Читать книгу Like Another Helen - Sydney C. Grier - Страница 8

“But sure, sir, Britons would never submit to such a spoliation?”

“I am not saying they would, madam. But Ally Verdy en’t our worst enemy, for he’s a man of sense and of some honour, if I may speak so of a Moor. But he has lately raised to the musnet,[14] or as we would say, adopted as his heir, his grandson, a youth of the vilest disposition, called Surajah Dowlah, and from him we have little better to hope than we would from a tyger. He is the Chuta Nabob concerning whom you was pleased to inquire.”

“But pray, sir, tell me more of this person.”

“Why, madam, what little I could tell you would be as displeasing for you to hear as for me to relate.”

I went as red as fire, I am sure. “Oh, sir, pray pardon me if I have trespassed on your patience. I know I’m a sad creature for asking questions, and I fear you’ll think I’m intruding into matters too high for a young woman to concern herself with.”

For I remembered, Amelia (how can I ever forget it?), that dreadful day at Holly-tree House, when the Rector brought his brother, the Admiral, to wait on our instructresses. You’ll know with what spirit the dear good gentleman described the last fleet action in which he had taken part, and how I was carried away by my excitements, and asked him all sorts of questions about the ships and their disposition. He saluted me at parting, you’ll remember, and said to Mrs Eustacia, “I dare be bound, madam, this pretty little Miss could write as fair an account of the fight as any clerk I ever had on board ship,” which piece of kindness puffed me up not a little. But when he was gone away with his brother, I was sent for to Mrs Eustacia, and chidden for meddling in matters with which I had no concern. There was nothing, said the good lady, that was so much disliked by gentlemen as the affectation of masculine knowledge in a young woman, and if I was so unhappy as to be cursed with a taste for severe learning, it behoved me to conceal it as I would the plague. And so I have always strove to do, aided by the kind condescension that prompts most gentlemen to turn the answer to a lady’s question into a compliment to her eyes or her smile, but this inquisitive spirit of mine (what am I to do with it, my dear?) is perpetually leading me wrong. But Captain Colquhoun was more tender to my fault than Mrs Eustacia had been.

“Indeed, madam,” he said, “I could wish there was more of our ladies here with your laudable desire of knowledge. If they took these things into account, there might be less of that grasping and grinding for money, which is making us (saving your presence) to stink in the nostrils of the Indians. But when every one is seeking to outshine her neighbours, and luxury is come to such a pitch among us that Rome herself can’t scarce have been worse, what wonder that money is sought by the sale of dussticks[15] and in other irregular ways, to the great damage of the Nabob and our eternal discredit?”

“Then you look for a judgment upon this place, sir?”

“I look for an invasion sooner or later of our territory on the part of the Chuta Nabob, madam, unless heaven should interpose and raise one of the other claimants to the soubahship[16] in his place. And when that invasion comes, here are we, with the Fort all tumbling to pieces, the guns useless, no powder, and a militia that don’t know one end of their muskets from t’other.”

“And is this the fault of the Company, sir?”

“No, madam. The Company sent out orders for the drilling of the militia by the Godolphin four years ago, and this year they have ordered positively the repair of the fortifications on two separate occasions, chiefly on account of the threatened war with France. But Colonel Scott, who prepared the complete plan of defence which was ordered to be carried out, is dead, and Mr Drake and the gentlemen of the Presidency won’t listen to any one of less responsible station. So the work is hung up, as the lawyers say, and when the place is plunged in one common ruin, all will suffer alike, though with different deserts.”

This and some further conversation to the same effect has made me (as I may without shame confess to my Amelia) almost afraid to sleep in my bed, lest I should find myself aroused at midnight by the terrors of a Moorish invasion. Here, where there’s no Whigs nor Tories, I am become as strong a party-woman, to use Mr Addison’s phrase, as any of the ladies of whom he wrote; and should the fashion arise, as in his days, of wearing hoods differing in colour according to the politics of the wearers, I should be among the first to adopt it. Let me see: our side would choose red, I suppose, as signifying our desire for warlike preparations, while the ladies of Mr Drake’s party would wear the Quaker gray. I think our party would have the best of it, Amelia; don’t you?

Calcutta, September ye 21st.

