, without one atom of virtue, became a wife.
This from me may appear to strangers like personal pique, but all who know me will acquit me of having ever, in my life, coveted the society of fools. I certainly, being naturally affectionate, should never have been induced to forsake my own sisters while they were kindly disposed towards me: and in short, had a man to whom I was to be married requested anything so unnatural of me, I should have disliked him ever afterwards for the wish, so far from complying with it. Yet I do feel irritated against Lady Berwick I confess it: but it is for her slights, or what I fancy was her neglect of my dear departed mother. As for her having forgotten me, our indifference being mutual, I am no longer at all disposed to find fault with it. I should in like manner have ceased to love my mother, had she but felt it in her power, or had it for an instant been in her contemplation to forsake me for ever.
Nothing particular occurred on the day of Sophia's marriage, which passed off very quietly, and Sophia ate a hearty dinner after it, which was what usually happened to that interesting young lady every day of her life at about six o'clock.
Sophia, having the command of more guineas than ever she had expected to have had pence, did nothing from morning till night but throw them away. She would go into a shop and ask for two or three Brussels veils--send a beggar's family to an expensive tailor to be clothed--build a little island on a pond--buy a dressing-box of fifteen hundred pounds price, and all within a week. Lord Berwick was often reminded that this silly girl would ruin him without comfort or benefit to herself; but his answer was, that he could not endure to scold the innocent creature, but must trust to her common sense for shortly finding out that all this extravagance could not last, even if he possessed four times as large an estate.
Sophia, finding that money was poured into her lap just as fast as she could ask for it, and seeing no end to it, thought that nothing could be more easy to practise than generosity. She was however nearly four months in the habit of throwing away money by wholesale before she made an attempt to be of the least service to her mother, though she knew well how harassed that dear parent was with her very large family. At last she amused herself at her country-house by sending her mother cart-loads of dishes, plates and saucepans, proposing to furnish her a house.
Lord Berwick's agent having sold Sophia's house in Montagu Square for two thousand pounds, and presenting it to her when she really knew not well what to do with it, Sophia sent it to her mother. I mention this circumstance merely as a matter of justice to a little, uninteresting being, whom I rather dislike than otherwise, and will repeat it as often as I have an opportunity to do so.
Lord Berwick, in less than twelve months after his marriage, was so involved, as to be under the necessity of making over the whole of his property to his creditors, for I do not know how many years.
Our young sister Charlotte, then about seven years of age, was a sweet, lovely little creature, and promised to be one of the finest dancers of the age. She had been some time a pupil of Monsieur Boigera of the Opera House.
It was not the profession my mother would have preferred, but Charlotte promised to do wonders in it, and, with her striking beauty, there could have been little doubt of her marrying well from the stage; and a mother, who has fifteen children to provide for, cannot do as she pleases.
Charlotte had already made her début as Cupid, and delighted everybody who saw her, when Lord and Lady Berwick, seized with a fit of pride which they nicknamed virtue, begged leave to snatch the child from such a shocking profession, and they undertook to bring her up and provide for her under their own eyes. My poor mother joyfully closed with this apparently kind offer, and immediately made Charlotte forsake the profession, which, with her talents, must have made her fortune, with or without marriage, to go and live with Sophia.
The child, when at her country seat, became a great favourite with the wife of Lord Berwick's brother, Mrs. Hill, and all went on charmingly, till Charlotte began to look like a woman, and one of such uncommon loveliness, as to attract the attention of all the elegant young men in the neighbourhood. Sophia could not endure this. Even at the Opera, many a man has preferred offering his arm to Charlotte; nay, it was said, a country gentleman of very large property was expected to make Charlotte an honourable proposal. This was too much. Poor Charlotte, after having forsaken the profession in which she must have succeeded, to be bred up in luxury among nobility, who looked on her as half an angel, was bundled off to a country school, there to earn her daily bread by birching young, vulgar misses, and teaching them their French and English grammar, and there has poor Charlotte been forced to bloom unseen, wasting her sweetness on the desert air ever since.
Patronage is a fine thing!
I should like to know what Charlotte says about it as she sits darning her cotton stockings on a Saturday night.
* * * * *
My time in London passed on pleasantly enough at this period, as I went wherever I pleased. The only drawback to my comfort was that the Duke of Beaufort did nothing but write and torment Lord Worcester to leave me, while Worcester's love seemed to increase on the receipt of every scolding letter. He daily swore to make me his wife, and professed to be wretched, whenever I desired him not to think of marriage.
Her Grace of Beaufort's letters to her son, which I always had the honour of perusing, were extremely eloquent on my subject. The duchess, unlike Lord Frederick Bentinck, was fond of hard words. "This absurd attachment of yours for this vile profligate woman, does but prove," wrote this noble personage, "the total subjugation of your understanding."
In answer to this nervous paragraph, one of Her Grace's epistles, I beg leave to correct the word subjugation. Not that there is any harm in it, on the contrary it is a very learned kind of a full sounding expression and looks handsome in a letter, but then it is too learned to be so ignorantly misapplied. Her Grace, in her zeal to be fine, must have mistaken it for something else, since I can offer an unanswerable reason why her hopeful son, Worcester, could not have his understanding subjugated even by the wonderful charms of Harriette Wilson, and that in four simple words:--He never possessed any.
Her Grace, in her infinite condescension, then goes on to state that the said Harriette Wilson is the lowest and most profligate creature alive. In short, so very bad, that she once sent for her own immaculate brother!--alluding to my having ordered up that worthy man to Marylebone Fields, one morning before breakfast. After continuing this most ladylike style of abuse in detail, enlarging on my former little sins and peccadillos, she writes, in a postscript: "Of course, Worcester, your own sense"--she forgot that it was subjugated--"will teach you to conceal this letter from the person of whom I have spoken so freely."
"It is very hard upon me!" said I one day to Lord Worcester, after reading one of Her Grace's flattering letters, "I was well disposed towards you, and towards your family for your sake. I have constantly refused to accept expensive presents from you, and I have saved you from gambling, and various other vices and misfortunes to which you would otherwise have been, shall I say, in humble imitation of Her Grace, subjugated? I have refused to become Marchioness of Worcester over and over again, believing that such a marriage would distress your family, and, in return, your duchess-mother, with the usual charity of all ladies who either are or pass for being chaste, insists on my being at once turned adrift into the streets and entirely unprovided for."
At last there came another very severe letter from the Duke of Beaufort, insisting on Lord Worcester immediately joining him at his seat near Oxford.
Worcester declared that he would not go, while I insisted that he should not disobey his father.
"Do not irritate His Grace," said I; "but, on the contrary, strive to set his mind at rest, by assuring him that I wish you too well to marry you. True, the duchess is very abusive, rather vulgarly so perhaps, all things considered; but I have no wish to deserve harsh language from your mother, in order that I may think of it with calm indifference."
Worcester spoke very handsomely on this subject. "I love my father and mother," said he, "and it would go to my heart to disobey them, if I saw them inclined to act with justice and humanity towards you. As it is, I could not resign them for ever without the deepest regret: at the same time, I solemnly declare to you, upon my honour and soul, if it were necessary to make a choice, and I must lose for ever either you, to whom I conceive myself bound quite as sacredly as though we were really married, or my whole family, I would not hesitate one instant, not even if they could cut me off with a shilling. I should prefer, ten thousand times over, driving a mail coach for our daily support, and living with you in a garret to any magnificence that could be offered me without you."
His lordship was miserably agitated, when he found that I seriously insisted on his leaving me to join his father, and perhaps he had, for this once, ventured to disobey me, had not his uncle, Lord William Somerset, at the Duke of Beaufort's request, called on us, and insisted on not leaving the house till he had seen Worcester safe off in the Oxford mail.
I forgot to mention a little circumstance which happened on the day previous to Lord Worcester's departure for Badminton, which is the name of his father's country-seat. We were sitting near one of the windows together, when a man on the opposite side of the way attracted my notice. Surely methought, I must have seen that man before. He was standing quite still, and for several minutes I could not for the life of me catch a second glimpse of his face, which had been turned towards us for an instant. At last he seemed as though he were making for my door.
"That is the man!" I abruptly exclaimed; "that is the madman!"
I spoke from the sudden impulse of the moment, and regretted no less instantaneously, but nothing I could say or do had power to detain Lord Worcester, who immediately darted across the street, and inquired of the man what his business had been with me, and why he had presumed to enter my house?
The man answered, that he had no business with me, and had never dreamed of entering my house.
Worcester called him a d----d liar, and throwing his card at him, at the same time, asked him who he was, and where he came from?
The man refused to satisfy this inquiry and fixed his eyes on Worcester with a vacant gaze.
"You won't tell me your name then?"
"No," said the man, at last, adding that he did not choose to have his name handed about in such company.
Worcester remarked that he rather fancied no one would ever hear his name as a fighter; but, if he was ashamed of his name, and felt conscious that his rank was too low in life for him to meet in a duel, without disgracing himself as a gentleman, he was ready to turn into the next field with him, and set to work with their fists, in the way most suitable to a blackguard like him!
The man declared that he was not a bruiser, and refused to stir.
Worcester struck him with his stick, when the man put himself into an attitude of defence; but not at all scientifically.
The fight lasted full twenty minutes. It took place in a public street in the broad face of day.
I did not see the end of the contest, but Worcester, on his return, informed me that he had been victorious, and then retired to wash the blood from his hands and nose.
The Honourable Berkeley Craven, who at all times can smell out a fight as often as such a thing occurs within ten miles of him, was present, I presume, at this mighty encounter, since he afterwards mentioned the circumstance to me, declaring that he knew Worcester's antagonist to be a young man of good family, who had twice made his escape from a mad-house.
Poor fellow! however he appeared to be of such muscular strength, that I do not think Worcester could have done him any material injury; notwithstanding his lordship was a pupil of Jackson.
* * * * *
Worcester shed tears in abundance at parting with me. His uncle, Lord William Somerset, placed himself in an easy chair, swearing he would not stir without his nephew.
Worcester declared to his uncle, that he was a d--m--n bore, and ought to be sensible how desirous he naturally must be to pass an hour or two alone with me, previous to his departure for Badminton.
Lord William Somerset remained firm as a rock, and took Worcester out of the house at half-past seven in the evening; which happened to be just in time to secure his place in the Oxford mail.
Chapter XXIII
Now what am I next to amuse my readers with? No, that's vanity. I meant to ask what I should try to amuse them with? Worcester is gone to his papa's, at Badminton; and I, being sworn to constancy, have no other beaux to write about.
Let us inquire what my sister Fanny is doing? She looked very serious when I called upon her, as she sat nursing Parker's pretty little daughter and kissing it.
"Colonel Parker is going to Spain," said Fanny to me, the moment I entered her room, and I saw a tear trembling in her bright eye.
"So must half the fine young men in England," was my reply.
"Parker is the only man on earth who has ever treated me with true respect and kindness," continued Fanny, "and my attachment to him is very strong; more so perhaps than you think for."
I told her that I could not doubt her love for the father of her infant.
"I am not romantic," Fanny went on to say, while sitting in a musing sort of attitude and seeming quite inattentive to my last wise speech. "It is not in my nature to be in the least romantic or sentimental, yet when Parker forsakes me I shall die of it!"
"Fiddlestick," I answered, "you are always talking about dying, merely because your nerves are weak, and, in the meantime, I never saw you look better in my life. When does Colonel Parker set off?"
"To-morrow night," she replied.
"He will write, of course?"
"He has promised to do so by every post."
I had seldom seen Fanny so serious. I begged her to come to me as soon as Parker had left her, and promised to do everything in my power to enliven her.
She told me that Julia wished her of all things to board with her again as soon as Parker went to Spain, and, continued Fanny, "I feel so melancholy that I think I shall avail myself of her invitation, provided she will permit me to furnish a spare, empty room she has in her house, and keep it entirely to myself. Do you know," continued Fanny, "I, who used to abhor solitude even for a single morning, am now become very fond of it? I love to think and to read; and, the more serious the work the better it suits the present tone of my mind. I have lately been copying the passages which have most struck me, and, when you look them over, you will be astonished at my change of sentiments and taste."
I asked her if her late studies had been religious.
"No," said Fanny; "but the books I like now are such as I consider most calculated to teach us fortitude to endure the ills, miseries, and disappointments of this life. I shall yet, I know, suffer much in mind, as well as in body; and the end of it all will be death! Do not I require fortitude?"
