Kitabı oku: «The Heroine», sayfa 7

'A few years? That bread and water business will dispatch me in a week! Mad? I mad? I vow to my conscience, Doctor, I was always reckoned the quietest, easiest, sweetest – sure every one knows honest Gregory Wilkinson. Don't they, Cherry? Dear child, answer for your father. Am I mad? Am I, Cherry?'

'As butter in May,' said Montmorenci.

'You lie like a thief!' vociferated the farmer, struggling and kicking. 'You lie, you sneering, hook-nosed reprobate!'

'Why, my dear uncle,' said Montmorenci, 'do you not recollect the night you began jumping like a grasshopper, and scolding the full-moon in my deer-park?'

'Your deer-park? I warrant you are not worth a cabbage-garden! But now I see through the whole plot. Ay, I am to be kept a prisoner here, while my daughter marries that old knave before my face. It would kill me, Cherry; I tell you I should die on the spot. Oh, my unfortunate girl, are you too conspiring against me? Are you, Cherry? Dear Cherry, speak. Only say you are not!'

'Indeed, my friend,' said I, 'you shall be treated with mildness. Doctor, I beg you will not act harshly towards him. With all his faults, the man is goodnatured and well tempered, and to do him justice, he has always used me kindly.'

'Have I not?' cried he. 'Sweet Cherry, beautiful Cherry, blessings on you for that!'

'Come away,' said Montmorenci hastily. 'You know 'tis near dinner time.'

'Farewell, Doctor,' said I. 'Adieu, poor Wilkinson.'

'What, leaving me?' cried he, 'leaving your old father a prisoner in this vile house? Oh, cruel, cruel!'

'Come,' said Montmorenci, taking my hand: 'I have particular business elsewhere.'

'For pity's sake, stay five minutes!' cried Wilkinson, struggling with the servants.

'Come, my love!' said Montmorenci.

'Only one minute – one short minute!' cried the other.

'Well,' said I, stopping, 'one minute then.'

'Not one moment!' cried his lordship, and was hurrying me away.

'My child, my child!' cried Wilkinson, with a tone of such indescribable agony, as made the blood curdle in my veins.

'Dear Sir,' said I, returning; 'indeed I am your friend. But you know, you know well, I am not your child.'

'You are!' cried he, 'by all that is just and good, you are my own child!'

'By all that is just and good,' exclaimed Montmorenci, 'you shall come away this instant, or remain here for ever.' And he dragged me out of the room.

'Now then,' said the poor prisoner, as the door was closing, 'now do what you please with me, for my heart is quite broken!'

On our way home, his lordship enjoined the strictest secrecy with regard to this adventure. I shewed him the hundred pounds, and reimbursed him for what he had paid the Doctor; and on our arrival, I discharged my debt to the poet.

Adieu.

LETTER XIII

Soon after I had got into these lodgings, I sent the servant to Grosvenor Square, with a message for Betterton, requesting him to let me have back the bandbox, which I left at his house the night I fled from him. In a short time she returned with it, and I found every article safe.

To my amazement and dismay, who should enter my apartment this morning but Betterton himself! I dropped my book. He bowed to the dust.

'Your business, Sir?' said I, rising with a dignity, which, from my being under the repeated necessity of assuming it, has now become natural to me.

'To make a personal apology,' replied he, 'for the disrespectful and inhospitable treatment which the loveliest of her sex experienced at my house.'

'An apology for one insult,' said I, 'must seem insincere, when the mode adopted for making it is another insult.'

'The retort is exquisitely elegant,' answered he, 'but I trust, not true. For, granting, my dear Madam, that I offer a second insult by my intrusion, still I may lessen the first insult so much by my apology that the sum of both may be less than the first, as it originally stood.'

'Really,' said I, 'you have blended politeness and arithmetic so happily together; you have clothed multiplication and subtraction in such polished phraseology – '

'Good!' cried he, 'that is real wit.'

'You have added so much algebra to so much sentiment,' continued I.

'Good, good!' interrupted he again.

'In short, you have apologized so gracefully by the rule of three, that I know not which has assisted you the most – Chesterfield or Cocker.'

'Inimitable,' exclaimed he. 'Really your retorting powers are superior to those of any heroine on record.'

In short, my friend, I was so delighted with my repartee, that I could not, for my life, continue vexed with the object of it; and before he left me, I said the best things in nature, found him the most agreeable old man in the world, shook hands with him at parting, and gave him permission to visit me again.