’Tis time, indeed, that I brought this letter to a close; but there’s one or two things I must first put down, though at the risque of my dear girl’s thinking me a sad tedious scribbler. I have found the way, Amelia, into my stepmother’s favour—a thing that would be altogether charming, were it not that the means thereto are such as, to borrow a phrase from our great but neglected British poet, would leave me poor indeed. But you shall hear. On Saturday, then, my trunks, which had been in the hold of the Orford, were brought to the house, and I was extraordinary well pleased, for I had feared to be forced to stay from church the next day for want of a suitable gown. Mrs Freyne was to the full as glad as I, and shut herself up with me in my chamber to see the trunks unpacked, telling the banyan, who performs such services of ceremony here, to deny her to her visitants, using the phrase “The door is shut,” which is so understood by everybody. Well, as Marianna unfolded and laid out one gown after another, I could see that Mrs Freyne became less and less contented, and at last she burst out with—

“I vow, miss, you have a prodigious great store of clothes. Pray how much did Mr Freyne send home for providing you with ’em?”

“I don’t know, madam,” I said, and I was thankful to be able to say so. “The gentlewomen at Holly-tree House were bid to provide them, and account to Mr Freyne, within a certain sum.”

“You might have been coming out as a married woman,” says my stepmother, smoothing the satin of my white quilted petticoat. “I never saw a young Miss so absurdly well provided. Look you there now; you have three—four—silk night-gowns, and questionless a dozen or two of muslin ones.”

“No, madam, I have none of muslin. Mrs Abigail said they would be made cheaper here, and the limit of the money not exceeded.”

Mrs Freyne’s countenance cleared. “Why then,” she said, “I’ll show you what’s to be done. You shall give me two of these silk night-gowns, and I’ll have half a dozen muslin ones made for you from stuff that I have lying by, and so you’ll be properly dressed and not over-furnished.”

“As you please, madam,” said I. But I was glad she left me the white damask and the yellow lustring, and took the blue and the green, which, as you know, I was not so pleased with. But I trembled when I saw her considering my blush-coloured paduasoy with the silver lace. If she had laid hands on it, I must have ventured to suggest to her that the hue was not becoming to ladies of such a delicate complexion as hers, but only to brown girls with a high colour, like your Sylvia. But she passed it over, and after requesting of me such trifles as an apron or two and a French necklace,[17] came to my head-clothes.

“Indeed you’re not badly off for lace!” she said. “Three heads,[18] as I’m alive—two Brussels and a Mechlin. I’m sure you can’t want this Brussels mob, miss.”

“Oh, pray, madam,” I said in a great taking, “you are welcome to the other two, but leave me that one.”

“I think it’s very ill-natured in you, miss, to say that when you know I have set my heart on it. How can you be so unamiable? I like to see a young woman facetious[19] to those about her.”

“Indeed I can’t give it you, madam,” I said, “for the lace was my mother’s, but if you’ll accept of the loan of it——”

“I see you en’t so disobliging as I thought,” said she graciously, and carried off the cap, though I would have given almost any of my other clothes to have kept it. But she has treated me much more obligingly since, and now that I know the way into her good graces, I shan’t forget the lesson, though to practise it might cost me all my favourite gowns, even to my mother’s white brocade flowered with gold. But no, I had forgot. She won’t want that, though she was mightily taken with the fashion of it (it was made over after the pattern of the Princess Emily’s gown for the last Birth-night,[20] my dearest friend will remember), for she said the stuff might have come out of Noah’s Ark.