"We shall all die," was my answer; "but the time and the manner of our deaths is unknown to us. No doubt, too, we all have our portion of sorrow and trouble to look forward to; but those sorrows are seldom without some alleviation, or mixture of happiness, neither are the comforts we are permitted to enjoy on earth by any means confined to those of youthful age alone. If, in a more advanced period we feel not wild rapture, yet are we infinitely more calm, and our pleasures are more real and certain, since they depend on the present. In advanced life we enjoy, while girls and boys pursue shadows and live on hope."
"There is no doubt that every age has its portion of enjoyments as well as cares," rejoined Fanny, "but, for myself, I am not I confess sanguine. I feel a weight about the region of my heart."
I interrupted her, and insisted on taking her directly to Julia's, where I left her, promising to see her early on the following day.
Worcester sent me about six sheets of foolscap, scribbled all over in every corner, once a day, and on Sunday he rode nine miles to overtake the coach with a volume! He had, he said, been accused by the duke his father of wishing to make me his wife, and he had found it impossible to deny that such was, in fact, his first hope. His father used very harsh words, and Worcester's courage and firmness had consequently increased. Suddenly, the duke had changed this high tone, and taking his son by the hand addressed him with much apparent feeling. This, as I afterwards learned from His Grace's brother, was a mere cold-blooded plan, settled between these two hopeful gentlemen, who had agreed that their best chance was to touch up the young marquis with a little bit of sentiment. Nay, in their zeal, they agreed to carry the farce to such lengths as even to speak of me, their night-mare, the person on earth which they most abhorred, and whose influence they most dreaded, with an appearance of feeling and respect, praying inwardly that either an earthquake might swallow me up, or that I might be seized with sudden death.
"My dear, dear boy," said Beaufort, "you must forgive me if the extreme anxiety you have for such a long time occasioned myself and your poor mother, has, for a season, made me lose my temper. I see that your feeling for Harriette is real, and beyond your power to overcome at present. Indeed, if she is good to you, I desire that every care and attention should be paid her, and you should return to her, and be teased no more on the subject: only pass your word and honour to me, as a son, and as a gentleman, that you will never marry her, and you shall hear no more from either of us on the subject."
Worcester, in his letter to me, where he described this scene, professed to have been deeply affected by it, and to have passed the following night and day in tears, yet he firmly refused to comply with his father's request. Et tout fut consternation dans le plus beau et le plus agréable château, qu'on puisse imaginer!
All those letters from Lord Worcester having been since returned to the Duke of Beaufort, that honourable nobleman with his son may be pleased to deny that such letters were written. However, after referring my readers to the celebrated Henry Brougham, M.P., of Lincoln's Inn, and another highly respectable counsellor of the same place, named Treslove, who have both read the whole of Lord Worcester's correspondence (why they did so shall be told hereafter), I will leave them to form their own conclusion as to the truth or falsehood of what I have written, or shall write, on the subject of those worthy wiseacres, the Beauforts!
Worcester concluded this letter by declaring he could not and would not remain any longer absent from me, and that I was all the consolation which was left him on earth, since his father was about to turn his back on him for ever.
I answered this letter immediately, to this effect.
"If, my dear Worcester, you do not immediately write, to give me your honour that you have set your father's mind at rest by having complied with his late reasonable request, you lose me now at once and for ever. For I shall go where you will not find me. What happiness, think you, could we enjoy, at the expense of making your parents miserable? They have good reason for what they request, and to save the time it would take you to contradict this last assertion of mine, I declare to you that I never will be your wife.
"Au reste, my dear Worcester, what is there in a ceremony and what do I care for a title? I swear, so help me God, I have ever been faithful to you since the first hour in which I placed myself under your protection, and in all and everything that was in my power, I have acted, and ever will act in a way to deserve your esteem as well as that of your family, in order that the abuse of Her Grace of Beaufort may sit light on my heart and mind. What gratification think you, could I enjoy at the idea of having merely inspired you with a strong passion for me, while I felt that, by my selfish conduct and the advantage I was ready to take of such an accidental circumstance, I had forfeited all right and title to your respect or future friendship?
"I have said enough I am sure, to convince any man worthy the name, and therefore you will have made friends with your father, and be on your road to join me very shortly after the receipt of this letter. So till then God bless you; but remember I can be firm and keep my word."
In three days after I had despatched the above letter, Worcester returned to me, having made the Duke of Beaufort the promise he had required. We now enjoyed something like quietness during the remainder of our stay in London.
Although Worcester appeared to have suffered much during his visit to his father's, for he was much paler and thinner, I really thought him consumptive. It was ever his lordship's pride and delight to drive me about the streets or the park, and to accompany me wherever I went. He but seldom went into society, and when he did, he always refused to dance much as he used to like it. In short, his passion for me, which from the very first seemed so ardent that I knew not it was in human nature that it could be susceptible of increase, became stronger with the difficulty of indulging it.
"My brother is a fool," said Lord William Somerset one day to us. "I would have cured you both in less than a month, and made Worcester hate you most cordially."
"How pray?" I inquired.
"Why," continued Lord William, "merely by shutting you up in one of my country houses together, making it my request that you never left each other an instant, to the end of your lives."
Worcester called God to witness that he was as sure as of his existence, that he could never love anything in the shape of a woman but myself: and, "were Harriette ever to leave me," he continued, "I should become a mere, cold-blooded, unfeeling profligate; for all the good about me is practised by her advice and example, or for her sake, that I may be somewhat more deserving of her."
Lord William laughed at his romance, and, I remember, took advantage of his absence to try to make love to me himself! But at this I only laughed in my turn, and, in spite of that common English mistake, which he fell into, in supposing that all unmarried females must be either maids or bad women, he was, take him altogether, I rather think about the best of the whole set; and I am almost sorry I called him Lord Berwick's Tiger. But what is an extravagant fellow to do, with high rank and little or no money? And who was to drive old, stupid Tweed, c'est à dire mon très aimable beau-frère, up and down, without borrowing a trifle, or not a trifle, of his ready cash? Some short time after my sister Sophia's marriage she received from Lord Deerhurst, half a year of the annuity he had made her. My eldest brother was requested to call upon his lordship, for the purpose of restoring the amount into his own hand, which commission my brother executed without, I believe, exchanging a single syllable with that most disgusting nobleman, who ever has been a disgrace to the peerage.
Fanny, in due time, received very kind letters from Colonel Parker, although they were certainly less warm than some of those he had formerly addressed to her. Napier's love for Julia seemed to grow with what it fed on, and this fair lady had been twelve times with child, and was actually turned forty, or as the French say, elle avait quarante ans, bien sommés.
Little Kitty, the lady of Colonel Armstrong, went on very modestly and quietly with her dear Tommy, although he now steadfastly adhered to his former resolution, not to risk any increase in his family.
Amy continued very steady, and constant in her love for--variety!
We were all regular at the Opera House both on Saturdays and Tuesdays, and, when the performance had concluded, we always remained late in the rooms, amusing ourselves with the absurdities of George Brummell, Tom Raikes and various others, some better, none worse! Not that Tom Raikes ever did anything bad enough, or what is worse, anything good enough to deserve the honour of a place in these my invaluable Memoirs; but, since I have named him, be it further known that Tom Raikes is a merchant who went to Paris and picked up French; and he is something of a mimic too; and he can take off Brummell very tolerably, as well as the manners of the vieille cour-France beaux; but I never discovered that he could do anything else. His tricks, like those of the man at Calais who entertains travellers while they dine, by imitating singing birds, cuckoos and castanets, are very well on the first representation; but it is indeed heavy work to be thrown into the society of Mr. Thomas Raikes more than twice in one's life. Brummell often dined with him, and therefore I take it for granted that Tom Raikes lent Brummell money. If he did, it was even for the éclat of the thing, and to have it to say that Brummell had dined with him, and that Brummell, his friend Brummell, was an excellent fellow. Tom Raikes happens to be one of the meanest men in England, at least so I have heard from several of his soi-disant male friends.
However, he was fortunate in having had a father who lived before him; as that father was no less fortunate in having met with such a friend as Richard Muilman Trench Chiswell, M.P., to whom the family owes its not undeserved rise. To this Tommy we may apply the epigram written on another Tommy:
What can little Tommy do? Drive a phaeton and two. Can little Tommy do no more? Yes--drive a phaeton and four.
Sophia looked very splendid in her Opera-box since her marriage, particularly when she wore all the late Lady Berwick's diamonds and her own to boot. Lord Deerhurst, I observed, for several successive nights made it a point to sit in a box by himself next to Sophia, and fix his eyes on her the whole of the evening. Not that he regretted or cared for her, but merely because, in his infinite vulgarity and littleness of soul, he gloried in insulting Lord Berwick's feelings, and conceived it high fun to ogle at Sophia's box, and then wink at his companions in the pit: but Lord Berwick was wise for once in his life, for he ever treated Deerhurst's low impertinence with the profound contempt it merited, nor condescended once to make a remark on it, even to his wife, although neither of them could have been blind to what was so very pointed.
* * * * *
To revert to the Beaufort story, mais c'est perdrix, perdrix, toujours perdrix!
The Beaufort story may be fort beau; and yet my readers may happen to require a little variety: at all events, if they do not, I do, for there is nothing on earth I think more abominable than to be hammering always at the same thing.
Chapter XXIV
"Hum!" said Alvanly, at a large dinner-party just as the soup was being handed round, in unusual but very dignified silence. "Hum! this company is growing dull--I'll tell you a story, gentlemen and ladies. In the year fifteen hundred and seventy-two, there was a man, who----"
Here he was interrupted by the loud laughter of the whole party, for who could give ear, during the first course, to a story which began as though it was to last for ever! Now the advantage of writing a long story, over that of telling it, is that one may, like a sermoniser in his pulpit, be just as prosy as one pleases, without any fear of interruption; but, seriously, I will venture to vary this dry Beaufort story by whipping in a little anecdote, which occurred either before my acquaintance had commenced with that noble family, or after it had ceased, I forget which, but that is of no consequence. I professed from the first to disregard dates. Everything here mentioned or told of happened within the last half-century, that is quite certain, and more perhaps than you care to be informed of, especially in this place; but I seriously declare, or rather repeat what I fancy I have somewhere declared before, that the careless manner in which these memoirs are written is all owing to my modesty; or rather the fault lies between my modesty and my indolence. I do not like to take trouble for nothing, and I do not feel at all certain, that even the very best I could do, by my unremitting labour, combined with the most studious attention, would be thought worth the attention of the public. In short, when I consider the thing seriously, I am ready to throw down my pen in despair; for how is it possible, I ask myself, in the name of common sense, that I should be able to scribble on one subject so as to deserve their patronage? I should indeed have given the idea up the other day, had I not recollected a book called Six Weeks at Long's. The author made money by it, as his publisher told me, and really I do think that work rather more stupid than mine, or, to treat myself with more politeness, I think mine the more pleasant and more natural of the two.
Perhaps I should do very little better, were I to go through the drudgery of copying, and correcting, studying and cogitating and all the rest of the ings; but however, if my readers only prove to be commonly civil to me and my maiden-work, they certainly shall hereafter see, but only in one volume, some of my very best and most studied composition.
* * * * *
The little anecdote which I proposed relating, merely to vary the story of the Beauforts, was about a prude, or rather a lady who went by that name. For my own part, I am miserably deficient in grammar, and a thousand more things, and, among many others, I am ignorant of the true, genuine, and real meaning of the word prude.
A French coquette will call any woman a cold, passionless prude, who, being attached to her husband and family, shows symptoms of impatience or disgust, whenever a chattering fool presumes to pour his regular, cut-and-dried, stupid flattery into her ear.
Some call a prude, a woman who steadfastly resists being kissed by a man for whom she has no regard, at a time when her heart is devoted to another.
"Pooh! Nonsense!" says the impatient reader, "A prude is a woman who sticks up for ridiculous punctilios in such trifles as are of no real consequence."
True! But then I never yet happened to meet with this sort of thing. I have only seen base copies of it, in women without any real modesty, who affected excessive niceness; but I cannot fancy a woman the worse, or the greater prude, for showing, naturally, any degree of modesty which she may really possess.