On calm consideration, I do not disapprove of my having allowed him this liberty. Were he merely a good kind of good for nothing old gentleman, it would only be losing time to cultivate an acquaintance with him. But as the man is a reprobate, I may find account in enlisting him amongst the other characters; particularly, since I am at present miserably off for villains. Indeed, I augur auspiciously of his powers, from the fact (which he confessed), of his having discovered my place of abode, by following the maid, when she was returning with my bandbox.

But I have to inform you of another rencontre.

Last night, the landlady, Higginson, and myself, went to see his lordship perform in the new Spectacle. The first piece was called a melodrama; a compound of horror and drollery, where scenery, dresses, and decorations, prevailed over nature, genius, and moral. As to the plot, I could make nothing of it; only that the hero and heroine were in very great trouble about trifles, and quite at their ease in real distress. For instance, when the heroine had arrived at the height of her misery, she began to sing. Then the hero, resolving to revenge her wrongs, falls upon one knee, turns up his eyes, and calls on the sacred majesty of God to assist him. This invocation to the Divinity might, perhaps, prove the hero's piety, but I am afraid it shewed the poet's want of any. Certainly, however, it produced a powerful effect on my feelings. I heard the glory of God made subservient to a theatrical clap-trap, and my blood ran cold. So, I fancy, did the blood of six or seven sweet little children behind the scenes, for they were presently sent upon the stage, to warm themselves with a dance. After dancing, came murder, and the hero gracefully advanced with a bullet in his head. He falls; and many well-meaning persons suppose that the curtain will fall with him. No such thing: Hector had a funeral, and so must Kemble. Accordingly the corpse appears, handsomely dished up on an escutcheoned coffin; while certain virgins of the sun (who, I am told, support that character better than their own), chaunt a holy requiem round it. When horror was exhausted, the poet tried disgust.

After this piece came another, full of bannered processions, gilded pillars, paper snows, and living horses, that were really far better actors than the men who rode them. It concluded with a grand battle, in which twenty men on horseback, and twenty on foot, beat each other indiscriminately, and with the utmost good humour. Armour clashed, sabres struck fire, a castle was burnt to the ground, horses fell dead, the audience rose shouting and clapping, and a man just below me in the pit, cried out in an ecstasy, 'I made their saddles! I made their saddles!'

As to Montmorenci's performance, nothing could equal it; for though his character was the meanest in the piece, he contrived to make it the most prominent. He had an emphasis for every word, an attitude for every emphasis, and a look for every attitude. The people, indeed, hissed him repeatedly, because they knew not, as I did, that his acting a broken soldier in the style of a dethroned monarch, proceeded from his native nobility of soul, not his want of talent.

After the performance, we were pressing through the crowd in the lobby, when I saw, as I thought, Stuart (Bob Stuart!), at a short distance from me, looking anxiously about him. On nearer inspection, I found I was right, and it occurred to me, that I might extract a most interesting scene from him, besides laying a foundation for future incident. I therefore separated myself (like Evelina at the Opera) from my party, and contrived to cross his path. At first he did not recognize me, but I continued by his side till he did.

'Miss Wilkinson!' exclaimed he, 'how rejoiced I am to see you! Where is your father?'

'Let us leave this place,' said I, 'they are searching for me, I know they are.'

'Who?' said he.

'Hush!' whispered I. 'Conduct me in silence from the theatre.'

He put my hand under his arm, and hurried me away. When we had gained the street:

'You may perceive by my lameness,' said he, 'that I am not yet well of the wound I received the night I met you on the Common. But I could not refrain from accompanying your father to Town, in search of you; and as I heard nothing of him since he went to your lodgings yesterday, I called there myself this evening, and was told that you had gone to the theatre. They could give me no information about your father, but of course, you have seen him since he came to Town.'

'I have not, I assure you,' said I, an evasive, yet conscientious answer, because Wilkinson is not my real father.

'That is most extraordinary,' cried he, 'for he left the hotel yesterday, to call on you. But tell me candidly, Miss Wilkinson, what tempted you to leave home? How are you situated at present? with whom? and what is your object?'

'Alas!' said I, 'a horrible mystery hangs over me, which I dare not now develop. It is enough, that in flying from one misfortune, I have plunged into a thousand others, that peace has fled from my heart, and that I am ruined.'