The next day we went to church in state, all of us in our palanqueens, with the peon marching before, and boys with fans and so on following behind. I was wearing my paduasoy, with the ribbons to match in my cap, and before we started my papa was so very kind as to place round my neck a collar of pearls, so large and white and fine that a queen might wear them, and I could scarce believe they were really designed for me. Mrs Freyne wore a very fine flowered satin, with the embroidered apron she had from me, and her diamonds made me wink to look at them. Forgive me, my dear, for entering into such particulars on such an occasion. I can’t tell why it should be that the Calcutta people should make such a show and parade of one’s first appearance at church, any more than why we in England should do the same on the Sunday after a wedding, but it is to them as important as an appearance at Court. I must tell you that I had devised a little plan with Miss Hamlin, which she succeeded in carrying out with the greatest exactness imaginable. Our respective processions (I can’t find any other word for it) approaching from opposite directions, we reached the church compound (which means an enclosure) at the same time, but at different gates, so that the gentlemen who were waiting to catch sight of the newly-arrived ladies were drawn two ways at once, and divided their forces. Still, there were enough of them to cause me great uneasiness, as they all pressed round to help me from the palanqueen, desiring to be allowed to hand me into church, or to carry a prayer-book, a fan, or even a handkerchief. I was so pressed and pestered that I didn’t know what to do, and suddenly catching sight of Captain Colquhoun on the outskirts of the crowd, I beckoned to him with my fan (I hope it wasn’t very forward in me), and he came and lent me his hand into the church. As we entered, in came Miss Hamlin at the opposite door, and handing her was the very gentleman we had seen standing in the gateway of the Fort on our arrival. We made our honours to each other as we passed to our pews, and there, with the Indian boys flapping us with feather fans, and the eyes of half the congregation fixed on one whenever the time came to stand up, I did my best to compose my thoughts suitably to the solemnity of the service. I am ashamed to say that I never found it so hard in my life.

After an excellent discourse from good Mr Bellamy (I had now commanded my thoughts sufficiently to be able to listen to it with attention), we passed out into the church porch, and there was such a bowing and curtseying and whispering and staring as you never saw. Every moment it was, “Pray, sir, present me to your lovely daughter,” or, “Do, dear madam, make me acquainted with this charming Miss,” and kind things enough said to confuse a London beauty, much more a poor girl just fresh from her boarding-school, as Miss Hamlin has so great a fancy for reminding me. And, indeed, Amelia, I was so flurried and flustered with trying to curtsey all ways at once, and with saying, “Sir, you’re most obliging”—“Madam, you are too good”—“Dear sir, you overpower me”—“Pray, madam, don’t make me blush with your kindness” (though I think it far from kind, and quite barbarous, to praise a young creature’s looks to her very face, till she don’t know whither to turn her eyes),—that I don’t know what would have happened if it had not been for Miss Hamlin. This extraordinary young lady had been receiving the compliments of the gentlemen with all the composure of a queen, though now and then she would lift her eyes and reply with a witty sentiment that set all but one of her admirers laughing at that one; but now, when we were both beset by some twenty importunate persons, all crying, “Madam, permit me the honour”—“Allow me, madam”—“Madam, your most obedient,” desiring to hand us to our palanqueens, she stepped across suddenly to me, and, seizing my hand, led me down the steps. “We can’t allow you all the pleasure and the honour, gentlemen,” she said, holding up her fan to shelter her from the sun. “Sure you won’t none of you grudge a little of it to Miss Freyne and me?”

I heard the gentlemen shout with laughter at the whimsical drollery of her tone, and I laughed myself, though I made sure we should not find our palanqueens among those at the foot of the steps, and should be forced to beg one of the gentlemen we had scorned to go in search of them. But there, to my surprise, they were, and Miss Hamlin handed me in with the most graceful air in the world.

“Oh dear, miss,” said I, “what should we have done if this had not happened so pat?”

“Happened?” says she. “I had it happen, sweet innocence. I gave my uncle’s peon his orders before church, and let me tell you, miss, that if that blackfellow think it safe to disobey any one’s orders at our house, it en’t those of the Chuta Beebee.”

“But shan’t we discommode Mr and Mrs Hamlin by bringing ’em to this door, miss?”

“No, indeed, miss. Why, we are all coming to tiffing at your papa’s, and our elders ought to thank me for ridding ’em so soon of the gentlemen.”

But we were not yet rid of the gentlemen, for they came down the steps in a body, headed by our fellow-passenger, Mr Ranger, and by Mr Ensign Bellamy, the Padra’s son, and with much raillery about the rival beauties, and the pretence of devoted friendship to deceive the looker-on, proceeded to escorte us home, marching before and behind our palanqueens, which they insisted should be carried exactly abreast. On reaching the house, we were handed out with great ceremony by our chief cavaliers, the rest of the gentlemen standing and bowing, and my papa, who had reached home by a shorter way, invited them all into the varanda to drink our healths. For indeed he was pleased to be charmed, not only with the honour the gentlemen had done us, as they considered it, but with Miss Hamlin’s action on the church-steps, and said afterwards that she was a fine, handsome, sprightly girl, and he would not be sorry to see me with a touch of her spirit, but my stepmother called her a bold-faced slut.

