Читать книгу Belinda - Maria Edgeworth - Страница 10

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They found Lady Anne Percival in the midst of her children, who all turned their healthy, rosy, intelligent faces towards the door, the moment that they heard their father’s voice. Clarence Hervey was so much struck with the expression of happiness in Lady Anne’s countenance, that he absolutely forgot to compare her beauty with Lady Delacour’s. Whether her eyes were large or small, blue or hazel, he could not tell; nay, he might have been puzzled if he had been asked the colour of her hair. Whether she were handsome by the rules of art, he knew not; but he felt that she had the essential charm of beauty, the power of prepossessing the heart immediately in her favour. The effect of her manners, like that of her beauty, was rather to be felt than described. Every body was at ease in her company, and none thought themselves called upon to admire her. To Clarence Hervey, who had been used to the brilliant and exigeante Lady Delacour, this respite from the fatigue of admiration was peculiarly agreeable. The unconstrained cheerfulness of Lady Anne Percival spoke a mind at ease, and immediately imparted happiness by exacting sympathy; but in Lady Delacour’s wit and gaiety there was an appearance of art and effort, which often destroyed the pleasure that she wished to communicate. Mr. Hervey was, perhaps unusually, disposed to reflection, by having just escaped from drowning; for he had made all these comparisons, and came to this conclusion, with the accuracy of a metaphysician, who has been accustomed to study cause and effect—indeed there was no species of knowledge for which he had not taste and talents, though, to please fools, he too often affected “the bliss of ignorance.”

The children at Lady Anne Percival’s happened to be looking at some gold fish, which were in a glass globe, and Dr. X——, who was a general favourite with the younger as well as with the elder part of the family, was seized upon the moment he entered the room: a pretty little girl of five years old took him prisoner by the flap of the coat, whilst two of her brothers assailed him with questions about the ears, eyes, and fins of fishes. One of the little boys filliped the glass globe, and observed, that the fish immediately came to the surface of the water, and seemed to hear the noise very quickly; but his brother doubted whether the fish heard the noise, and remarked, that they might be disturbed by seeing or feeling the motion of the water, when the glass was struck.

Dr. X—— observed, that this was a very learned dispute, and that the question had been discussed by no less a person than the Abbé Nollet; and he related some of the ingenious experiments tried by that gentleman, to decide whether fishes can or cannot hear. Whilst the doctor was speaking, Clarence Hervey was struck with the intelligent countenance of one of the little auditors, a girl of about ten or twelve years old; he was surprised to discover in her features, though not in their expression, a singular resemblance to Lady Delacour. He remarked this to Mr. Percival, and the child, who overheard him, blushed as red as scarlet. Dinner was announced at this instant, and Clarence Hervey thought no more of the circumstance, attributing the girl’s blush to confusion at being looked at so earnestly. One of the little boys whispered as they were going down to dinner, “Helena, I do believe that this is the good-natured gentleman who went out of the path to make room for us, instead of running over us as the other man did.” The children agreed that Clarence Hervey certainly was the good-natured gentleman, and upon the strength of this observation, one of the boys posted himself next to Clarence at dinner, and by all the little playful manoeuvres in his power endeavoured to show his gratitude, and to cultivate a friendship which had been thus auspiciously commenced. Mr. Hervey, who piqued himself upon being able always to suit his conversation to his companions, distinguished himself at dinner by an account of the Chinese fishing-bird, from which he passed to the various ingenious methods of fishing practised by the Russian Cossacks. From modern he went to ancient fish, and he talked of that which was so much admired by the Roman epicures for exhibiting a succession of beautiful colours whilst it is dying; and which was, upon that account, always suffered to die in the presence of the guests, as part of the entertainment.—Clarence was led on by the questions of the children from fishes to birds; he spoke of the Roman aviaries, which were so constructed as to keep from the sight of the prisoners that they contained, “the fields, woods, and every object which might remind them of their former liberty.”—From birds he was going on to beasts, when he was nearly struck dumb by the forbidding severity with which an elderly lady, who sat opposite to him, fixed her eyes upon him. He had not, till this instant, paid the smallest attention to her; but her stern countenance was now so strongly contrasted with the approving looks of the children who sat next to her, that he could not help remarking it. He asked her to do him the honour to drink a glass of wine with him. She declined doing him that honour; observing that she never drank more than one glass of wine at dinner, and that she had just taken one with Mr. Percival. Her manner was well-bred, but haughty in the extreme; and she was so passionate, that her anger sometimes conquered even her politeness. Her dislike to Clarence Hervey was apparent, even in her silence. “If the old gentlewoman has taken an antipathy to me at first sight, I cannot help it,” thought he, and he went on to the beasts. The boy, who sat next him, had asked some questions about the proboscis of the elephant, and Mr. Hervey mentioned Ives’s account of the elephants in India, who have been set to watch young children, and who draw them back gently with their trunks, when they go out of bounds. He talked next of the unicorn; and addressing himself to Dr. X—— and Mr. Percival, he declared that in his opinion Herodotus did not deserve to be called the father of lies; he cited the mammoth to prove that the apocryphal chapter in the history of beasts should not be contemned—that it would in all probability be soon established as true history. The dessert was on the table before Clarence had done with the mammoth.

