THE COUNTESS IN LOW SOCIETY
By dint of stratagems worthy of a Court intrigue, the Countess de
Saldar contrived to traverse the streets of Lymport, and enter the
house where she was born, unsuspected and unseen, under cover of a
profusion of lace and veil and mantilla, which only her heroic resolve
to keep her beauties hidden from the profane townspeople could have
rendered endurable beneath the fervid summer sun. Dress in a foreign
style she must, as without it she lost that sense of superiority, which
was the only comfort to her in her tribulations. The period of her
arrival was ten days subsequent to the burial of her father. She had
come in the coach, like any common mortal, and the coachman, upon her
request, had put her down at the Governor’s house, and the guard had
knocked at the door, and the servant had informed her that General
Hucklebridge was not the governor of Lymport, nor did Admiral Combleman
then reside in the town; which tidings, the coach then being out of
sight, it did not disconcert the Countess to hear; and she reached her
mother, having, at least, cut off communication with the object of
conveyance.
The Countess kissed her mother, kissed Mrs. Fiske, and asked sharply
for Evan. Mrs. Fiske let her know that Evan was in the house.
“Where?” inquired the Countess. “I have news of the utmost importance
for him. I must see him.”
“Where is he, aunt?” said Mrs. Fiske. “In the shop, I think; I wonder
he did not see you passing, Louisa.”
The Countess went bolt down into a chair.
“Go to him, Jane,” said Mrs. Mel. “Tell him Louisa is here, and don’t
return.”
Mrs. Fiske departed, and the Countess smiled.
“Thank you, Mama! you know I never could bear that odious, vulgar
little woman. Oh, the heat! You talk of Portugal! And, oh! poor dear
Papa! what I have suffered!”
Flapping her laces for air, and wiping her eyes for sorrow, the
Countess poured a flood of sympathy into her mother’s ears and then
said:
“But you have made a great mistake, Mama, in allowing Evan to put his
foot into that place. He—beloved of an heiress! Why, if an enemy should
hear of it, it would ruin him—positively blast him—for ever. And that
she loves him I have proof positive. Yes; with all her frankness, the
little thing cannot conceal that from me now. She loves him! And I
desire you to guess, Mama, whether rivals will not abound? And what
enemy so much to be dreaded as a rival? And what revelation so awful as
that he has stood in a—in a—boutique?”
Mrs. Mel maintained her usual attitude for listening. It had occurred
to her that it might do no good to tell the grand lady, her daughter,
of Evan’s resolution, so she simply said, “It is discipline for him,”
and left her to speak a private word with the youth.
Timidly the Countess inspected the furniture of the apartment, taking
chills at the dingy articles she saw, in the midst of her heat. That
she should have sprung from this! The thought was painful; still she
could forgive Providence so much. But should it ever be known she had
sprung from this! Alas! she felt she never could pardon such a dire
betrayal. She had come in good spirits, but the mention of Evan’s
backsliding had troubled her extremely, and though she did not say to
herself, What was the benefit resulting from her father’s dying, if
Evan would be so base-minded? she thought the thing indefinitely, and
was forming the words on her mouth, One Harrington in a shop is equal
to all! when Evan appeared alone.
“Why, goodness gracious! where’s your moustache?” cried the Countess.
“Gone the way of hair!” said Evan, coldly stooping to her forehead.
“Such a distinction!” the Countess continued, reproachfully. “Why, mon
Dieu! one could hardly tell you; as you look now, from the very
commonest tradesman—if you were not rather handsome and something of a
figure. It’s a disguise, Evan—do you know that?”
“And I’ve parted with it—that’s all,” said Evan. “No more disguises for
me!”
The Countess immediately took his arm, and walked with him to a window.
His face was certainly changed. Murmuring that the air of Lymport was
bad for him, and that he must leave it instantly, she bade him sit and
attend to what she was about to say.
“While you have been here, degenerating, Evan, day by day—as you always
do out of my sight—degenerating! no less a word!—I have been slaving in
your interests. Yes; I have forced the Jocelyns socially to acknowledge
us. I have not slept; I have eaten bare morsels. Do abstinence and
vigils clear the wits? I know not! but indeed they have enabled me to
do more in a week than would suffice for a lifetime. Hark to me. I have
discovered Rose’s secret. Si! It is so! Rose loves you. You blush; you
blush like a girl. She loves you, and you have let yourself be seen in
a shop! Contrast me the two things. Oh! in verity, dreadful as it is,
one could almost laugh. But the moment I lose sight of you, my
instructions vanish as quickly as that hair on your superior lip, which
took such time to perfect. Alas! you must grow it again immediately.
Use any perfumer’s contrivance. Rowland! I have great faith in Rowland.