The lady I alluded to just now was nearly forty years of age, but she was still handsome, although she had entirely ceased to think about the adornment of her person. She was naturally sensible, and misfortunes had made her serious. The most delicate flattery which could have been offered from the lips of youth and beauty, would now have been extremely irksome to one who, having loved a good husband dearly and lost him, had for ever devoted her mind to other pursuits, as often as she could turn it from melancholy reflections.
I remember hearing this very excellent creature abused for being a nasty, stiff, tiresome prude, because she seriously assured a stupid, ugly fop, who was teasing her with the most insipid impertinence, that the style of his conversation was extremely disagreeable to her.
However, prude or no prude, this good lady was kind enough to receive my visits at all times with an appearance of real satisfaction.
We wanted to go to the play, for we were both in love with Elliston; but we had no party and, what was worse, no private box. I have never in my life frequented the public boxes, and we scarcely knew our way in or our way out from that side of the house; yet, when two women take a thing into their heads, it is not a trifle can induce them to balk their fancies; so, after we had finished our dinner, my friend the prude declared that she was quite old enough to act as chaperon to me, and, going in our morning, quiet costumes, without rouge or ornaments, she was sure no man would dare to insult us.
"In short," continued Prude, for so we will call her, since I do not think it fair to make her real name public, "in short, I never believe in such stories as women often relate to me about being insulted by the other sex. For my part, I have ever been in the habit of using my liberty and going where I please, and alone too, when it suited my humour, taking it for granted that, if I am decently and modestly dressed, and conduct myself with perfect propriety, it is impossible the men can mistake me for anything but what I really am; and if they did, the frown of indignation which a virtuous woman can put into her countenance, cannot fail to awe the most determined libertine."
"Nous verrons," said I, as I placed myself before the glass, to practise a frown of virtuous indignation, for that night only! But frowning was not my forte, and I made such ridiculous, ugly faces, without looking in the least awful, that Mrs. Prude burst into a loud laugh, requesting me, in God's name, to leave the frowning part of our evening's entertainment entirely to herself.
I did not half like going to the play, without the protection of a gentleman or a private box. "It is all very well for you," I said, "but I have no character to spare!"
However, Prude soon overruled my objections and sent for a hackney-coach to convey us to the theatre.
We were quite delighted with Elliston in The Honeymoon. We could not, of course, obtain seats in the dress-boxes, in our morning attire, but we had good seats upstairs; and, though the men did cast many a sly look at me, yet no one ventured to address us. Even if they had so presumed, I knew that my friend's awe-inspiring frown would set all to rights, parce que c'était Madame, elle même, qui me l'avait assuré.
I was at that time very striking; for I never could pass anywhere unnoticed. I do not say this by way of paying myself a compliment, but merely to relate a fact, in which everybody who was then acquainted with me will bear me out. I always hated to be stared at by the mob, and I did my best to prevent it by the simplicity of my evening dresses, which were invariably composed of white gauze or muslin, and my head was always dressed, after the fashion of the Irish people's potatoes, au naturel, but it would not do. I often wished to be more interesting, and less remarkable; mais quoi faire?
"I cannot conceive why these men stare at you in this manner?" said Prude.
"Thank you, ma'am, for the compliment," answered I, laughing.
"I do not mean to say that you are not handsome," continued my very liberal friend; "on the contrary, I think your countenance remarkably fine; but still I wonder why the people look so much more at you than at any other fine handsome woman who may be in the house!"
"God knows! I do not thank them for their preference," said I, waxing half angry, as I observed the fixed, intense gaze of a young man, who, for the last quarter of an hour, had been eagerly watching every turn of my head.
He was a very fashionable-looking man; but not at all handsome. I felt convinced, from that certain air de famille, that he must be a Stanhope, although I had never seen him before. It was neither Lincoln Stanhope, nor Fitzroy, nor that great, unlicked cub, who was turned out of his regiment for black-legging, or leaguing with black-legs. These three I had often met. It must be Leicester, then, thought I, having heard that Lord Harrington had a son of that name, who was less handsome than his brothers.
"It will not do to attempt frowning at that young man," said I to Mrs. Prude, "as it may have the effect of making him laugh, as it did you at dinner-time; but I will fix my eyes on him with an expression of dignity, which is more in their natural character, and try if that will do."
The young man was not vulgarly bold nor impudent, and his eyes fell under my fixed gaze. He was not immediately behind us; but occupied the second bench to my left. I had no objection to his looking at me modestly. In fact I rather liked it, being neither more nor less than a mere woman; but I hate vulgarity or assurance in men.
I wanted to have another look at Leicester Stanhope, which I at last contrived to accomplish slyly. He is ugly, methinks, and yet I prefer him to any of the handsome Stanhopes, for there is something of better feeling and more expression in his eyes. I dare say this is not, in fact, the case, and that I merely preferred his ugliness to his brother's beauty, because he was the only one of the family who ever seemed to admire me even for an instant.
No, now I recollect myself, this is a libel on my own attractions; I remember Lord Petersham, after having for several years been in the habit of talking to me, and shaking my hand with the same sang froid one would have expected at fourscore, one Sunday morning, when we crossed each other's path at Hyde Park corner, paid me the following most flattering compliment.
"You are decidedly a very fine creature, but all that I have known for the last three years, and also that you are the wittiest, cleverest creature in London."
Now Lord Petersham knew no more of my wit than that of the man in the moon, only it was the fashion to call me clever and witty, and whoever had said otherwise would have himself passed for a fool.
"But," Petersham went on, "I will be frank with you; for you are too spoiled just now, and too vain to be angry with truth."
"So that you will make haste about it," interrupted I, observing that we were blocking up the road.
"Well then," said Petersham frankly, "your charms never excited in me the least particle of desire till this morning."
"The fact is," answered I, laughing, "it required more wit than all the wit of all the Stanhopes to find them out."
"No, no, no," said Petersham, "I always thought you beautiful; but it was the style of beauty that never warmed me till this morning."
"Are you sure you have not mistaken me for the sun?"
"The influence of both at once are, at this moment, almost too much for me," Petersham answered, "and if you are the sort of spirited, independent, fine creature I have always heard you were, you will allow me to accompany you home immediately, as fast as our horses can drive us."
"Just the sort of thing I should like best!" said I, "if--" and I paused.
"If what?"
"If I happened to have a fancy for you; but, frankly, I have none!"
"Upon your honour and word, you do not like me?" Petersham asked, with evident astonishment.
"No, really," said I, "although you are very handsome; but you are not my style of man. I am not alluding to your foppery; a young man must ape something, and a polite fop is infinitely better than the heavy swaggering dragoon style, which I abhor."
"What is it you dislike about me, then?" Petersham asked.
"Lord bless us, how can you ask such stupid questions, Lord Petersham?" I inquired, somewhat impatiently, and then wished him a good morning.
To return to the young man we left staring at me from the back seat of an upper box, and whom I believed could be no other person than the Honourable Leicester Stanhope--it was only between the acts that I recollected he was behind me, being tolerably accustomed to this sort of thing.
When the play was over we were a little at a loss how to find our way out; but, after wandering up one passage and down another, we came to a large room, lighted well up, and, seeing so many people enter it, we concluded that we had only to follow them. However, we had no sooner made our appearance in it than we were led to imagine that every man we met must have suddenly lost the use of his senses. In vain did poor Prude practise her infallible awe-inspiring frowns! They did but excite merriment.
"What, are you the bawd?" said one of them rudely lifting up her bonnet.
"What do you ask for this pretty, black-eyed girl?" inquired a drunken man in a dashing light green coat, a red waistcoat, and large tally-ho pin in his shirt, touching me in the most indecent manner; and, when I resisted these disgusting liberties with all the strength of my little hands, they only fell into roars of laughter.
"Are there no constables here?" asked Prude, in a loud voice.
"Bravo," exclaimed a flashy-looking youth in top-boots, bearing in his hand a cane, with which he tapped an old constable who was near the door, "I say, my boy, that woman insists on having you to go home with her; but she is perfectly welcome so that she leaves me her daughter"; and he tried to pull my arm under his.
"Good heavens! what shall we do?" said I, while the tears of anger trembled in my eyes as I threw a hasty glance round the room to look for protection--and saw Leicester Stanhope, for it was really him, following us at some little distance, and shrinking back that I might not observe him, evidently half ashamed of the admiration he had evinced towards a woman who walked the lobby! For it was indeed that most respectable saloon, in which Prude and I were making an exhibition of our pretty persons, owing to the merest ignorance.
All the world seemed to be in this room, which was something like the round-room at the Opera. How could we help fancying it was the right way out? In short, we had tried and could find no other. It was immensely crowded, and, as we moved on slowly, every step we took exposed us to fresh insult, of the grossest and most disgusting nature, Stanhope seemed determined to see the end of it all, à la distance.
"How can that young man stand by and see two women so shockingly insulted, and not come forward to offer his protection?" said Mrs. Prude, observing Stanhope.
At this moment we came in close contact with some females whose language made our blood run cold. I hesitated, while I was almost tempted to interest Mr. Stanhope to protect us to a carriage: a horrible-looking, fat, bloated man, in a state of brutal intoxication, being actually about to thrust his hand into my bosom, Stanhope took a hasty glance at my countenance, and, observing it crimson up to my very eyes, he did, as by some ungovernable impulse, qu'était plus fort que lui, hastily place his person before me, as a protection, nay, almost in defiance of the fat man.
"I believe I am addressing a Mr. Stanhope?" said I to him, in much agitation.
Leicester bowed with an appearance of great reserve.
"Being acquainted with several of your brothers," I continued, "I must take the liberty to entreat you will either protect us to a hackney-coach, or employ some honest man to do us a kindness you see we stand so deplorably in need of."
"Is it possible that you seriously wish to avoid all this impertinence?" asked Leicester, in evident but gratified surprise.
Both Mrs. Prude and myself actually fell back a pace or two, as we fixed our eyes on him in speechless astonishment at his manner of asking this question.
"Do not you really know what place this is? Do not you know that you are in the lobby?" asked Stanhope, whispering in my ear.
"Oh, dear me! good gracious, Mrs. Prude, we are in the lobby, with all the very worst women!" said I, and I thought Prude would have fallen back in a fainting fit.
Leicester Stanhope politely offered me his arm, and hastened to convey us out of the house. He afterwards set us down in safety at my own door, requesting permission to inquire after my health the next morning.
For some weeks after this Leicester was, or affected to be, in love with me, and was constantly making up little parties to the minor theatres for my amusement. One night Amy caught a glimpse of us at some public place, I forget which.
"Kitty," said Amy to Mrs. Armstrong, "there is Harriette with a new man. I must go and call on her without fail to-morrow." I was consequently honoured with her early visit the next day.
"How do you do, Harriette?" said kind Amy. "I called to inquire after your health; because you looked rather pale last night at the ----. Apropos! who was that elegant-looking man with you?"
Having answered her first question, she begged to know when I was likely to see him again.
"Leicester Stanhope wants me to go to Drury Lane to-night, and has taken a private box for me."
"Oh! pray do admit me of your party," said Amy, "for I am so very dull and ill."
I understood her perfectly, and was well aware of two things,--first, that she would try hard to make Leicester fall in love with her, and, secondly, she would by various little spiteful hints, uttered in a tone of innocent naïveté, do her best to inspire him with contempt for me: but what did I care for Leicester Stanhope, or any one of his stupid race, beyond the mere pastime these attentions might afford me, pour le moment? Therefore I invited Amy to join us.
In less than a fortnight from that evening, Amy and Leicester were to be found ruralising together at a retired pothouse at Putney, or Clapham, or some such place, for their honeymoon!
I forget which of them got tired first; but I know one of them was tired in less than a week, and Amy returned to town and her dear variety.
I too must return to my dear Worcester, whose noble father had allowed him six or eight months more to grow tired of me, during which time nothing very remarkable occurred, except that Worcester's love and passion absolutely did increase daily, although that was what I had imagined to be morally and physically impossible.
His Grace now became furious again, and so did his gentle duchess. Their Graces were both in town, and tormented Worcester hourly. The Duchess often declared, in the presence of a female servant, who afterwards repeated it to me, that she should prefer seeing her son dead under his horse's feet, to his ever becoming my husband! His Grace thought that we had been privately married.