As the butler put a fine dish of cherries upon the table, he said,

“My lady, these cherries are a present from the old gardener to Miss Delacour.”

“Set them before Miss Delacour then,” said Lady Anne. “Helena, my dear, distribute your own cherries.”

At the name of Delacour, Clarence Hervey, though his head was still half full of the mammoth, looked round in astonishment; and when he saw the cherries placed before the young lady, whose resemblance to Lady Delacour he had before observed, he could not help exclaiming,

“That young lady then is not a daughter of your ladyship’s?”

“No; but I love her as well as if she were,” replied Lady Anne.—“What were you saying about the mammoth?”

“That the mammoth is supposed to be——————” but interrupting himself, Clarence said in an inquiring tone—“A niece of Lady Delacour’s?”

“Her ladyship’s daughter, sir,” said the severe old lady, in a voice more terrific than her looks.

“Shall I give you some strawberries, Mr. Hervey,” said lady Anne, “or will you let Helena help you to some cherries?”

“Her ladyship’s daughter!” exclaimed Clarence Hervey in a tone of surprise.

“Some cherries, sir?” said Helena; but her voice faltered so much, that she could hardly utter the words.

Clarence perceived that he had been the cause of her agitation, though he knew not precisely by what means; and he now applied himself in silence to the picking of his strawberries with great diligence.

The ladies soon afterwards withdrew, and as Mr. Percival did not touch upon the subject again, Clarence forbore to ask any further questions, though he was considerably surprised by this sudden discovery. When he went into the drawing-room to tea, he found his friend, the stern old lady, speaking in a high declamatory tone. The words which he heard as he came into the room were—

“If there were no Clarence Herveys, there would be no Lady Delacours.”—Clarence bowed as if he had received a high compliment—the old lady walked away to an antechamber, fanning herself with great energy.

“Mrs. Margaret Delacour,” said Lady Anne, in a low voice to Hervey, “is an aunt of Lord Delacour’s. A woman whose heart is warmer than her temper.”

“And that is never cool,” said a young lady, who sat next to Lady Anne. “I call Mrs. Margaret Delacour the volcano; I’m sure I am never in her company without dreading an eruption. Every now and then out comes with a tremendous noise, fire, smoke, and rubbish.”

“And precious minerals,” said Lady Anne, “amongst the rubbish.”

“But the best of it is,” continued the young lady, “that she is seldom in a passion without making a hundred mistakes, for which she is usually obliged afterwards to ask a thousand pardons.”

“By that account,” said Lady Anne, “which I believe to be just, her contrition is always ten times as great as her offence.”

“Now you talk of contrition, Lady Anne,” said Mr. Hervey, “I should think of my own offences: I am very sorry that my indiscreet questions gave Miss Delacour any pain—my head was so full of the mammoth, that I blundered on without seeing what I was about till it was too late.”

“Pray, sir,” said Mrs. Margaret Delacour, who now returned, and took her seat upon a sofa, with the solemnity of a person who was going to sit in judgment upon a criminal, “pray, sir, may I ask how long you have been acquainted with my Lady Delacour?”