'Ruined!' exclaimed he, with a look of horror.

'Past redemption,' said I, hiding my face in my hands.

'This will be dreadful news for your poor father,' said he. 'But I beg of you to tell me the particulars.'

'Then to be brief,' answered I, 'the first night I came to Town, a gentleman decoyed me into his house, and treated me extremely ill.'

'The villain!' muttered Stuart.

'Afterwards I left him,' continued I, 'and walked the streets, till I was taken up for a robbery, and put into the watchhouse.'

'Is this fact?' asked Stuart, 'or are you merely sporting with my feelings?'

''Tis fact, on my honour,' said I, 'and to conclude my short, but pathetic tale, a gentleman, a mysterious and amiable youth, met me by mere accident, after my release; and I am, at present, under his protection.'

'A shocking account indeed!' said he. 'But have you never considered the consequences of continuing this abandoned course of life?'

'Now here is a pretty insinuation!' cried I; 'but such is always the fate of us poor heroines. No, never can we get through an innocent adventure in peace and quietness, without having our virtue called in question. 'Tis always our virtue, our virtue. If we are caught coming out of a young man's bed-room, – 'tis our virtue. If we remain a whole night in the streets, – 'tis our virtue. If we make a nocturnal assignation, – Oh! 'tis our virtue, our virtue. Such a rout as they make.'

'I regret,' said Stuart, 'to see you treat the subject so lightly, but I do beseech of you to recollect, that your wretched parent – '

''Tis a fine night, Sir.'

'That your wretched parent – '

'Sir,' said I, 'when spleen takes the form of remonstrance, a lecture is only a scolding put into good language. This is my house, Sir.' And I stopped at the door.

'At least,' said he, 'will you do me the favour of being at home for me to-morrow morning?'

'Perhaps I may,' replied I. 'So good night, master Bobby!'

The poet and the landlady did not return for half an hour. They told me that their delay was occasioned by their search for me; but I refused all explanation as to what happened after I had lost them.

Adieu.

LETTER XIV

Just as I had finished my last letter, his lordship entered my room, but saluted me coldly.

'I am informed,' said he, 'that you strayed from your party last night, and refused, afterwards, to give an account of yourself to the landlady. May I hope, that to me, who feel a personal interest in all your actions, you will be more communicative?'

'I regret,' said I, 'that circumstances put it out of my power to gratify your wishes. I foresee that you, like an Orville, or a Mortimer, will suspect and asperse your mistress. But the Sun shall return, the mist disperse, and the landscape laugh again.'

'Confound your metaphors! 'cried he, discarding attitude and elegance in an instant. 'Do you hope to hide your cunning under mists and laughing landscapes? But I am not to be gulled; I am not to be done. No going it upon me, I say. Tell me directly, madam, where you were, and with whom; or by the devil of devils, you shall repent it finely.'

I was thunderstruck. 'Sir,' said I, 'you have agitated the gentle air with the concussion of inelegant oaths and idioms, uttered in the most ungraceful manner. Sir, your vulgarity is unpardonable, and we now part for ever.'

'For ever!' exclaimed he, reverting into attitude, and interlacing his knuckles in a clasp of agony. 'Hear me, Cherubina. By the shades of my ancestors, my vulgarity was assumed!'

'Assumed, Sir?' said I, 'and pray, for what possible purpose?'

'Alas!' cried he, 'I must not, dare not tell. It is a sad story, and enveloped in a mysterious veil. Oh! fatal vow! Oh! cruel Marchesa!' Shocking were his contortions as he spoke.

'No!' cried I. 'No vow could ever have produced so dreadful an effect on your language.'

'Well, 'said he, after a painful pause, 'sooner than incur the odium of falsehood, I must disclose to you the horrid secret.

'The young Count Di Narcissini was my friend. Educated together, we became competitors in our studies and accomplishments; and in none of them could either of us be said to excel the other; till, on our introduction at Court, it was remarked by the Queen, that I surpassed the Count in shaking hands. 'Narcissini,' said her Majesty, 'has judgment enough in knowing when to present a single finger, or perhaps two; but, for the positive pressure, or the negligent hand with a drooping wrist; or the cordial, honest, dislocating shake, give me Montmorenci. I cannot deny that the former has great taste in this accomplishment; but then the latter has more genius – more execution – more, as it were, of the magnifique and aimable.'