Worcester was desirous that I should disguise myself, and go with him to Gretna Green.
"Have you forgotten the promise you made to your father?" I asked.
"It was a conditional promise," answered his lordship, "and my father has broken the conditions. You see that he refuses to let me live on with you in peace, and again, and again, I must solemnly swear to make you my wife, whenever I can obtain your consent!"
Worcester was over head and ears in debt, and on this subject the duke was eternally lecturing, as in duty bound; declaring for his own part he had never, when he was Marquis of Worcester, exceeded his allowance or incurred a single debt.
I do not mean to dwell on the subject of Worcester's love, and Worcester's devoted attentions to me, as I can conceive nothing more uninteresting. His love never varied the least in the world, nor did we ever quarrel.
We returned once more to Brighton, and after continuing there for about two months, Worcester's troop was ordered to be stationed in a small village near Portsmouth, to guard the prisoners.
Quintin offered him the choice of changing his troop; but Worcester said if I did not mind passing a short time at a wretched little village, he would much rather not leave it.
I was perfectly willing to accompany him; and, on the day appointed for our leaving Brighton, four post-horses were put to Worcester's travelling chariot, which was to carry me to our destination. The distance was about forty miles, and the troop with the Duc de Guiche, Worcester, and Lord Arthur Hill, were to rest one night on the road.
I never once entered the carriage; but rode in a line with the officers dressed in my regimental cap and habit like a little recruit. We all lodged together in the same deplorable pot-house. Our bedroom served us for parlour, kitchen, and hall, and we dined together in the only spare room there was, in this apology for an inn, furnished exactly in the usual style of such places; to wit, twelve immense, high-backed, black leather chairs, too heavy for anybody except Bankhead to move; and the wainscot adorned with such pictures as a fox-chase, and then the Virgin Mary; and, cheek-by-jowl with that holy woman, Bellingham, the murderer of Perceval; next a print of King George the Third, in his parliamentary robes; a county map; the Holy Apostles, sitting at the Last Supper, and a poll parrot, done in what is, I believe, usually called cloth-work; plenty of sand on the floor, and plenty of wine-glasses, tooth-picks, and cruets on the sideboard.
It poured of rain every day and all day long, during the first fortnight of our residence in this earthly paradise; and we further enjoyed the most exquisite odours which had been accumulating, time out of mind, from beer and tobacco! The weather also being windy as well as rainy, the sign-board, on which was depicted a flaming red bear, danced more merrily than musically at our window.
Here Worcester, once upon a time, laid his lordly head upon a large mahogany table, after wiping away the sour beer which fantastically varied its surface, and with infinite enthusiasm delivered himself to me in such soft words as, "Oh Harriette, my adored, delicious, lovely, divine Harriette, what perfect happiness is this, passing thus every minute of the day and night in your society! God only knows how long I shall be permitted to enjoy all this felicity; but it is too great I feel to last. Nobody was ever thus happy long. They will make my going abroad a point of honour; but even then, my beloved angel-wife will accompany me! Yet alas! how dreadful it will be to see you exposed to the dangers and inconveniences of war!"
I had a real tenderness and sisterly affection for Worcester at that time. I should otherwise have been the most ungrateful, callous, and inhuman creature breathing; and I really was about to make a very tender, warm, and suitable reply; but, at that critical moment, the woman brought in a large platter of ill-dressed veal cutlets and bacon, followed by the Duc de Guiche and the fat Lord Arthur Hill.
After our sumptuous dinner, Lord Arthur proposed our driving over to Portsmouth to see the play.
We went accordingly, and having hired a large stage-box, and seated ourselves in due form, all the sailors in the gallery began hissing and pelting us with oranges, and made such an astonishing noise that, out of compassion for ourselves as well as the rest of the audience, we were obliged to leave the theatre before the first act was over, and we were followed by a whole gang of tars on our way to the inn. They called us Mounseers, German moustache rascals, and Frenchmen.
I know not whether the sailors objected to the dress of dragoons in general, as being a German costume, or whether it was our French Duc de Guiche, who had caused all the mischief. However that may be, His Grace of Beaufort, having got hold of the story from the newspapers probably, declared, with his usual liberality towards me, that the English tars at Portsmouth could not endure the idea of my not being legally married to Worcester; want of chastity being held in utter abhorrence among the crews of our royal navy, as a sin they have no idea of, and one which is never by any chance practised by them.
In short, the duke would not seem to entertain the slightest doubt that the whole audience, nay, the whole town, had been thrown into confusion and alarm by the appearance of so wicked a sinner as myself in so chaste a seaport.
The world indeed believed me a lawfully wedded wife; and even the duke himself suspected that I was privately married; but then my certificate ought to have been forwarded to the governor of Portsmouth before I presumed to enter the town, and then I should have been permitted to have witnessed the performance in peace and quietness.
Not to digress too long, being all four hissed out of Portsmouth with much éclat, we returned to our humble village looking rather wise at each other, and, for the next two months or thereabouts that we remained in that part of the world, we confined ourselves to quarters parce que les plaisirs du village valaient, pour le moins, ceux, dont on nous régalaient à la ville.
His Grace of Beaufort at last obtained leave for Worcester to join him at Badminton, and being, as he said, rendered perfectly miserable every hour that his son continued within the magic circle of my spells, he wrote to insist on Worcester joining him in a few days.
Worcester, when he read these commands from his father, looked as if he had received his death-warrant. He was indeed completely wretched. For my part, I also felt very melancholy and dull, under the idea that, somehow or other, His Grace was determined to separate us. I had become habituated to Worcester's society and Worcester's attentions, and was beginning to feel a very lively friendship for him. Such friendships are often more lasting and better than love; and then I knew well that I should not again meet with half such kindness and devotion from any other man, for I never in my life yet heard of one, young or old, who was so eternally aux petits soins, and paid a woman the unremitting attention which I received from Worcester up to the last hour of our continuing together.
I cannot however say that I was sorry to exchange this miserable, muddy village for my comfortable house in town. Not but Lord Arthur Hill had something comical about his manner, which I thought amusing enough; yet there was no real fun nor humour in the Duc de Guiche, although he often laughed in much the same stiff and unnatural style as his shirt collars. He was not remarkably popular either with soldiers or officers, although he is undoubtedly a very handsome gentlemanlike Frenchman, and, as I have always heard, and been inclined to believe, a very brave one too. He was rather severe with the men and, I fancy, ill-tempered, and he was a decided fop, as I think I have before mentioned.
I remember the Duc de Guiche one day desiring Lord Charles Somerset's eldest son, who was a cornet in the Tenth at Brighton, to change the saddle on which he was riding, and which happened to be one of his father's constructing while his lordship commanded the district, and to substitute the regular regimental saddle.
The lad refused, declaring that he had been commanded by Lord Charles to use his own.
De Guiche was Captain of the troop to which young Somerset belonged, and it was the duke's turn to attend in the riding-school.
The duke, much incensed, would have put Somerset under arrest if he had not immediately changed the saddle.
The lad was very sulky, and complained in the evening to his papa.
It was afterwards reported to De Guiche that Lord Charles had made use of some hasty remark on hearing his boy's account of the saddle, and which amounted to the same thing as though he had declared De Guiche to have presumed to take an unwarrantable liberty. I will not say this was the exact expression, because I was not present; but Worcester assured me that De Guiche was miserably agitated on the following day, under the impression that Lord Charles had said even more than this, and in fact that his lordship had threatened in the presence of his son to put the duke under arrest. De Guiche, in short, not being able to call his commanding officer to account, fell sick from very vexation and pride of heart, and was obliged to keep his room.
The late Lady Charles Somerset appeared to feel much anxiety at the aspect of the difference, and requested Worcester to try and conciliate.
"Do, for God's sake, Worcester, go to De Guiche, and see what is to be done," said her ladyship to her nephew.
Worcester did so, and on his return described to me what had passed between himself and the handsome young Frenchman, whom he had just visited in his barrack-room.
De Guiche commenced by descanting on the military laws, and it was evident he had made them his particular study. It was natural for a proud, noble young emigrant like De Guiche, to have carefully acquainted himself with the duties of his profession, in order, by the strictest observance of them, to escape such reproof as his high spirit could ill brook.
Worcester admitted that young Somerset had been decidedly under De Guiche's command when he presumed to murmur, or rather refused to obey His Grace.
"Mon Dieu!" said De Guiche, in much agitation, or rather with suppressed rage, "is it the wish of Lord Charles Somerset that exception shall be made for his son of regimental duty?"
"Why no," answered Worcester, "my uncle, I am sure, did not wish that. Perhaps, though his lordship did not say so to me, yet I think it possible that, at the moment, he suffered some little hasty expression to escape him under the idea that, since he, who was an excellent judge of riding, and a commander here, had advised his son to ride on that saddle, perhaps Lord Charles expected, from your politeness,--but, I give you my honour, I have not spoken to my uncle on the affair. My own, and Lady Charles's friendship for you, alone induce me to interfere: but this I will venture to assert of my uncle, he has too much respect for military discipline ever to have desired his son to neglect it, and I am also sure that, if any remark was made it must have been spoken in haste and ought not to have been repeated to you."
"It is, in my opinion, just the contrary of that," said De Guiche, who spoke very good English for a Frenchman, although with somewhat of the foreign accent and idiom, "it is in my opinion exactly the contrary of that. If Lord Charles Somerset has used some expressions which relate to my government of my troop, or to any part of my conduct as an officer, he cannot, I should think, he ought not to make objections nor scruple to repeat again what he has said before, and, écoutez moi, permettez," observing that Worcester was about to interrupt him, "and, if Lord Charles Somerset, when he made use of remarks to my prejudice was, as you suggest, under the influence of passion, his lordship, if it give him pleasure to be so far condescending, will repeat that circumstance also, and in the presence of any gentleman he pleases."
"If you request me, as your friend, I will certainly acquaint Lord Charles with what you say," answered Worcester.
"I wish to inquire of his lordship respectfully, if he has objections to tell me whether or not he has ever threatened to put me under arrest? If he did, I think he will not mind to repeat it."
Lady Charles Somerset was very fond of this young foreigner, and almost considered him as her son. Perhaps she rather expected he might become her relation one day or other, since he was always romping with her two bold daughters, who, as Worcester informed me, were to be found continually in a morning sitting on His Grace's knee, and allowing him to kiss them, and, as Worcester fancied, to do much more.
"I like your presuming to talk about Harriette," Worcester would often say to his ugly cousins, "when you are both ten thousand times bolder and more impudent, and more like ... than she is, only you are both so ugly."
"Ah, that's right, scold them, Worcester," grunted out poor Lady Charles, who was at that time in a very bad state of health. "Do, for God's sake, my dear Worcester, keep those girls in order. For shame child! De Guiche, I will not suffer you to kiss and pull my daughters about in this way."
"Poor little thing, she is jealous!" De Guiche used to say, and then, to make all square, as Will Haught termed it, he would put his arms about the little fat Lady Charles's neck and kiss her with such vehemence that the good woman was half smothered.
But recollect, readers, and remember, my own favourite Lord Charles; but, apropos my lord, do you know what the king one day said of you and your spencer, and your trousers, and your--but never mind, inquire of Worcester, and remember, I say, that all I know about your wife and daughters is from what your nephew told me, who is, as you know, an excellent mimic.
I only wish you were to see him take off your lordship, when you are dealing for a horse!
But to De Guiche's story--Lord Charles, as I understand, made His Grace an apology and now my story's done.
* * * * *
One day, when Worcester refused to pass before De Guiche as a matter of etiquette, while the young Frenchman, who was then called the Count de Grammont, refused to move forward, in spite of all Worcester could say, I became quite impatient and tired of waiting.
"How is this?" said I to De Guiche, when, at last, we were seated at table. "Why do you hesitate to go first, if your rank is highest, and if it is not, how happens it that Worcester, who is generally so au fait on all these subjects, is mistaken?"
"I am, in fact, and truth, the Duc de Guiche," said His Grace; "but, since for some serious reasons, I do not take that title in England, and as I never expect to enjoy it in my own country, I consider it all nonsense; and, being called count in the regiment, it would look strange that I should take the precedency of Worcester."