Clarence Hervey took up a book, and with great gravity kissed it, as if he had been upon his oath in a court of justice, and answered,

“To the best of my recollection, madam, it is now four years since I had first the pleasure and honour of seeing Lady Delacour.”

“And in that time, intimately as you have had the pleasure of being acquainted with her ladyship, you have never discovered that she had a daughter?”

“Never,” said Mr. Hervey.

“There, Lady Anne!—There!” cried Mrs. Delacour, “will you tell me after this, that Lady Delacour is not a monster?”

“Every body says that she’s a prodigy,” said Lady Anne; “and prodigies and monsters are sometimes thought synonymous terms.”

“Such a mother was never heard of,” continued Mrs. Delacour, “since the days of Savage and Lady Macclesfield. I am convinced that she hates her daughter. Why she never speaks of her—she never sees her—she never thinks of her!”

“Some mothers speak more than they think of their children, and others think more than they speak of them,” said Lady Anne.

“I always thought,” said Mr. Hervey, “that Lady Delacour was a woman of great sensibility.”

“Sensibility!” exclaimed the indignant old lady, “she has no sensibility, sir—none—none. She who lives in a constant round of dissipation, who performs no one duty, who exists only for herself; how does she show her sensibility?—Has she sensibility for her husband—for her daughter—for any one useful purpose upon earth?—Oh, how I hate the cambric handkerchief sensibility that is brought out only to weep at a tragedy!—Yes; Lady Delacour has sensibility enough, I grant ye, when sensibility is the fashion. I remember well her performing the part of a nurse with vast applause; and I remember, too, the sensibility she showed, when the child that she nursed fell a sacrifice to her dissipation. The second of her children, that she killed—”

“Killed!—Oh! surely, my dear Mrs. Delacour, that is too strong a word,” said Lady Anne: “you would not make a Medea of Lady Delacour!”

“It would have been better if I had,” cried Mrs. Delacour, “I can understand that there may be such a thing in nature as a jealous wife, but an unfeeling mother I cannot comprehend—that passes my powers of imagination.”

“And mine, so much,” said Lady Anne, “that I cannot believe such a being to exist in the world—notwithstanding all the descriptions I have heard of it: as you say, my dear Mrs. Delacour, it passes my powers of imagination. Let us leave it in Mr. Hervey’s apocryphal chapter of animals, and he will excuse us if I never admit it into true history, at least without some better evidence than I have yet heard.”

“Why, my dear, dear Lady Anne,” cried Mrs. Delacour—“I’ve made this coffee so sweet, there’s no drinking it—what evidence would you have?”

“None,” said Lady Anne, smiling, “I would have none.” “That is to say, you will take none,” said Mrs. Delacour: “but can any thing be stronger evidence than her ladyship’s conduct to my poor Helen—to your Helen, I should say—for you have educated, you have protected her, you have been a mother to her. I am an infirm, weak, ignorant, passionate old woman—I could not have been what you have been to that child—God bless you!—God will bless you!”

She rose as she spoke, to set down her coffee-cup on the table. Clarence Hervey took it from her with a look which said much, and which she was perfectly capable of understanding.

“Young man,” said she, “it is very unfashionable to treat age and infirmity with politeness. I wish that your friend, Lady Delacour, may at my time of life meet with as much respect, as she has met with admiration and gallantry in her youth. Poor woman, her head has absolutely been turned with admiration—and if fame say true, Mr. Hervey has had his share in turning that head by his flattery.”

“I am sure her ladyship has turned mine by her charms,” said Clarence; “and I certainly am not to be blamed for admiring what all the world admires.”

“I wish,” said the old lady, “for her own sake, for the sake of her family, and for the sake of her reputation, that my Lady Delacour had fewer admirers, and more friends.”

“Women who have met with so many admirers, seldom meet with many friends,” said Lady Anne.

“No,” said Mrs. Delacour, “for they seldom are wise enough to know their value.”

“We learn the value of all things, but especially of friends, by experience,” said Lady Anne; “and it is no wonder, therefore, that those who have little experience of the pleasures of friendship should not be wise enough to know their value.”

“This is very good-natured sophistry; but Lady Delacour is too vain ever to have a friend,” said Mrs. Delacour. “My dear Lady Anne, you don’t know her as well as I do—she has more vanity than ever woman had.”

