Читать книгу Heroines Of Fiction - William Dean Howells - Страница 17

The domestic situation in Lady Delacour's household is promptly developed through the mysterious contradictions that cloud her conduct: the wild gayety, the listless melancholy, the moody despair. "For some days after Belinda's arrival in town she heard nothing of Lord Delacour; his lady never mentioned his name except once accidentally, as she was showing Miss Portman the house. . . . The first time Belinda ever saw his Lordship, he was dead drunk in the arms of two footmen who were carrying him up-stairs to his bedroom; his lady, who was just returned from Ranelagh, passed him by on the landing-place with a look of sovereign contempt. 'What is the matter? Who is this?' said Belinda. 'Only the body of Lord Delacour,' said her ladyship. . . . 'Don't look so shocked and amazed, Belinda; don't look so new, child; this funeral of my lord's intellects is to me a nightly, or,' added her ladyship, looking at her watch and yawning, ' I believe I should say, a daily ceremony—six o'clock, I protest!' The next morning . . . after a very late breakfast. Lord Delacour entered the room. ' Lord Delacour, sober, my dear,' said her ladyship to Miss Portman, by way of introducing him."

The cat-and-dog life which this couple lead is very unreservedly portrayed, and Belinda is so far deceived as not to suppose that they can be in love with each other, in spite of all. My lord's days and nights are given to debauchery, his lady's to the wildest dissipation at balls and routs (one faintly imagines what a rout was!) and gay parties at those public resorts which were once so much the fashion in London, or at least in London novels, where from Vauxhall to Ranelagh, from Ranelagh to the Pantheon, from the Pantheon to Almack's, there is a perpetual glitter of their misleading lights.

On leaving the masquerade where Belinda has overheard that killing talk about herself among the young men of her circle, she repeats it in an anguish of shame to her friend, as they drive away from Lady Singleton's to the Pantheon, in their respective disguises of the tragic and the comic muse. '"And is this all?' cried Lady Delacour. ' Lord, my dear, you must either give up living in the world or expect to hear yourself, and your aunts, and your cousins, and your friends, from generation to generation, abused every hour in the day by their friends and your friends; 'tis the common course of things. Now you know what a multitude of obedient servants, dear creatures, and very sincere and most affectionate friends I have. ... Do you think I'm fool enough to imagine that they would care the hundredth part of a straw if I were this minute thrown into the Red or the Black Sea?' . . . The carriage stopped at the Pantheon. ... To Belinda the night appeared long and dull; the commonplace wit of chimneysweepers and gypsies; the antics of harlequins; the graces of flower-girls and Cleopatras had not power to amuse her; for her thoughts still recurred to that conversation which had given her so much pain. . . . 'How happy you are, Lady Delacour,' said she, when they got into the carriage to go home, . . . 'to have such an amazing flow of spirits!' 'Amazing you might well say, if you knew all,' said Lady Delacour, and she heaved a deep sigh, threw herself back in the carriage, let fall her mask, and was silent. It was broad daylight, and Belinda had a full view of her countenance, which was a picture of despair. . . . Her ladyship started up and exclaimed, 'If I had served myself with half the zeal I have served the world I should not now be thus forsaken. . . . But it is all over now. I am dying.' . . . Belinda . . . gazed at Lady Delacour, and repeated the word, ' Dying!' ' I tell you I am dying,' said her ladyship."

At home she bade Belinda " follow her to her dressing room. . . . Come in; what is it you are afraid of?' said she. Belinda went in, and Lady Delacour shut and locked the door. There was no light except what came from the candle which Lady Delacour held in her hand. . . . Belinda, as she looked around, saw nothing but a confusion of linen rags; vials, some empty, some full, and she perceived there was a strong smell of medicines. Lady Delacour . . . looked from side to side of the room without seeming to know what she was in search of. She then, in a species of fury, wiped the paint from her face, and returning to Belinda, held the candle so as to throw the light full on her livid features . . . which formed a horrid contrast with her gay, fantastic dress. 'You are shocked, Belinda,' said she, ' but as yet you have seen nothing— look here'—baring half her bosom. . . . Belinda sunk back into a chair; Lady Delacour flung herself on her knees before her. ' Am I humbled, am I wretched enough?"'

The story of Belinda's friendship for the miserable woman from this moment on is imagined with a knowledge of human nature and a divination of its nobler possibilities worthy of Tolstoy, though it is wrought with an art indefinitely more fallible. Miss Edgeworth was not only in herself very inconstantly an artist, but, as is well known, she subordinated her judgment to that of her honored father, whom she allowed to meddle with her work, and mar it in the cause of good morals as much as he would. It is but fair to lay to the charge of her well-willing, ill-witting parent at least half of the crude and clumsy didacticism with which Belinda's fine nature is unfolded in her efforts to serve and to save Lady Delacour; but perhaps the crude and clumsy mechanism of the affair is all Miss Edgeworth's own. We may easily grant this, and still in the dramatic moments find enough evidence of her power to prove her a great artist.