* * * * *
Now I am on the subject of Brighton I must relate another little anecdote, which ought to have been mentioned earlier. Young Berkeley, as my readers may remember, during the last visit he paid me, which happened on the very morning of my departure from town to join Lord Worcester, for the first time declared, upon his life and soul, that, since he knew himself to be a much handsomer man than his lordship, he would contrive to be even with me, if I so far presumed to differ in opinion from his as to prefer the latter. What he said made so little impression on me that it did not even once occur to my recollection after I had left London, until I was reminded of it by a report of a very disgusting nature, which Augustus had taken care to circulate about town, till it came to Worcester's ears: namely, that the girl whom Worcester wanted to marry was an old flame of his and his brother's, and that both had often passed the night in my house.
Worcester appeared greatly annoyed at this wicked falsehood, and anxiously inquired of me what grounds there were for it.
I assured him most solemnly of what I now repeat with the same candour and anxiety, that I never gave the least encouragement to either of the young Berkeleys, Henry and Augustus, to pursue me; and that, for a length of time, they nevertheless both so haunted and both so persecuted me with what they were pleased to call their love for me, that in the case of Augustus I was very near applying to a magistrate for permission to be let alone.
"But, my dear Worcester," said I, "it will really not be worth while to give all this nonsense a second thought. You will have rather too much upon your hands should you resolve to vindicate and defend my virtue after the manner of Don Quixote; and, provided nothing is said against me or my conduct since I have known you, I think common sense points out that you had better leave the rest, to find its own level, parce que je ne m'en suis jamais donné pour une grande vertu; mais, tout au contraire, comme vous savez bien!"
Worcester replied that my former faults, deeply as he regretted them, and sincerely as he prayed that they might now be for ever abandoned, furnished no excuse for the insult offered to himself, by such disgusting and improbable untruths as Berkeley stated to have occurred, at the very moment when his own most devoted attentions had proved unsuccessful.
I remarked that they were only joking, and everybody knows Augustus too well to believe one word he says on these sort of subjects.
"Write to him then," said Worcester, "and request him, if he has related this story in joke to contradict it in earnest."
I wrote accordingly, and Lord Worcester directed and sealed my letter, which was forwarded, and in due time I received an answer, enclosed to the Marquis of Worcester.
"MY DEAR HARRIETTE," began young Berkeley, and then went on, with his usual, incorrigible duplicity and meanness.--
"The less said, you know, about the past, particularly when it relates to such scenes as you mention, the better, I hope you like Worcester, &c &c.
"Yours, dear Harriette, "Most truly and affectionately."
Lord Worcester immediately enclosed both my letter and the envelope addressed to himself in a blank cover, which he sealed with his arms and directed to young Berkeley.
In about a week after this letter was despatched, Henry Wyndham of the Tenth Hussars, who is the eldest son of Lord Egremont, called on Worcester, and, not finding him at home, requested to see me, of whom he made particular inquiries, as to when I expected him, or where he was to be found.
I told Wyndham the surest way for anybody to meet with Worcester was to remain with me: and being well aware of this fact, he sat down to wait for him.
I did not like to ask questions of Captain Wyndham, although I certainly felt anxious to learn what pressing business he could have with Worcester. His lordship came home in less than half an hour, and Wyndham, having requested to say a few words to him in private, was desired to accompany him to his dressing-room.
When Worcester returned to me he looked unusually pale and agitated. He informed me that young Berkeley had just arrived from his brother's country house, to demand an explanation of him on the subject of having sent back his letter.
"I must go with Henry Wyndham, who is waiting for me, directly," continued Worcester.
I was of course very much frightened at this information; but, alarmed as I really felt, it certainly struck me that Worcester ought not to have acquainted me nor any other woman breathing with what had passed between himself and Captain Wyndham. However, right or wrong, the information served to agitate me most cruelly! I first implored Worcester's coachman to follow and not lose sight of his master; and then I wrote a hasty scrawl to Lord Charles Somerset, entreating him to prevent mischief, if possible, between his nephew and Berkeley. In short, I made Worcester's private business as public in a few hours, as though I had been employed for that purpose as town-crier.
In consequence of my letter, Lord Charles Somerset sent down a messenger express, with a note to Worcester, requesting his lordship not to be too hasty; but to wait till he had been consulted:--"Be assured," continued his lordship, in this pathetic letter to his brave nephew--"be assured that I will advise nothing that can be derogatory to your honour!"
It was all smoke!
Worcester returned in an hour, and assured me that everything was amicably settled.
"How is that?" I asked, "has Berkeley been induced, by fear, to render me that justice, which he has denied to my earnest entreaty?"
"No!" said Worcester, a little confused. "He has not contradicted his former assertion."
"How could it possibly be settled then?" I inquired, merely for the sake of information.
"Why," said Worcester, "Wyndham assured me that the offence which Berkeley conceived it impossible to brook, was my having enclosed, with his letter to you, his envelope addressed to me, in which were written a few civil lines requesting me to forward the enclosed, &c. &c."
"Well?" I ejaculated in earnest surprise.
"Well," repeated Worcester, "I was willing to admit that his note to me, which was civil enough, I never meant to have returned to him, and, if I had done so, it must have been my mistake: and Wyndham assured me that, since I was ready to acknowledge so much, he had no doubt that the business might be arranged, this and this only being the unpardonable offence."
To make an end, the affair was brought to a conclusion.
I make no comments on a subject to which I cannot presume myself to be competent. The real facts being stated, and I believe Harry Wyndham will bear me out in them, the world may, and we all know it will, put what construction it pleases on the conduct of either or both parties. For my own part, I am not like those ugly women and cross old maids who abuse the world, or the world's judgment of my actions. Generally speaking, I have found the world act fairly, justly, and often, very liberally, towards me.
It is certainly, perhaps, a misfortune in many respects for a woman to become the fashion, which was my case; for what second-rate man does not like to be in the fashion? Nay, there are few, very few, who would not affect pride in the possession of what their betters have coveted in vain!
Chapter XXV
"I beg you fifty thousand pardons," bawled Lord Petersham to me one morning from his or some other person's gay barouche, as I stood at my drawing-room balcony; "but, to save time, will you answer me one single question from your window? I only want a yes or a no as I am sure I can take your word."
My house being half in the country, I begged his lordship to make as free as he pleased.
"Did you," asked his lordship, forcing a little, mean-looking man, who was seated next to him, to stand up upon his two feet while I surveyed him, "did you ever see this man in your born days?"
"Never, to my knowledge," was my reply.
"Then you can declare, at all events, that you never made his acquaintance?" asked Petersham.
"Certainly, I can: and your friend will unhesitatingly confirm the truth of what I assert."
"Tout au contraire," said Petersham, "he has been amusing us with an account of a former petite affaire du coeur he had with you."
"He does me honour," I rejoined, "although he knows I was never so completely blessed as to have been in his society."
"That's quite enough," said Petersham, giving me a significant little wink with his left eye, kissing his hand, and driving off, all at the same moment.
I must now return to Lord Worcester, or rather to my house in town, he having left Portsmouth to join his incensed papa and mamma at Badminton.
"I have lost my parents," he wrote in one of his letters. "They refuse to acknowledge me as their son, and yet they attempt to keep me shut up here by force. This I should have resisted and have returned to you last week, but that my mother declares herself ill, and my father asserts that she is not likely ever to recover her late accouchement while her mind is so dreadfully agitated. For my part I can neither eat nor sleep, and both my father and uncle admit that they have tormented me till I am seriously ill. I implore you then, my adored, beloved, darling Harriette to come to me. I never close my eyes in sleep without awaking in the greatest fright and agony, having dreamed that you were taken away from me for ever."
He then went on to beg and entreat of me, if I had the least pity for him, to disguise myself as a countrywoman, or a common servant, in a coloured gown and checked apron, and go in the coach to a certain inn at Oxford, where he would contrive, unknown to his father, who should believe him in his bed, to await my arrival at past twelve o'clock at night, which he said was the hour at which the afternoon-coach got into Oxford. He then made me at least a thousand humble apologies for having wanted me to disguise myself and take all this trouble, assuring me that, if I went to Oxford in my usual style and character, some one or other would probably meet me on the road, and he could not describe what would be his parents' indignation and anger, in case my visit to Oxford came to their knowledge.
* * * * *
Were I to give my readers these letters in Worcester's own expressions, there would be no end to them, since every other word was angel, or adored wife, or beautiful sweet Harriette, or darling sweetest, sweetest darling, dearest dear, dear, dearest, &c., so perhaps they will prefer taking all these sweets at once, that I may proceed quietly with these most amusing and very interesting Memoirs.
* * * * *
At about three o'clock on the day after I had received this letter from Lord Worcester, as my sister Fanny was standing at her window, pleasing herself with her pretty little daughter Louisa, a hackney-coach stopped at her door, and out of it sprung a light-footed, spruce damsel, clad in a neat, coloured gown, thick shoes, blue stockings, blue check apron, coloured neck-handkerchief, cloth cap and bright cherry-coloured ribbons. In the next minute this bold young woman had given both Fanny and her daughter Louisa a hearty kiss!
"Good gracious, my good woman!" exclaimed Fanny, pushing me gently aside, and, in the next instant, hearing a loud laugh in the room, for I had not observed Julia and Sir John Boyd sitting at the other window, till they joined in our merriment.
"Lord help the woman," said Julia, "what can have put it into her head to appear this beautiful weather in such a costume?"
"It is a new style of travelling dress," said I, "and I am going to introduce the fashion. What do you think of my cap? It cost eighteen-pence. And my blue stockings? But I can't stay gossiping with you fine ladies or I shall lose my place in the stage. However, do just look at my nice, little, bran-new red cloak."
"You don't seriously and really mean to say you are going to travel that figure, and in the broad face of day too?" said Fanny.
"I must! I must! Worcester says if I don't want to be beaten to a mummy by papa Beaufort I must go to Oxford in disguise."
"Disguise, indeed!" said Julia.
"If Fred Bentinck meets a woman of my loose morals in this dress, il croira que c'est la belle Madeleine!"
"But where is your bonnet?" asked Sir John Boyd.
"Oh! I cannot afford to buy a bonnet; that would be only half-and-half, a mere vulgar, shabby-genteel, cockney kind of a maid-servant!"
"You will be found out by your tapering waist and large bosom."
"Why, what is the matter with it, Sir John? Is it not very decently covered by this smart, coloured handkerchief?"
"Yes; but it's all too pretty, and your stays are too well made."
Julia's maid-servant, who had not recognised me as I flew past her up the stairs, now entered the room, with a message from my hackney-coachman, who was waiting at the door.
"The coachman, marm, desires me to tell the young woman that he shall expect another sixpence if she does not come down directly."
"Oh laws a mighty! and here I hasn't a got a sixpence in the world more than what's tied up here in this here bag, on purpose for to pay my fare to Oxford," said I, holding up a small red bag.
Julia's maid-servant looked in my face, and seeing everybody ready to laugh, found it impossible to resist joining them.
"Why, the Lord defend me! Miss Harriette, is it really you?" she asked, opening her eyes as wide as possible.
"You see, Sir John, the delicacy of my shape has not stood the least in my way with the coachman, who did not discover the air noble under this costume! But I must be off directly."
"Good-bye! God bless you; mind you write to me directly, and tell me everything that happens to you," said Fanny.
They all gave me a kiss round, for the form of kissing a woman in blue stockings and a check-apron, and I was soon seated in the stage-coach, which was being loaded at the door of the Green Man and Still, or as the Frenchman dated his letter, Chez l'Homme Vert et Tranquil.
"You're not apt to be sick, are you, my dear?" inquired a fat-faced merry-looking man, with a red handkerchief tied over his chin, who had already, with a lady whom I fancied might be his wife, taken possession of the two best seats.
I assured them that I was a very good traveller.
"Because, my dear, you see, many people can't ride backwards; and there's Mrs. Hodson my wife as is one of them."
"Oh; the young woman is not particler, I dare say," said Mrs. Hodson, with becoming reserve.
In short, not altogether liking the words "my dear," as they had been applied to me by her husband, she thought it monstrous vulgar!
A lady, in a green habit, who was standing near the coach door, now vowed and declared her travelling basket should be taken out of the boot where it had been thrown by mistake, before she would take her seat.
The coachman in vain assured her it was perfectly safe.
"Don't tell me about its safety," cried the angry lady, "I know what your care of parcels is before to-day."