“That is certainly saying a great deal,” said Lady Anne; “but then we must consider, that Lady Delacour, as an heiress, a beauty, and a wit, has a right to a triple share at least.”

“Both her fortune and her beauty are gone; and if she had any wit left, it is time it should teach her how to conduct herself, I think,” said Mrs. Delacour: “but I give her up—I give her up.”

“Oh, no,” said Lady Anne, “you must not give her up yet, I have been informed, and upon the best authority, that Lady Delacour was not always the unfeeling, dissipated fine lady that she now appears to be. This is only one of the transformations of fashion—the period of her enchantment will soon be at an end, and she will return to her natural character. I should not be at all surprised, if Lady Delacour were to appear at once la femme comme il y en a pen.”

“Or la bonne mère?” said Mrs. Delacour, sarcastically, “after thus leaving her daughter——”

“Pour bonne bouche,” interrupted Lady Anne, “when she is tired of the insipid taste of other pleasures, she will have a higher relish for those of domestic life, which will be new and fresh to her.”

“And so you really think, my dear Lady Anne, that my Lady Delacour will end by being a domestic woman. Well,” said Mrs. Margaret, after taking two pinches of snuff, “some people believe in the millennium; but I confess I am not one of them—are you, Mr. Hervey?”

“If it were foretold to me by a good angel,” said Clarence, smiling, as his eye glanced at Lady Anne; “if it were foretold to me by a good angel, how could I doubt it?”

Here the conversation was interrupted by the entrance of one of Lady Anne’s little boys, who came running eagerly up to his mother, to ask whether he might have “the sulphurs to show to Helena Delacour. I want to show her Vertumnus and Pomona, mamma,” said he. “Were not the cherries that the old gardener sent very good?”

“What is this about the cherries and the old gardener, Charles?” said the young lady who sat beside Lady Anne: “come here and tell me the whole story.”

“I will, but I should tell it you a great deal better another time,” said the boy, “because now Helena’s waiting for Vertumnus and Pomona.”

“Go then to Helena,” said Lady Anne, “and I will tell the story for you.”

Then turning to the young lady she began—“Once upon a time there lived an old gardener at Kensington; and this old gardener had an aloe, which was older than himself; for it was very near a hundred years of age, and it was just going to blossom, and the old gardener calculated how much he might make by showing his aloe, when it should be in full blow, to the generous public—and he calculated that he might make a 100l.; and with this 100l. he determined to do more than was ever done with a 100l. before: but, unluckily, as he was thus reckoning his blossoms before they were blown, he chanced to meet with a fair damsel, who ruined all his calculations.”

“Ay, Mrs. Stanhope’s maid, was not it?” interrupted Mrs. Margaret Delacour. “A pretty damsel she was, and almost as good a politician as her mistress. Think of that jilt’s tricking this poor old fellow out of his aloe, and—oh, the meanness of Lady Delacour, to accept of that aloe for one of her extravagant entertainments!”

“But I always understood that she paid fifty guineas for it,” said Lady Anne.

“Whether she did or not,” said Mrs. Delacour, “her ladyship and Mrs. Stanhope between them were the ruin of this poor old man. He was taken in to marry that jade of a waiting-maid; she turned out just as you might expect from a pupil of Mrs. Stanhope’s—the match-making Mrs. Stanhope—you know, sir.” (Clarence Hervey changed colour.) “She turned out,” continued Mrs. Delacour, “every thing that was bad—ruined her husband—ran away from him—and left him a beggar.”

“Poor man!” said Clarence Hervey.