The things I have mentioned all happened the day before yesterday, and last evening, finding Mrs Freyne about to set forth to an assembly at my Lady Russell’s house in the Rope-walk, I wondered whether she would bid me attend her there, since I was now introduced into the world of Calcutta. But she said nothing of taking me with her, and started alone, while I sat down and wrote these sheets to my Amelia, since my papa was gone to sup with the Governor at the Company’s house on the other side of the Fort. To my surprise, however, he returned home early in the evening, and testifying some vexation on finding me alone, offered to carry me for an airing in the budgero on the water in the moonlight. You’ll guess that I accepted his kindness with transports of gratitude, and sure the occasion had been a charming one, even if it had not brought the added pleasure of his dear company. But as it fell out, he was good enough to speak to me in so tender and affecting a manner as I could describe to no one but my dearest friend.

“Has any one here remarked to you that you are like your mother, miss?” he asked me.

“No, sir; no one but yourself.”

Mr Freyne. And yet to me every turn of your head, every motion of your arm, recalls her to mind. But I suppose few would remember her.

Sylvia. It must be near eighteen years since she left Fort William, sir.

Mr F. True, my girl, and our generations are but short ones in Bengall. Yet it seems to me, seeing you, only yesterday that I took leave of my Sally on the deck of the Sunderland (for I had accompanied her out to sea as far as I might go). The iya stood behind her, holding her infant (that was you, miss), christened by the Padra in haste that very day. Your mother would have you named Sylvia, saying that her own name was so ugly she would choose a sweet pretty one for her baby, and ’twas as much for your sake as her own that she embarked upon that voyage to the Cape of Good Hope which the physician said would save both your lives, for that season was a prodigious unhealthy one at Fort William. The Company’s rule forbids its servants to leave their posts unless sent on business by the Council here, and I durst not throw up the Service if I did not wish us all to starve. So I went back to my work, and managed to scrape together a sufficiency of money to enable me to hire the house we now have from Omy Chund, the Gentoo shroff[21] that owns half Calcutta. ’Twas an agreeable place enough, and cooler than my old quarters in the Fort, and I watched for the coming of the ships from home, which should bring my Sally back to me from the Cape. Instead of that, the first that arrived brought me the news of her death. She had died at sea, and the child was gone on to England with its nurse, to be bred up, as its mother had desired, by the two French gentlewomen who had instructed herself. Does my girl recollect anything of that voyage?

Sylvia (weeping). Nothing, sir. I was barely a year old when I reached Holly-tree House.

Mr F. And you knew as little of your papa as he of you. In mourning my lost charmer I forgot the sweet little pledge of our loves which she had left me. Was there anything to remind you that you possessed a living parent, child?

Sylvia. Indeed, dear sir, there was not much. The other young Misses could talk of their papas’ kindness to them in their holidays, but all times were the same to me. Once or twice you were good enough to say in your letters to Mrs Eustacia, “I hope Miss is a good girl, and minds her book,” and I’ll assure you the school could scarce contain me, I was so proud to be remembered so far away.

Mr F. At times I could almost wish that I had left the Service five years ago, and gone home to settle down somewhere with my girl. But, no; I had not money enough, and must make more. And make it I did, and am making it every day more and more—for Madam to spend.

Sylvia. Sure, sir, Mrs Freyne lays it out with great elegance.

Mr F. Questionless, miss. But I had as lief the money and the elegance had been some other man’s. There’s a pleasing quality of your sex, that they can’t endure for any one to be indifferent towards ’em. When Miss Harriet Quinion from Madrass came to visit her relations here, and had the whole place at her feet, sure ’twas more than kind in her to take no satisfaction in the admiration she received because there was one old fellow that had no part in it. I dare avouch that Henry Freyne’s coldness piqued her more than all her conquests pleased her. At any rate, she was determined to overcome it, and brought all her feminine artillery to bear on the man that was still wedded to the memory of a wife dead these fifteen years. All the ladies gave her their assistance, of course—they love to hunt down one that they believe a contemner of their sex—and you don’t need telling what the event was, which gave me the honour of keeping Mrs Freyne in gowns and equipages, and blessed you, miss, with the tender care of a stepmother, for which I don’t doubt you have often thanked me with tears.