'His mother the Marchesa overheard this critique, turned as pale as ashes, and left the levee.

'That night, hardly had I fallen into one of those gentle slumbers, which ever attends the virtuous, when a sudden noise roused me; and on opening my eyes, I beheld the detested Marchesa, with an Italian assassin, standing over me.'

'Montmorenci!' cried she, 'thou art the bane of my repose. Thou hast surpassed my son in the graces. Now listen. Either pledge thyself, by an irrevocable vow, henceforth to sprinkle thy conversation with uncouth phrases, and colloquial barbarisms, or prepare to die!'

'Terrible alternative! What could I do? The dagger gleamed before my face. I shuddered, and took the fatal vow of vulgarity.

'The Marchesa then put into my hand the Blackguard's Dictionary, which I studied night and day with much success; and I have now the misfortune to state, that I can be, so far as language goes, the greatest blackguard in England.'

'Unhappy youth!' cried I. 'This, indeed, accounts for what had often made me uneasy. But say, can nothing absolve you from this hateful vow?'

'There is one way,' he replied. 'The Marchesa permitted me to resume my natural elegance, as soon as my marrying should put an end to competition between her son and me. Oh! then, my Cherubina, you, you alone can restore me to hope, to happiness, and to grammar!'

'Ah! my lord,' cried I, 'recollect my own fatal vow. Never, never can I be your's!'

'Drive me not mad!' he cried. 'You are mine, you shall be mine. This, this is the bitterest moment of my life. You do not, cannot love me. No, Cherubina, no, you cannot love me.'

I fixed my eyes in a wild gaze, rose hastily from my chair, paced the room with quick steps; and often sighing deeply, clasped my hands and shuddered.

He led me to the sofa, kissed the drapery of my cambric handkerchief, and concealed his face in its folds. Then raising his head.

'Do you love me?' said he, with a voice dropping manna.

A smile, bashful in its archness, played round my rich and trembling lip; and with an air of bewitching insinuation, I placed my hand on his shoulder, shook my head, and looked up in his face, with an expression half reproachful, half tender.

He snatched me in a transport to his heart; and that trembling pressure, which virtue consecrated, and love understood, conveyed to each of us an unspeakable sensation; as if a beam from Heaven had passed through both our frames, and left some of its divine warmth behind it.

What followed, angels might have attested.

A ringlet had escaped from the bandage of my bodkin. He clipped it off with my scissors, and fixed it next his heart; while I prettily struggled to prevent him, with arch anger, and a pouting playfulness. A thousand saucy triumphs were basking in his eyes, when the door opened, and who should make his appearance, but – Master Bobby!

I could have boxed him.

'I avail myself,' said he, 'of the permission you gave me last night, to call on you this morning.'

Montmorenci looked from the one to the other with amazement.

'And as I am anxious,' continued Stuart, 'to speak with you in private – '

'Sir,' said I, 'any thing which you have to communicate, this gentleman, my particular friend, may hear.'

'Yes, Sir,' cried his lordship, in a haughty tone, 'for I have the honour to boast myself the protector of this lady.'

'If you mean her protector from injury and insult,' said Stuart, 'I hope, Sir, you are not on this occasion, as on others, an actor?'

'You know me then?' said his lordship.

'I saw you perform last night,' answered Stuart, 'but, to say the truth, I do not recollect your name.'

'My name is Norval on the Grampian Hills,' cried his lordship.

'Sir,' said Stuart, 'though we sometimes laugh at you, even in your grave characters, the part you have now chosen seems much too serious for drollery. Allow me to ask, Sir, by what right you feel entitled to call yourself the protector of this lady?'

'First inform me,' said Montmorenci, 'by what right you feel entitled to put that question?'

'By the right of friendship,' answered Stuart.

'No, but enmity,' cried I, 'unprovoked, unprincipled, inexorable enmity. This is the Stuart whom you have often heard me mention, as my persecutor; and I hope you will now make him repent of his temerity.'

'Sir,' said his lordship, 'I desire you to leave the house.'

'Not till you favour me with your company,' replied Stuart; 'for I find I must have some serious conversation with you.'

'Beshrew my heart!' cried Lord Altamont Mortimer Montmorenci, 'if you want satisfaction, follow me this moment. I am none of your slovenly, slobbering shots. Damme, I scorn to pistol a gentleman about the ankles. I can teach the young idea how to shoot, damme.'