“But now,” said Lady Anne, “let’s come to the best part of the story—mark how good comes out of evil. If this poor man had not lost his aloe and his wife, I probably should never have been acquainted with Mrs. Delacour, or with my little Helena. About the time that the old gardener was left a beggar, as I happened to be walking one fine evening in Sloane-street, I met a procession of school-girls—an old man begged from them in a most moving voice; and as they passed, several of the young ladies threw halfpence to him. One little girl, who observed that the old man could not stoop without great difficulty, stayed behind the rest of her companions, and collected the halfpence which they had thrown to him, and put them into his hat. He began to tell his story over again to her, and she stayed so long listening to it, that her companions had turned the corner of the street, and were out of sight. She looked about in great distress; and I never shall forget the pathetic voice with which she said, ‘Oh! what will become of me? every body will be angry with me.’ I assured her that nobody should be angry with her, and she gave me her little hand with the utmost innocent confidence. I took her home to her schoolmistress, and I was so pleased with the beginning of this acquaintance, that I was determined to cultivate it. One good acquaintance I have heard always leads to another. Helena introduced me to her aunt Delacour as her best friend. Mrs. Margaret Delacour has had the goodness to let her little niece spend the holidays and all her leisure time with me, so that our acquaintance has grown into friendship. Helena has become quite one of my family.”

“And I am sure she has become quite a different creature since she has been so much with you,” cried Mrs. Delacour; “her spirits were quite broken by her mother’s neglect of her: young as she is, she has a great deal of real sensibility; but as to her mother’s sensibility—”

At the recollection of Lady Delacour’s neglect of her child, Mrs. Delacour was going again to launch forth into indignant invective, but Lady Anne stopped her, by whispering—

“Take care what you say of the mother, for here is the daughter coming, and she has, indeed, a great deal of real sensibility.”

Helena and her young companions now came into the room, bringing with them the sulphurs at which they had been looking.

“Mamma,” said little Charles Percival, “we have brought the sulphurs to you, because there are some of them that I don’t know.”

“Wonderful!” said Lady Anne; “and what is not quite so wonderful, there are some of them that I don’t know.”

The children spread the sulphurs upon a little table, and all the company gathered round it.

“Here are all the nine muses for you,” said the least of the boys, who had taken his seat by Clarence Hervey at dinner; “here are all the muses for you, Mr. Hervey: which do you like best?—Oh, that’s the tragic muse that you have chosen!—You don’t like the tragic better than the comic muse, do you?”

Clarence Hervey made no answer, for he was at that instant recollecting how Belinda looked in the character of the tragic muse.

“Has your ladyship ever happened to meet with the young lady who has spent this winter with Lady Delacour?” said Clarence to Lady Anne.

“I sat near her one night at the opera,” said Lady Anne: “she has a charming countenance.”

“Who?—Belinda Portman, do you mean?” said Mrs. Delacour. “I am sure if I were a young man, I would not trust to the charming countenance of a young lady who is a pupil of Mrs. Stanhope’s, and a friend of—Helena, my dear, shut the door—the most dissipated woman in London.”

“Indeed,” said Lady Anne, “Miss Portman is in a dangerous situation; but some young people learn prudence by being placed in dangerous situations, as some young horses, I have heard Mr. Percival say, learn to be sure-footed, by being left to pick their own way on bad roads.”

Here Mr. Percival, Dr. X——, and some other gentlemen, came up stairs to tea, and the conversation took another turn. Clarence Hervey endeavoured to take his share in it with his usual vivacity, but he was thinking of Belinda Portman, dangerous situations, stumbling horses, &c; and he made several blunders, which showed his absence of mind.

“What have you there, Mr. Hervey?” said Dr. X——, looking over his shoulder—“the tragic muse? This tragic muse seems to rival Lady Delacour in your admiration.”

“Oh,” said Clarence, smiling, “you know I was always a votary of the muses.”

“And a favoured votary,” said Dr. X——. “I wish for the interests of literature, that poets may always be lovers, though I cannot say that I desire lovers should always be poets. But, Mr. Hervey, you must never marry, remember,” continued Dr. X——, “never—for your true poet must always be miserable. You know Petrarch tells us, he would not have been happy if he could; he would not have married his mistress if it had been in his power; because then there would have been an end of his beautiful sonnets.”

“Every one to his taste,” said Clarence; “for my part I have even less ambition to imitate the heroism than hope of being inspired with the poetic genius of Petrarch. I have no wish to pass whole nights composing sonnets. I would (am I not right, Mr. Percival?) infinitely rather be a slave of the ring than a slave of the lamp.”

Here the conversation ended; Clarence took his leave, and Mrs. Margaret Delacour said, the moment he had left the room, “Quite a different sort of young man from what I had expected to see!”