Without him, I believe, there would have been many bald women
committing suicide! You remember the bottle I gave to the Count de
Villa Flor? ‘Countess,’ he said to me, ‘you have saved this egg-shell
from a crack by helping to cover it’—for so he called his head—the top,
you know, was beginning to shine like an egg. And I do fear me he would
have done it. Ah! you do not conceive what the dread of baldness is! To
a woman death—death is preferable to baldness! Baldness is death! And a
wig—a wig! Oh, horror! total extinction is better than to rise again in
a wig! But you are young, and play with hair. But I was saying, I went
to see the Jocelyns. I was introduced to Sir Franks and his lady and
the wealthy grandmother. And I have an invitation for you, Evan—you
unmannered boy, that you do not bow! A gentle incline forward of the
shoulders, and the eyes fixed softly, your upper lids drooping
triflingly, as if you thanked with gentle sincerity, but were
indifferent. Well, well, if you will not! An invitation for you to
spend part of the autumn at Beckley Court, the ancestral domain, where
there will be company the nobles of the land! Consider that. You say it
was bold in me to face them after that horrible man committed us on
board the vessel? A Harrington is anything but a coward. I did go and
because I am devoted to your interests. That very morning, I saw
announced in the paper, just beneath poor Andrew’s hand, as he held it
up at the breakfast-table, reading it, I saw among the deaths, Sir
Abraham Harrington, of Torquay, Baronet, of quinsy! Twice that good man
has come to my rescue! Oh! I welcomed him as a piece of Providence! I
turned and said to Harriet, ‘I see they have put poor Papa in the
paper.’ Harriet was staggered. I took the paper from Andrew, and
pointed it to her. She has no readiness. She has had no foreign
training. She could not comprehend, and Andrew stood on tiptoe, and
peeped. He has a bad cough, and coughed himself black in the face. I
attribute it to excessive bad manners and his cold feelings. He left
the room. I reproached Harriet. But, oh! the singularity of the
excellent fortune of such an event at such a time! It showed that our
Harrington-luck had not forsaken us. I hurried to the Jocelyns
instantly. Of course, it cleared away any suspicions aroused in them by
that horrible man on board the vessel. And the tears I wept for Sir
Abraham, Evan, in verity they were tears of deep and sincere gratitude!
What is your mouth knitting the corners at? Are you laughing?”
Evan hastily composed his visage to the melancholy that was no
counterfeit in him just then.
“Yes,” continued the Countess, easily reassured, “I shall ever feel a
debt to Sir Abraham Harrington, of Torquay. I dare say we are related
to him. At least he has done us more service than many a rich and
titled relative. No one supposes he would acknowledge poor Papa. I can
forgive him that, Evan!” The Countess pointed out her finger with
mournful and impressive majesty, “As we look down on that monkey,
people of rank and consideration in society look on what poor dear Papa
was.”
This was partly true, for Jacko sat on a chair, in his favourite
attitude, copied accurately from the workmen of the establishment at
their labour with needle and thread. Growing cognizant of the infamy of
his posture, the Countess begged Evan to drive him out of her sight,
and took a sniff at her smelling-bottle.
She went on: “Now, dear Van, you would hear of your sweet Rose?”
“Not a word!” Evan hastily answered.
“Why, what does this indicate? Whims! Then you do love?”
“I tell you, Louisa, I don’t want to hear a word of any of them,” said
Evan, with an angry gleam in his eyes. “They are nothing to me, nor I
to them. I—my walk in life is not theirs.”
“Faint heart! faint heart!” the Countess lifted a proverbial
forefinger.
“Thank heaven, I shall have the consolation of not going about, and
bowing and smirking like an impostor!” Evan exclaimed.
There was a wider intelligence in the Countess’s arrested gaze than she
chose to fashion into speech.
“I knew,” she said, “I knew how the air of this horrible Lymport would
act on you. But while I live, Evan, you shall not sink in the sludge.
You, with all the pains I have lavished on you! and with your
presence!—for you have a presence, so rare among young men in this
England! You, who have been to a Court, and interchanged bows with
duchesses, and I know not what besides—nay, I do not accuse you; but if
you had not been a mere boy, and an English boy—poor Eugenia herself
confessed to me that you had a look—a tender cleaving of the
underlids—that made her catch her hand to her heart sometimes: it
reminded her so acutely of false Belmaraña. Could you have had a
greater compliment than that? You shall not stop here another day!”
“True,” said Evan, “for I’m going to London to-night.”
“Not to London,” the Countess returned, with a conquering glance, “but
to Beckley Court—and with me.”
“To London, Louisa, with Mr. Goren.”
Again the Countess eyed him largely; but took, as it were, a side-path
from her broad thought, saying: “Yes, fortunes are made in London, if
you would they should be rapid.”