He spoke, and strode out of the room.

Stuart smiled and followed him. You must know, I speculate upon a duel.

In short, my plot is entangling itself admirably; and such characters as Betterton and Stuart will not fail to keep the wheels of it going. Betterton is probably planning to carry me off by force; Stuart and our hero are coming to a misunderstanding about me; the latter will, perhaps, return with his arm in an interesting sling, and another parting-forever interview cannot be far distant.

Such is the promising aspect of affairs.

Adieu.

LETTER XV

While I was sitting in the most painful suspense, a knock came to the door, and Stuart entered.

'You terrify, shock, amaze me!' cried I. 'What dreadful blow awaits me? Speak!'

'Pray,' said he, laughing, 'what was your fancy for telling me that you were ruined?'

'And so I am,' answered I.

'At least, not in the way you wished me to suppose,' said he.

'I repeat, Sir,' cried I, 'that I am ruined: no matter in what manner; but ruined I am.'

'Your friend, the player, tells me that you are not,' said he.

'My friend, the player, is very meddling,' answered I. 'This is the way that whatever plot I lay down for my memoirs is always frustrated. Sir, I say I am ruined.'

'Well,' cried he, 'I will not dispute the point. I wish only to guard you against being ruined again. I mistrust this Grundy much. From his conversation, after we left you, I can perceive that he has a matrimonial design upon you. Pray beware of the fellow.'

'The fellow!' cried I. 'Alas! you know him not. His large and piercing eye is but the index of a soul fraught with every human virtue.'

'Ah! my friend,' said he, 'you stand on the very verge of a precipice, and I must endeavour, even at the risk of your displeasure, to snatch you from it.'

He then began a long lecture on my conduct, and asserted that my romantic turn is a sort of infatuation, amounting to little less than madness, and likely to terminate in ruin. He painted, in language pretty enough, the distraction of Wilkinson, after I had fled from his house; and, at last, contrived to extract from me (what, I remark, I can never obtain when I want them) – tears.

Seeing me thus affected, he turned the conversation to desultory topics. We talked of old times, of our juvenal sports and quarrels, when we were playfellows; what happened after our separation; his life at college and in the army; my studies and accomplishments. Thence we made a natural transition to the fine arts. In short, it was the first time in my life that I had a rational conversation (as it is called) with a well-informed young man, and I confess I felt gratified. Besides, even his serious remonstrances were so happily interspersed with humour and delicate irony, that I could not bring myself to be displeased with him.

He remained more than two hours, and at parting took my hand.

'I have hitherto been scolding you,' said he, with a smile, 'and I must now praise you, that I may be better entitled to scold you again. You have the elements of every thing amiable and endearing in your mind, and an admirable understanding to direct them. But you want some one to direct that understanding. Your father and I have already had a serious consultation on the subject; but till he comes, nothing can be done. Indeed, I am much alarmed at his absence. Meantime, will you permit me to legislate in his stead, and to begin by chusing more eligible lodgings for you. I confess I dread the machinations of that actor.'

As he spoke, a rap came to the door.

'Do me the favour to take tea with me this evening,' said I, 'and we will talk the matter over.'

He promised, and took his leave.

Montmorenci then made his appearance, and in visible perturbation, at having found Stuart here again. If I can constitute a jealousy between them it will add to the animation of several scenes. I therefore praised Stuart to the skies, and mentioned my having asked him to tea. His lordship flew into a violent rage, and swore that the villain wanted to unheroinize me, in order to gain me himself. He then renewed his entreaties that I would consent to an immediate marriage; but now the benefits of my fatal vow shone forth in their full lustre, and its irrevocability gave rise to some of the finest agonies that his lordship ever exhibited.

At length we separated to dress for dinner.

At my toilette I recollected with exactness every particular of his late conversation; his sentiments so congenial with mine; his manners so engaging; his countenance so noble and ingenuous.

'I shall see him no more,' said I.

A sigh that followed, told me more of my heart than I wished to know.

No, my Biddy, never, never can he be mine. I must banish his dear image from my mind; and to speak in the simple and unsophisticated language of the heroine in the Forest of Montalbo:

'Indeed, surely, I think, we ought, under existing circumstances, dearest, dearest madam, to avoid, where we can, every allusion, to this, I fear, alas! our, indeed, hopeless attachment.'

Adieu.