"Come, come, my good lady," said Mr. Hodson, whom I recognised as a London shoemaker of some celebrity, "come, come, ma'am, your thingumbobs will be quite safe. Don t keep three inside passengers waiting, at a nonplush, for these here trifles!"
"Trifles!" burst forth the exasperated lady; "are females always to be imposed upon in this manner?"
"Monsieur le Clerc!" continued the lady, calling to a tall thin Frenchman, in a light grey coat, holding under his arm an umbrella, a book of drawings, an English dictionary and a microscope, "Monsieur le Clerc, why don't you insist on the coachman's finding my travelling basket?"
"Yes, to be sure, certainely," said the Frenchman, looking about for the coachman. "Allons, cocher, Madame demande son panier. Madame ask for one litel someting out of your boots directly."
"Did I not desire you to mention, Monsieur le Clerc, when you took my place, that the basket was to go inside?" demanded the lady.
"Yes, oui," answered the Frenchman eagerly. "I tell you, Mr. Cocher, dis morning, six, seven, ninety-five times, madame must have her litel, vat you call---over her knee."
"I'm sorry for the mistake, sir; but it would take a couple of hours to unload that there boot, and I must be off this here instant."
"Come now, aisey there, aisey," bawled out a queer, poor Irishman, with a small bundle in his hand, running towards the coach in breathless haste. "Aisey! aisey! there, sure and I'm a match for you, this time, anyhow in life," continued he, as he stepped into the coach, and then took out his handkerchief to wipe the perspiration from his face. He was so wretchedly clothed that Mrs. Hodson eyed him with looks of dismay, while drawing her lavender-coloured silk dress close about her person, that it might not be contaminated. I was, indeed, surprised that this poor fellow could afford an inside place.
The lady and her French beau, seeing no remedy, ascended the steps of the carriage in very ill humour, and they were immediately followed by a man with much comic expression in his countenance. He wore a would-be dashing, threadbare, green coat, with a velvet collar, and his shirt collar was so fine, and so embroidered, and so fringed with rags, that I think he must have purchased it out of the Marquis of Lorne's cast wardrobe. His little Petersham-hat seemed to have been remit de nouveau, for the third time, at least.
"Lord! Mr. Shuffle, how do you do? Who would a thort of our meeting you, in the coach?" inquired Mr. and Mrs. Hodson, addressing him in a breath.
"Delighted to see you both," said Shuffle, shaking hands with them.
"And now pray, Mr. Shuffle, if I may be so bold, what might have brought you up to London? What antics might you be up to, hey? Are you stage-struck as usual, or struck mad by mere accident?"
"Thereby hangs a tale," said Shuffle.
"What! a pig-tail? I suppose you're thinking of the shop."
"Not I indeed," Shuffle observed; "I've done with wig-making these two years; for really it is not in the nature of a man of parts to stick to the same plodding trade all his life as you have done, Hodson."
Hodson replied that he knew his friend Shuffle had always been reckoned a bit of a "genus," and, for his part, he always knode a "genus" half a mile off, by his thread-bare coat, and his shoes worn down at the heels.
"Aprepo!" said Mrs. Hodson, "by-the-by, Mr. Shuffle, you forgot to settle for that there pair of boots before you left Cheltenham six months ago."
"Very true, my dear lady," answered Shuffle, "all very true: everything shall be settled. I have two irons in the fire at this time, and very great prospects, I assure you, only do pray cut the shop just now and indulge me with a little genteel conversation."
"A genteel way of doing a man out of a pair of boots," muttered Hodson, "but I'll tell you what, Mr. Shuffle, you must show me a more lasting trade, of one with more sole in it, before you succeed in making me ashamed of being a shoemaker."
"And pray," continued Hodson, "where's the perpetual motion you were wriggling after so long? and then your rage for the stage, what's become of that? Have you made any money by it?"
"How is it possible," answered Shuffle, "for a man to make money by talents he is not permitted to exert!
"'Sir,' said I, to the manager of the Liverpool theatre, 'I have cut my trade of wig-making dead, and beg to propose myself to you as a first-rate performer.' 'Have you any recommendations?' inquired the manager, eyeing me from head to foot. 'Yes sir,' I replied, 'plenty of recommendations. In the first place, I have an excellent head.'"
"For a wig! a good block, I reckon," interrupted Hodson.
"'In the second place,' Shuffle continued, "'I have the strongest lungs of any man in England.'"
"That is unfortunately the case of my good woman here," again interrupted Hodson.
"'And, as for dyeing, sir,'" still continued Shuffle, "'I have been practising it for these two years.'"
"Upon red and grey hair, I presume?" said the incorrigible Hodson.
"'Sir,' said the Liverpool prig," so Shuffle went on, "'Sir, our company happens to be at this moment complete.' Fifty managers served me the same. At last however I got a hearing, and, as I suspected would be the case, was immediately engaged. The play-bills mentioned the part of Romeo by a gentleman, his first appearance on the stage; but it was a low company and beggarly audience, which accounts for my having been pelted with oranges and hissed off the stage!"
Hodson here burst into a very loud fit of laughter, declaring this was the best joke he ever heard in his life.
Shuffle, without at all joining in his friend's mirth, declared that he had now resigned all thoughts of a profession, the success of which must often depend on a set of ignorant blockheads, and turned his thoughts to love and experimental philosophy.
"I say?" was Hodson's wise remark, looking very significantly at his friend.
"Well sir; what have you to say?" Shuffle inquired.
"Blow me, Shuffle, if you ar'n't a little--" Hodson paused and touched his forehead.
"Don't meddle with the head, friend, that's not your trade. Oh, by the bye," Shuffle continued, "talking of heels, I want to consult you about a new sort of elastic sole and heel, after my own invention: one that shall enable a man to swim along the river like a goose, at the rate of fifteen miles an hour! I have just discovered that the goose owes its swiftness to the shape of its feet. Now, my water-shoe must be made to spread itself open, when the foot is extended, and close as it advances."
"Well done, gentleman," interposed the poor Irish traveller, "this bates the cork jacket anyhow in life!"
"Who the devil are you, sir?" asked Shuffle, "and what business have you to crack jokes?"
"The only little objection that I see to your contrivance," continued Pat, "is that the patent shoe will be just after turning into a clog as soon as it gits under water, good luck to it."
"The devil take me if that warn't a capital joke! So well done, master Pat," said Hodson.
"Is that an Irish wig you have got on your head, Pat?" Shuffle asked, by way of being even with him.
"For God's sake sink the shop, Shuffle, and let's have a little genteel conversation," said Hodson, imitating Shuffle's late affectation of voice and manner.
"Pray what do you Irish know about wig-making?" asked Shuffle, disregarding Hodson.
"And may be you would not approve nather, of their nate, compact little fashion of breaking a head, perhaps?" inquired Pat very quietly.
"Come, come, my comical fellow," said Hodson, "don't be so hot. Mr. Shuffle only meant to remark that it was a pity to wear a red wig over your fine head of hair."
"Arrah, by my sowl! and is it under it you'd have me wear it?" asked the Irishman.
"You're a funny chap! but I loves to see a man in good spirits," Hodson remarked.
"Is it in good spirits then, you reckon me? Sure and you're out there anyhow in life; for the devil a drop of spirits have I poured into me, good, bad or indifferent since yesterday, worse luck to me!"
"What, are you out of employment then?" Mrs. Hodson inquired.
"No my dear lady, in regard to my being employed just now, looking out for work."
Shuffle inquired how long he had left Ireland.
"Not more than a month, your honour; and four weeks out of that time have I been wandering about the great, gawky village of London, up one strate and down the tother, in search of a friend, and sorrow bit of the smallest intelligence can I gain, anyhow in the world, of poor Kitty O'Mara."
"And is that absolutely necessary?" I asked.
"And did I not promise Mistress Kitty, the mother of him, that I would stick by her darling till the breath was clane out of his body? and then, after our death, wasn't it by mutual agreement between Kitty and me, that we should dig each other a nate, tight bit of a grave, and bury each other, in a jontale, friendly manner? so that, what with disappointment, fatigue, and the uncommon insults which have been put upon me lately, sure and I'm completely bothered!"
"And pray, Pat, what takes you over to Oxford?" Hodson asked.
"Sure and I'm just going there, to come back again by the marrow-bone stage."
"But what reason have you for making the journey?" said Shuffle.
"Is it what rasin had I? Havn't I paid for my place more than a week ago, and havn't I lost a good sarvice in them parts, by missing the coach by a trifle of half an hour's oversleeping myself? and did not the proprietor of this same coach promise me the first vacant sate?"
"Well, but having lost your place, why trouble yourself to go down when it is too late?" Hodson inquired.
"And you'd have me chated and diddled out on the fare as well as the service? Bad luck to me!" added Pat, with comic gravity.
"Blow me, if you ain't a funny one," said Hodson, as the coach stopped to set him down in a small village between London and Oxford; "and since you've put me into spirits, I must put spirits into you, so here's a shilling for you, Pat. In for a penny, as I says, in for a pound. Good bye, Shuffle, and I shall thank you to call and settle for that there pair of boots. Come, my good woman, give us your hand. Good bye, my pretty lass," nodding to me, as he and his better half quitted the coach.
Nothing of very great interest occurred during the remainder of our journey, except that Shuffle seemed disposed to hire Pat as his servant. The Frenchman found fault with everything at table, drank eau sucrée, and studied in his dictionary. The lady in the green habit scorned to address even a single syllable to a person in the humble garb I wore, and I never once opened my lips till we arrived at Oxford, and I was set down at a little inn nearly a mile distant from the one where Worcester promised to wait for me. It was almost one o'clock in the morning, it poured with rain, and there was not a star to enliven a poor traveller!
Though the discovery was too late, it was now very evident that I had taken my place in the wrong coach. What was to be done? I inquired the distance of the inn at which Worcester promised to expect me; but for more than a quarter of an hour everybody seemed too busy looking after the luggage and the passengers to attend to a poor girl in a coarse red cloak. At last I contrived to speak to the landlady, who assured me that I must be mad to think of wandering about the streets of Oxford at such an hour and in such weather; that the passengers always used her house, and that in the course of an hour the other passengers would be served, and then the chamber-maid would see about providing me with a bed.
"Impossible," said I, "for I have a person waiting for me at the Crown Inn, and I shall feel much obliged to you, madam, if you will immediately furnish me with a guide to protect me."
"Protect a fiddlestick!" said my landlady. "I've got no time to procure guides at this time of night, indeed;" and she waddled off after the rest of the passengers.
I was left alone in the passage, to watch my travelling-bag, shivering with cold, and wishing the vile red cloak and blue stockings at the bottom of the Red Sea, since it was to them I was indebted that everybody held me in such contempt. As a last resource, I addressed myself to a man in a dirty smock-frock, whom I imagined to be the hostler.
"My good man, where can I procure a safe guide and protector, to walk with me to the Crown Inn?"
"You'd better wait here till to-morrow morning, my dear," answered the man; "for you see it's quite at t'other end of the town, and a man don't care to get wet for nothing."
"But I will give you half a crown, and thank you too, if you will only come with me directly, and bring a lanthorn with you."
"Indeed!" exclaimed the man incredulously. "Pray how comed you to be so rich, hey? Suppose you show us your half-crown?"
"Willingly," said I, taking one out of my little bag, at the sight of which he begged me to wait outside the door, till he joined me from the stable with his lanthorn.
"But you must step out foot, my dear, as I may get home before mistress misses me, you see."
As we hurried on together, while the rain fell in torrents on our heads, I felt half afraid of my strange guide; and asked him every two minutes if he was quite sure he had not mistaken the road.
"No, child," said he, at last, "for here we be safe and sound. This be the Crown Inn."
I was not long in doubt as to the truth of what he said; for, at the door, stood Worcester as large as life, looking eagerly down the road after the carriages. I put my half-crown into my guide's hand, and hastily placed my arm under that of Worcester, who, so little dreamed of seeing me arrive on foot in such a wet miserable condition, that he pushed me rather roughly on one side.
"My dear Mr. Dobbins," said I, for that was the name we were to go by at the Crown, where he believed he was not personally known; "Mr. Dobbins! don't you recognise your dear Mrs. Dobbins?"