Sylvia. Oh pray, dear sir, don’t think I have ventured to cavil at anything you may choose to do. En’t it your right to please yourself?

Mr F. To please myself! Quite so, and I did it, you would say, miss? But it did not please Madam to have you out here at all, not knowing your dutiful inclinations towards her. Indeed, I was almost resolved, for your own sake, to request your instructresses to see you married at home, with no question of coming out, but Madam over-reached herself there. Knowing nothing of my intentions, she kept up such a clamour at me about you, that hearing Mrs Hamlin was to bring out her niece this year, I took a sudden determination, and wrote that you should come with her.

Sylvia. How can I ever thank you enough, dear sir?

Mr F. What, you were glad to come? But how long am I to keep you, miss, pray? Are you to be married to-morrow or the day after?

Sylvia (trembling). Oh, dear sir, if I might venture to entreat——

Mr F. (roughly). Out with it, miss. Are you married already?

Sylvia. Oh no, no, sir. All I desired was to ask that I might be permitted to lead a single life for the present, and devote myself to my dear papa, of whom I have seen so little.

Mr F. (looking stern). This means, miss, that you’re entertaining some lover whom you don’t dare present to me.

Sylvia. Forgive me, dear sir, but you wrong me. My papa will believe me when I assure him that there’s no one I could marry sooner than another.

Mr F. Then pray, miss, what does all this mean that Madam has been telling me, having heard it from Mrs Hamlin, about some nephew of Captain Colquhoun’s?

Sylvia. I don’t know, sir, I’m sure, what you may have heard from Mrs Freyne, but the only relative of the Captain with whom I am acquainted is the humble servant of another lady.

Mr F. It en’t an unheard-of thing for a lover to change his divinity.

Sylvia. Indeed, sir, I can assure you that the very last time I saw him the gentleman protested to me his unaltered devotion to his original charmer.

Mr F. Then Madam has been trying to make mischief, curse me if she hasn’t! Give me a kiss, my girl. You deserve something for answering with so much sense and calmness questions over which most young Misses would have fallen into fits, and you shan’t be drove into any marriage to please her. You may have this coming cold weather to look about you and decide whom you’ll have. But mind you, there’s to be no coquetting first with one and then with another. The first sign I see of that, I vow I’ll marry you off next day to the oldest and ugliest gentleman of my acquaintance. I won’t have half the young sparks of Calcutta killing t’other half in duels about my daughter.

Sylvia. ’Twill be no hardship to me to obey you, sir. I believe I prefer the elder gentlemen to the younger. If you choose, I’ll adopt Captain Colquhoun as my cavalier whenever he’s present.

Mr F. As you did yesterday? By all means, miss. But you’re not to set yourself to break the poor Captain’s heart because you think him old and ugly. He’s the most respectable person in Calcutta, save Padra Bellamy and one or two more, and also the most foolish and the worst treated.

Sylvia. You surprise me, sir.

Mr F. He’s the most foolish because, in company with Captain Jones of the Train,[22] he persists in running his head against a stone wall. Only last week they were told not to come troubling the Council with their nonsense, having been pressing them for the hundredth time to put the place into a state of defence. And he’s also foolish because, when he might have been transferred two years ago to the Carnatic he refused to go, lest he should seem to be running away from his enemies here, and you won’t wonder that he’s ill-treated after what I have told you.

This, my Amelia, ended our conversation, which has filled me with a hundred grateful thoughts of my dear papa. One thing only troubles me, but surely I am not called upon to confess my foolishness in the matter of Mr Fraser? To admit that he gave me cause to think him my lover would mean that my papa would insist upon quarrelling with him, while surely the poor man en’t to blame if a silly girl took his undoubted kindness to mean other than it did. No, the history of my mistake shall still be confided only to the faithful bosom of my Amelia, and I’ll hope more fervently than ever that winds and tides and the public service may combine to keep the Tyger, and in especial her fourth lieutenant, away from Bengall. My deepest love and gratitude are owed to my dear papa for his goodness, which is beyond what I had dared to hope, and will enable me to triumph over Miss Hamlin, whose prophecies have been so signally belied.