Lady Delacour, of course, believes that she has a cancer, and she has put herself in the hands of a quack who preys upon her fears. Her secret is known only to her waiting-woman, till she herself betrays it to Belinda, whom she binds to her by the most solemn vows of silence. But the girl can find no peace till she has got Lady Delacour's leave to speak of it to a physician (who is, of course, Edgeworthianly over-wise and over-good); and as Belinda has not lived for several weeks under the roof of Lord Delacour without surprising in him some traits of kindness for his wife, she wins Lady Delacour's consent to let him know that some great calamity is threatening her. Belinda sets herself with all her innate discreetness to make them friends, but she does not, discreet as she is, manage this without rousing the jealousy of Lady Delacour, which finds food in her returning love for her husband. Seeing Belinda and Lord Delacour on such increasingly good terms in her interest, she can only believe that they wish to be on better in their own as soon as she is out of the way. As the story was always to end well, however, the cancer proves no cancer, and is cured with very slight scientific attention; Lady Delacour is reconciled to her husband without losing her friend, and Belinda is duly married to Clarence Harvey, whom she has been in love with from the beginning.

Such a meagre résumé of merely one order of its events does no justice to the many-sided interest of the novel, and its rich abundance of characterization, which sometimes accuses itself of caricature, but which probably embodies a presentation of fashionable life at the beginning of our century faithfuller than it can now appear. Still, the jealousy of Lady Delacour, though but one interest of the story, becomes in its finer artistic treatment the chief interest; and the scene in which it betrays itself becomes the greatest moment of the drama. The episode is almost altogether admirable, but its climax sufficiently suggests the whole encounter between the unsuspecting Belinda and Lady Delacour, when her passion is fired by the girl's suppression of certain passages in a letter from her aunt Stanhope, giving some worldly advice which her ladyship ironically congratulates Belinda upon not needing.

"The rapid, unconnected manner in which Lady Delacour spoke, the hurry of her motions, the quick, suspicious, angry gleams of her eye, her laugh, her unintelligible words, all conspired at this moment to give Belinda the idea that her intellects were suddenly disordered. . . . She went towards her with the intention of soothing her by caresses; but at her approach Lady Delacour pushed the table on which she had been writing from her with violence; started up, flung back the veil which fell over her face as she rose, and darted upon Belinda a look which fixed her to the spot where she stood. . . . Belinda's blood ran cold—she had no longer any doubt that this was insanity. She shut the penknife that lay upon the table, and put it in her pocket. 'Cowardly creature!' cried Lady Delacour, and her countenance changed to an expression of ineffable contempt. 'What is it you fear?' 'That you should injure yourself. Sit down—for Heaven's sake listen to your friend, to Belinda.' 'My friend! My Belinda!' cried Lady Delacour. ... 'O, Belinda! You whom I have so loved, so trusted!' The tears rolled fast down her painted cheeks; she wiped them hastily away, but so roughly that she became a strange and ghastly spectacle. Unconscious of her disordered appearance, she rushed past Belinda, who vainly attempted to stop her, threw up the sash, and, stretching herself far out of the window, gasped for breath. Miss Portman drew her back, and closed the window, saying, ' The rouge is all off your face, my dear Lady Delacour; you are not fit to be seen. ' . . . ' Rouge! Not fit to be seen! At such a time as this, to talk to me in this manner! O, niece of Mrs. Stanhope! dupe, dupe, that I am.'"

Belinda tries to reason with Lady Delacour's jealousy, which takes the form of ironical meekness, only to burst out again in envenomed accusation. "'You are goodness itself, and gentleness, and prudence personified. You know perfectly how to manage her whom you fear you have driven to madness. But, tell me, good, gentle, prudent Miss Portman, why need you dread so much that I should go mad? . . . Nobody would believe me whatever I said. . . . And would not this be almost as if I were dead and buried? No; your calculations are better than mine: the poor mad wife would . . . yet stand between you and the fond object of your secret soul—a coronet. ... O, Belinda, do not you see that a coronet cannot confer happiness?' 'I have seen it long; I pity you from the bottom of my soul,' said Belinda, bursting into tears."

Lady Delacour cannot believe the girl is leaving her house when she leaves the room; she determines to balk the hope of being pressed to stay, which she imagines in Belinda; and when some people call, she swiftly repairs her looks and goes to receive them. "Fresh rouged, and beautifully dressed, she was performing her part to a brilliant audience, when Belinda entered the drawing-room. . . . 'You dine with Lady Anne, Miss Portman, I understand. Though you talk of running away from me ... I am with all due humility so confident of the irresistible attractions of this house, that I defy Oakley Park and all its charms. So, Miss Portman, instead of adieu, I shall only say au revoir!' ' Adieu, Lady Delacour! ' said Belinda, with a look and tone that struck her ladyship to the heart. All her suspicions, all her pride, all her affected gayety forsook her. . . . She flew after Miss Portman, stopped her at the head of the stairs and exclaimed,' My dearest Belinda, are you gone? My best, my only friend, say you are not gone forever! Say you will return!' 'Adieu,' repeated Belinda."

We are told that she broke from Lady Delacour with a heart full of pity for her, but sure of the right and wisdom of her course; and nothing in the whole scene between them is more finely ascertained than the delicate dignity and goodness with which Belinda behaves. In this she is worthy to be the heroine of her own story, and though she must divide the honors with Lady Delacour, in the dramatic moments, she has the heroine's true supremacy as a subtler study of character, and a newer type. The intensely emotional nature like Lady Delacour, vivid, violent, reckless, has been often done, and it is always fascinating; but it has seldom been so well done as by Miss Edgeworth, who, with a few touches of analysis, has allowed it to express itself. Yet, after all, a nature like Belinda's, ruled by principles and bound by scruples, the nature of a lady, is far more difficult to do.