"Good God, my love! how came you alone this miserable night?" and Worcester handed me upstairs, all joy and rapture and trembling anxiety lest I should catch cold. In less than a quarter of an hour, thanks to his good care, I was in a warm bed and an excellent supper was served by the side of it, with good claret, fruit, coffee, and everything we could possibly require.
We talked all night long; for we had much to say to each other.
Worcester declared that he looked forward to no hope nor rest until we should be really married.
I entreated him to consider all the inconveniences of such a match. "Your father never will forgive you remember!"
"That I shall deeply regret," answered his lordship; "but I must and will choose my own partner for life. You and I have passed weeks, months, years together, without having had a single quarrel. This is proof positive, at least, that our tempers harmonise perfectly together, and I conceive that harmony of temper between man and wife, is the first and greatest blessing of the wedded state."
I was too frank to deny that I perfectly agreed with him in this particular.
"I was never happy till I knew you," continued Worcester, "and I am sure, as I am of my existence, that you are the only woman on earth to whom I could ever be constant to the end of my life and not break my oath. When all is over, my father must submit to necessity."
"It may not be," said I, mildly. "Nay, it shall not be. Your parents, harsh as they are towards me and my faults, shall not have cause to curse me, neither shall you."
Worcester was greatly agitated; and, when all else failed, tried to laugh me out of my resolution. "We will go to Scotland together, in the mail," said his lordship.
"And who shall be the father to give me away, and be a witness to prove my marriage?" I asked, merely to make a joke of a subject I was tired of treating seriously.
"You shall wear this pretty dress," said Worcester, "and my coachman, Boniface, shall come down to the North with us to give you away. I dare not trust Will Haught; he shall know nothing of our departure, till he has missed us."
"Boniface, of course, must be gaily dressed," said I, "and wear a large nosegay."
"True," proceeded Worcester, "and a white waistcoat."
"Shall the waistcoat be made with pockets and flaps, pray?"
"Why, perhaps, that might look handsomer."
"Very well," said I, "perhaps pockets and flaps, perhaps not. Let that matter rest for the moment, and now, with regard to this long journey to Gretna Green to look for a dirty blacksmith, I think that really will be unnecessary."
"How can it be avoided till I am of age?" Worcester eagerly inquired.
"Why, I have spoken to that most reverend, pious, and learned divine, Lord Frederick Beauclerc, on this important subject, and he declares himself willing to officiate on this occasion, and marry us privately by special licence, providing you agree to grant les droits du seigneur."
Worcester inquired what that meant.
"Simply, les droits du mari, for the first night."
Worcester, having by this time discovered that I was only laughing at him, appeared deeply wounded and offended with me.
"My love, what is to be done?" I asked. "I, as your friend, your real friend, wish you to be comfortably reconciled to your parents, and, by making me your wife you lose them for ever, without doing me any material good; for I have no ambition nor hankering after rank, and, I confess, my conscience does not reproach me with any particular crime, attached to my present, quiet mode of life, since I have no children; else I should for their sake judge differently. Let us hope the best, enjoy the present, and be merry, pray, or I might as well have remained in town."
By degrees Worcester recovered his spirits, and, perhaps, there never was an hour during our whole acquaintance in which he was so devoted to me, so madly, passionately fond of me, as during my visit to the Crown Inn, which proves how the passion of love is ever increased by difficulties, till it, at last, acquires such a degree of enthusiastic ardour, as persons in the full, easy possession of what they desire can form not the least conception of.
Alas! how fleeting are our moments of happiness! Poor Worcester was obliged to leave me by nine in the morning, after handing me into a hack-chaise; because he could not bear the idea of my being again addressed by any low man who might happen to be fellow traveller, when my dress would induce them to mistake me for a servant.
Just as I had got about a mile from Oxford, one of Worcester's uncles passed my chaise: if I recollect right it was Lord Edward. He stared at me in my old costume as though I had been the ninth wonder of the world. However, I hoped, since I had never in my life spoken to his lordship and merely guessed him to be a Somerset, that he would have remained at least in some little doubt as to my identity.
The next morning's post convinced me of my mistake. Worcester, in a very long, dismal letter, acquainted me that I had been seen, in a very odd, unladylike kind of dress close to Oxford. Worcester assured his father that it was quite impossible, as I certainly should not have gone to Oxford without acquainting him of the circumstance. The duke and duchess condescended to laugh at him as a weak silly dupe to a vile and profligate woman, asked him what good he fancied I could be doing by travelling about in disguise; and why, if it had been good, I looked so confused, and appeared so anxious to hide my face from his uncle, as to have actually covered it with both my hands? His uncle further declared that I was both deformed and ugly, which rendered his infatuation the more absurd.
Worcester, in reply, declared his aunt so very ugly that the man who had chosen her for his wife must for ever give up all pretensions to taste; and then he asked them why they imagined two of the handsomest men of this, and perhaps of any age, Lord Ponsonby and the Duke of Argyll--my readers must excuse my placing Lord Ponsonby first--should have been so much in love with deformity? And, if they were, it was of course a proof that my mind must have been of that superior cast as made ample amends for the defects of my person.
There were two young men at that time on a visit with Her Grace of Beaufort, who is known to have always encouraged a very motherly kindness of feeling towards young men, particularly when they were well looking. Perhaps she wanted them for her daughters; and yet, that beauty soon fades is the cry of most moral mammas. However that may be (and I have not in the least presumed to entertain a doubt of Her Grace's virtue, according to the English acceptation of that word), the two young men I have just now mentioned, and who so vehemently joined the hue and cry against me, were Montagu, the eldest son of a lady in Portman Square, who used to give charitable dinners to the poor chimney-sweepers once a year, and Mr. Meyler, a young Hampshire gentleman, in the possession of very large West India property, of at least five and twenty thousand a year.
This youth had lately become of age, and, as everybody informed me, was very handsome. Worcester assured me that this young sugar-baker, as Lord Alvanly was pleased to call him, expressed himself in such strong terms of disgust in reference to me, that his lordship had been obliged to desire him never to use my name in his presence again.
Meyler however dédommaged himself with his favourite the Duchess of Beaufort, to whom Worcester had presented him when they were both at Christchurch together. He always agreed with that lady, as to the subjugation of her noble son's superior parts; for, said Meyler, "it would be impossible for any man, in his right senses, to be in love with that woman called Harriette Wilson; she may have been better once; but she is now in ill health, spoiled by flattery, and altogether the most disgusting style of woman I know."
"Are you acquainted with her, then?" asked the duchess.
Meyler confessed he had never spoken to me; but added that he saw me every night in my Opera box, and in the round-room afterwards; and, in short, from having often conversed with my acquaintances, he knew just as much about me as if he had been so unfortunate as to have been personally acquainted with me.
This inveterate abuse from a stranger, whom I did not even know by sight, somewhat excited my curiosity, nay more, my emulation perhaps; car j'avais quelquefois le diable au corps, comme aucune autre.
"If," said I one day to Fanny, "if all this abuse of me could be reconciled to good taste in a gentleman, and this Meyler is really so handsome, it would be worth while changing his dislike into love, seulement, pour lui apprendre à vivre. At all events there is novelty in being an object of disgust to any man, just when Worcester has so cloyed me with sweets! Where can one get a sight of Meyler?"
"Sir John Boyd is a relation or particular friend of his," said Fanny; and, on the first opportunity Sir John was consulted.
"No woman can do anything with Meyler in the way of love," said Sir John; "for Meyler really don't know what sentiment means, and that is why I cannot conceive what he is always doing with that fine strapping woman, the Duchess of Beaufort, who appears never so happy nor so comfortable, as when he is perched upon a high stool by her side. Meyler is a mere animal, a very handsome one it is true, and there is much natural shrewdness about him, besides that he is one of the most gentlemanlike young men I know; but you may read his character in his countenance."
"What is that like?" I asked.
"It is beautiful," said Sir John Boyd, "and so peculiarly voluptuous, that, when he looks at women after dinner, although his manner is perfectly respectful, they are often observed to blush deeply, and hang down their heads, they really cannot tell why or wherefore."
"And whom does he love?" I inquired.
"His affections are, I believe, at this moment, divided between a Mrs. Bang, a Mrs. Patten and a Mrs. Pancrass, all ladies of Covent Garden notoriety. Meyler is a hard drinker, a very hard rider, and a good tennis and a cricket player, prides himself on his Leicestershire stud and his old English hospitality, and he is no fool though he hates reading; and that is all I know about him, except that I don't believe he would like to be constant for a single fortnight to the most lovely or accomplished woman on earth. In short, he holds all women very cheap, and considers them as mere instruments of pleasure, with the exception of the Duchess of Beaufort, whom he calls a paragon."
"En voilà assez," said I, "de votre belle sauvage. Perhaps you will show him to me some day, not on Ludgate Hill, but at the Opera?"
Chapter XXVI
Things went on worse and worse at Badminton, and I am now delighted that they did so, being altogether most miserably tired of the Beaufort story.
The Duke of Beaufort at last sent a notorious swindler of his acquaintance, who has since been confined in chains for forgery, one Mr. Robinson, who, as I have heard, had long been in the habit of doing dirty jobs for noblemen. Robinson declared that I had it in my power, considerably to relieve the anxiety and distress of mind to which I had reduced the Beaufort family, by returning all letters in my possession containing promises of marriage made by the Marquis of Worcester to myself.
"In short," said Robinson, "if you will take an oath at Westminster Hall, that you have delivered into mine, or His Grace of Beaufort's hands, every letter, or copy of a letter, from Worcester, now in your possession, you may make your own terms with His Grace."
Though I never cared for myself, and I am afraid I never shall, yet, when one is dealing with a notorious rogue it seems silly to become his dupe: I therefore requested to have a week allowed me to decide. This time being granted me, because I would have it so, I consulted a most respectable counsellor, Thomas Treslove, Esq., of Old Square, Lincoln's Inn, who had been acquainted with my family when I was quite a child and living with my parents.
Mr. Treslove, after reading Lord Worcester's letters containing his repeated and solemn promises of marriage, at my particular request, declared, what I have no doubt he is ready this day to repeat, merely that he conceived the letters, if brought into a court of law, to be worth twenty thousand pounds to me, and, when I afterwards consulted Henry Brougham, Esq., M.P., of the same place, he entirely agreed in opinion with Mr. Treslove.
I inquired whether my situation, previous to my having been under the protection of Lord Worcester, made any difference?
"The court would not discuss that point, nor take it into the smallest consideration for or against you," said Mr. Treslove. "You have, for anything which can be proved to the contrary, in all probability been prevented from establishing yourself eligibly or comfortably in life, by having received the most solemn promises of marriage from the Marquis of Worcester. If, from the extreme generosity of your disposition, you, instead of hurrying the thing forward, wished his lordship to take time for consideration, you have the stronger claim on that family, supposing them to be people of honour. The duke has no witness of your having ever refused the marquis, on the contrary, you tell me, His Grace will not believe a single syllable of the matter.
"Lord Worcester has, by the dates of these letters, been pledging his faith to you for the space of two years; and, I conceive the damages, if he should now declare off, would be rated at least at twenty thousand pounds!"
The next day I had a second interview with Mr. Robinson, to whom I repeated the opinion of Counsellor Treslove, and assured him that gentleman was ready to put it in writing if necessary.
Robinson said that it would not be required; for the duke expected all this, and indeed he thought that I might make better terms without exposing the secrets of a noble family in a public Court of Justice.
I promised Mr. Robinson that His Grace should receive my decided answer by the next day's post.
Robinson said this would not be regular, and it had better pass through his hands.
I begged to be excused, declaring that I must and would manage matters in my own way; and Mr. Robinson was at length compelled to leave me, although in a very ill-humour.
The following morning Worcester arrived in town, with the Duke and Duchess of Beaufort. Those worthy parents had again adopted the pathetics, finding it impossible to manage Worcester in any other way.
"My poor father is very wretched," said Worcester, "and my mother, when I left the house this morning, was almost in hysterics, because I will not consent to go abroad without you: and I never can nor will attempt it."
"Do you think they would feel happier if they were in possession of your promises of marriage?" I inquired.
"Certainly," answered Worcester. "His Grace would, in fact, make any sacrifice to obtain them, though in the end they could not serve his wishes, since I will never give up the hope and full expectation of becoming your husband."
"Poor duke!" said I, musing to myself after Worcester had left me on the pomps and vanities of this wicked world. "I have perhaps, though very innocently, been the cause of much uneasiness to him. Not that this matter is quite certain either; for Worcester might have, by this time, completely involved his father's estate. It had indeed been his wish to do this, but that I laboured to prevent him, and he is now only a few thousands in debt, owing to the very small allowance his father makes him. I have never done the duke or his family any real injury, and I never will; nay, I should like to prove myself anxious for their happiness, only their all being so severe upon me, and so very abusive, is such a damper. I will make the Duke of Beaufort like me, and regret his former severity," continued I, opening my writing desk, and after five minutes more deliberation, I addressed a letter to His Grace of Beaufort, as nearly as I can recollect in these words.
"Your Grace has been very severe on me and my errors; but, if you imagine they are of a nature to destroy your domestic comfort, I can easily forgive all the very harsh expressions which yourself as well as Her Grace, in letters I have seen of her own writing, made use of on my subject. I will venture to remind Your Grace that I was very far from seeking the acquaintance of your son. In short, but for such perseverance as I have seldom witnessed, I had never placed myself under his protection. I knew not that in doing so I was likely to destroy the peace of any human being. In short, if I had not respected yours, I had long since become your daughter-in-law. Having now inspired Lord Worcester with a very strong affection, something is surely due to him from gratitude, neither would my conscience acquit me if, out of respect for the parent I never saw, I were to act with inhumanity towards the son who would sacrifice all for me. I have pledged myself solemnly not to desert him at present; but what I can do, in perfect good faith to Worcester, I am very anxious to perform for the relief of his noble father's mind. I will not sell the proofs of respect and affection which have been generously tendered to me; but as I conceive they cannot be put to better account than that of relieving the anxiety of a father's mind, I have the greatest pleasure in forwarding them to your Grace, and am ready to take any oath that you may require, as to my now having enclosed you the whole of Lord Worcester's correspondence in my possession or power. All I ask, in return, is to be considered by your Grace, with something less of ill-will, and that, for for your own sake, as well as that of the duchess, you will feel some confidence in the goodness of my heart, and in the sincere wish I do in truth feel, that your son may turn out all and everything you can desire.
"Only point out what I can do more, for the tranquillity of Lord Worcester's parents, which shall not become a breach of faith and humanity towards himself, and I declare to your Grace that you shall never see me hesitate from anything like a selfish motive. I have the honour to remain, with sincere wishes for the happiness of Lord Worcester's parents,
"Your Grace's most obedient, "and very humble servant, "HARRIETTE WILSON."
His Grace of Beaufort never in any way condescended to acknowledge the receipt of this letter, which I carried myself and left with his porter in Grosvenor Square; yet the Beauforts were ever a high-bred race! But I conclude high-bred and well-bred must be two things, for it never could be well-bred of His Grace to refuse to acknowledge the above, to say nothing of the extreme selfishness and want of feeling of the noble duke, who, having obtained what he wished for the present, returned to Badminton, to which place he insisted on Worcester again accompanying him.
During another month, Worcester declared to me that his parents, relatives, and his father's friends, persecuted and tormented him beyond his patience; and that young Meyler had begged him to leave me, as though he had been begging for his life, humbly entreating him to forgive the liberty he took with him, which alone arose out of his brotherly affection and respect for the duchess, &c.
Worcester generally contrived to get over to London every two or three days, though but for a few hours; and, when that was impossible, I went to meet him at a village ten miles on this side of Brighton.
One morning I received a letter from Worcester, so blotted over from one end to the other, that it was scarcely legible, and some parts appeared actually to have been defaced by tears. Such an incoherent scrawl I never had known him nor anybody else write before! It was all over wives and angels, and eternal constancy, and eternal despair; with miseries and tortures without end. In short, it was out of all compass miserable, and out of all rules, or direct right angles, or parallel lines. All I could make out of this scrawl, as certain, was that Wellington, at the request of Worcester's father, who had made it without his son's knowledge, had appointed him his aide-de-camp, and that go he must; for there was no remedy, or it would be called cowardice if he hesitated. Nevertheless, he had sworn not to leave London unless he had been allowed to pass a whole fortnight entirely with me. This had been granted, and I was to expect him in two days after the receipt of his letter, which ended with earnest entreaties that I would promise to accompany him to the continent, and, lastly, his lordship informed me, that his father would arrive in London on the same morning with his letter, for the express purpose of attending a levée, and demanding a private audience of his present majesty, to beg permission for Worcester to leave his regiment and join the Duke of Wellington in Spain.
I knew not nor had ever suspected how much Worcester's loss would affect me until there was no remedy and my case desperate, for well I knew that I should never be permitted to follow up the army in Spain, even had I been disposed to make the attempt. I burst into a violent flood of tears.
It now struck me very forcibly that Worcester had deserved all my devoted attachment, and that I had not been half grateful enough to him. That he would lose his life in Spain I felt convinced, and that, since his regiment remained in England, I should have his blood on my head. What was to be done? My crimson velvet pelisse, trimmed with white fur, and also my white beaver hat, with the charming plume of feathers, were spread out in my dressing-room ready for Hyde Park, and conquests. And poor Worcester perhaps might soon be numbered with the dead, food for worms!
After a second flood of tears, on went the red pelisse and charming white hat, and in half an hour behold me standing at the Duke of Beaufort's street-door, awaiting the answer to my humble, single rap, with a little note in my hand, containing these few words, addressed to the duke.
"I earnestly entreat your Grace to permit me to speak a few words to you before you attend the levée this morning.
"Your most obedient, humble servant, "HARRIETTE WILSON."
When his Grace's huge, fat porter opened the door I made a desperate effort to conceal my tears, which had been flowing in abundance ever since I had read poor Worcester's letter, just as if I had received his dying speech; and I delivered my little note, requesting to be allowed to wait for the duke's answer. The porter looked on me suspiciously: he seemed to be considering His Grace of Beaufort's moral character, as his eye glanced from my face downward, as though it had struck him as just possible that I might have come thus unattended, for the purpose of swearing a child against his noble master.
"Are you quite certain that it is the Duke himself you want to see, and not the young marquis?"
I assured him that I wished much either to see the duke, or to receive an answer to my note.
As the man again looked under my large beaver bonnet, I felt the tears gush into my eyes.
"His Grace shall have the note directly," said the porter, in a tone of compassion, observing how I was trembling, as I really half expected the Duke of Beaufort would order one or two of his tall footmen to put me on the other side of the door. I saw the porter give my note to a servant in livery, desiring him to take it to His Grace's valet.
"The duke," said the porter, turning to me, "is dressing for the levée; so you had better take a seat."
I did so, and, while I was almost choked with the efforts my pride caused me to make in order to conceal my tears from a parcel of curious, impudent servants, who for near twenty minutes, that I was suffered to remain in the hall, were eyeing me with very impertinent curiosity, the kind porter again addressed me, almost in a whisper, with, "Ma'am, your note has been put into His Grace's own hands, and he is reading on it; so I dare say he will ring his bell, and we shall hear if there is any answer for you."
I waited another quarter of an hour in a very miserable state of suspense, and in real, bodily fear of being kicked out of the house.
At last, as I sat with my handkerchief to my eyes and my face turned towards the ground, I heard some one, in a mild gentlemanlike voice call from the bottom of the stairs, to inquire if the person was waiting who had brought the last note? I raised my head, and seeing a handsome-looking man in a court dress, who appeared to be a very little older than Worcester, I grew brave, as I always do from desperation, conceiving everything was now lost, and that the duke had descended from his usual dignity for the purpose of seeing justice done to the orders he was about to issue for my being kicked into the street.
"Did you bring this note, pray?" asked the duke, addressing me, since his first question had not, it seemed, reached the dull ear of the fat porter.
"I did, your Grace," answered I, firmly.
"Then do me the favour to walk this way," continued the duke, opening the parlour-door, and closing it after him.
"What can he be going to do to me?" thought I, and trembled from head to foot.
"My bell was broken," said His Grace, "and, for the last ten minutes, before I came down, I could not make any one hear: but I assure you that I had no idea that you yourself were waiting in my hall. I conceived it was your messenger."
The least sound of kindness to one already so very low and nervous is enough to affect one. The tears I had made such efforts to conceal from the servants, would be restrained no longer and I was not, like the duchess on a former occasion, almost hysterical, but quite so; and the more I laboured and prayed for calm, the more impossible it was to obtain it; so, as I stood sobbing aloud, in the middle of the duke's large dining-room, with my handkerchief held to my eyes, the Duke of Beaufort and myself really cut two very pretty figures! and I much wish Stockdale would get a print of it!
"I am not aware of your motive, Miss Wilson, for favouring me with this visit," said the duke.
And, as I attempted to apologise, my tears fell still faster and faster, till they quite choked my voice.
The duke seeing that mine was real agitation and not affectation, condescended to unbend a little.
"Sit down," said His Grace, drawing an easy chair towards me. "I beg you will sit down and compose yourself, and don't think it necessary to speak till you are more calm. I hope you believe that I felt very much shocked that you should have waited in my hall? Upon my honour, I had not a conception of finding you there when I went downstairs, because I could not make anybody hear."
At length I succeeded in recovering myself, so far as to state to His Grace that, on the receipt of Lord Worcester's letter, I had felt so very much shocked at the idea of being the sole cause of his lordship being sent into danger, while his regiment remained quietly in England, that really I found it impossible to resist making an effort to prevent it, by proposing to His Grace to do all in my power to induce Lord Worcester to consent to our separation; and even if I failed, rather to agree to go abroad myself and keep my residence a secret from his son, than that he should for my sake be exposed to danger.
The duke declared that even had he been inclined to comply with my request, and he honestly confessed he was not, it was now too late; "and really Miss Wilson," continued His Grace, "it was from the first folly and madness in you, ever to have fancied Worcester could or would have made you his wife."
"Your Grace still believes me desirous of the honour I might obtain by forcing myself on you as your despised relative?" said I, indignation drying up my tears at the idea of being misunderstood, "and further you imagine that if I wished and would consent to marry your son I should fail to accomplish my designs?"
"Certainly," answered His Grace, proudly.
"Duke!" said I, fixing my eyes mildly but firmly, on his face, "you neither deceive me nor yourself by that assertion, for you know the contrary. I am"--and I felt my heart swell with something between grief and indignation--"I am," I continued, "naturally good, but you will, among you, harden my heart till it becomes cold and vicious. Since nothing generous, and no sacrifice on my part, is understood or felt, even when I would serve others, and while I only think of them you will not, or you cannot understand me. Allow me, then, to tell you, the fault is in your own character; I will not say in your heart but in your want of heart."
The duke being of gentlemanly manners, to give everybody their due, sought to appease matters a little.
"I did not mean to hurt your feelings, I assure you," said His Grace, "perhaps I expressed myself improperly. I only wanted to observe to you that such unequal marriages are seldom if ever attended with happiness to either party, as witness Lord Egremont, and several more I could name."
"Do not trouble yourself, duke, since I am, and I always was determined not to marry your son; upon my word, I am; and, if you again give me the lie, or speak to me as though you entirely disbelieved this positive assurance which has been repeated to your son so often, while on his knees he has implored me to become his wife, I shall say you do so because I am a woman, and cannot call you to account for it. Your Grace would use more ceremony with a man; but my object for the great presumption of thus intruding on you was the hope of being able to suggest some plan, which would render it unnecessary for Lord Worcester to join the Duke of Wellington's staff. You have answered me on that subject, and I have now the honour to take my leave of your grace."
"Not yet," said the duke. "Pray stay till you are more tranquil. Shall I get you a glass of water?"
I declared it was unnecessary; but he insisted on my waiting, while he himself went into his dressing-room to procure one.
"Now I hope you are quite convinced that your being left in my hall was contrary to my knowledge, and gives me real concern?" said the duke, after I had swallowed the glass of water he presented to me.
I bowed in acknowledgment of this apology, "I have spoken to Lord Worcester's father for the first, and in all human probability for the last time in my life," said I, feelingly; because I really for Worcester's sake felt a regard and respect towards his father at that time.
"And if it should happen so?" inquired the Duke of Beaufort.
"Will your Grace shake hands with me?" said I timidly, and without presuming to offer my hand.
"With great pleasure," answered the duke, and, after shaking hands rather cordially, he himself conducted me into the hall, and called loudly to the porter to attend and open the door for me.