She meditated. At that moment Dandy knocked at the door, and called
outside: “Please, master, Mr. Goren says there’s a gentleman in the
shop—wants to see you.”
“Very well,” replied Evan, moving. He was swung violently round.
The Countess had clutched him by the arm. A fearful expression was on
her face.
“Whither do you go?” she said.
“To the shop, Louisa.”
Too late to arrest the villanous word, she pulled at him. “Are you
quite insane? Consent to be seen by a gentleman there? What has come to
you? You must be lunatic! Are we all to be utterly ruined—disgraced?”
“Is my mother to starve?” said Evan.
“Absurd rejoinder! No! You should have sold everything here before
this. She can live with Harriet—she—once out of this horrible
element—she would not show it. But, Evan, you are getting away from me:
you are not going?—speak!”
“I am going,” said Evan.
The Countess clung to him, exclaiming: “Never, while I have the power
to detain you!” but as he was firm and strong, she had recourse to her
woman’s aids, and burst into a storm of sobs on his shoulder—a scene of
which Mrs. Mel was, for some seconds, a composed spectator.
“What’s the matter now?” said Mrs. Mel.
Evan impatiently explained the case. Mrs. Mel desired her daughter to
avoid being ridiculous, and making two fools in her family; and at the
same time that she told Evan there was no occasion for him to go,
contrived, with a look, to make the advice a command. He, in that state
of mind when one takes bitter delight in doing an abhorred duty, was
hardly willing to be submissive; but the despair of the Countess
reduced him, and for her sake he consented to forego the sacrifice of
his pride which was now his sad, sole pleasure. Feeling him linger, the
Countess relaxed her grasp. Hers were tears that dried as soon as they
had served their end; and, to give him the full benefit of his conduct,
she said: “I knew Evan would be persuaded by me.”
Evan pitifully pressed her hand, and sighed.
“Tea is on the table down-stairs,” said Mrs. Mel. “I have cooked
something for you, Louisa. Do you sleep here to-night?”
“Can I tell you, Mama?” murmured the Countess. “I am dependent on our
Evan.”
“Oh! well, we will eat first,” said Mrs. Mel, and they went to the
table below, the Countess begging her mother to drop titles in
designating her to the servants, which caused Mrs. Mel to say:
“There is but one. I do the cooking”; and the Countess, ever disposed
to flatter and be suave, even when stung by a fact or a phrase, added:
“And a beautiful cook you used to be, dear Mama!”
At the table, awaiting them, sat Mrs. Wishaw, Mrs. Fiske, and Mr.
Goren, who soon found themselves enveloped in the Countess’s
graciousness. Mr. Goren would talk of trade, and compare Lymport
business with London, and the Countess, loftily interested in his
remarks, drew him out to disgust her brother. Mrs. Wishaw, in whom the
Countess at once discovered a frivolous pretentious woman of the
moneyed trading class, she treated as one who was alive to society, and
surveyed matters from a station in the world, leading her to think that
she tolerated Mr. Goren, as a lady-Christian of the highest rank should
tolerate the insects that toil for us. Mrs. Fiske was not so tractable,
for Mrs. Fiske was hostile and armed. Mrs. Fiske adored the great Mel,
and she had never loved Louisa. Hence, she scorned Louisa on account of
her late behaviour toward her dead parent. The Countess saw through
her, and laboured to be friendly with her, while she rendered her
disagreeable in the eyes of Mrs. Wishaw, and let Mrs. Wishaw perceive
that sympathy was possible between them; manoeuvring a trifle too
delicate, perhaps, for the people present, but sufficient to blind its
keen-witted author to the something that was being concealed from
herself, of which something, nevertheless, her senses apprehensively
warned her: and they might have spoken to her wits, but that mortals
cannot, unaided, guess, or will not, unless struck in the face by the
fact, credit, what is to their minds the last horror.
“I came down in the coach, quite accidental, with this gentleman,” said
Mrs. Wishaw, fanning a cheek and nodding at Mr. Goren. “I’m an old
flame of dear Mel’s. I knew him when he was an apprentice in London.
Now, wasn’t it odd? Your mother—I suppose I must call you ‘my lady’?”
The Countess breathed a tender “Spare me,” with a smile that added,
“among friends!”
Mrs. Wishaw resumed: “Your mother was an old flame of this gentleman’s,
I found out. So there were two old flames, and I couldn’t help
thinking! But I was so glad to have seen dear Mel once more.”
“Ah!” sighed the Countess.
“He was always a martial-looking man, and laid out, he was quite
imposing. I declare, I cried so, as it reminded me of when I couldn’t
have him, for he had nothing but his legs and arms—and I married
Wishaw. But it’s a comfort to think I have been of some service to
dear, dear Mel! for Wishaw’s a man of accounts and payments; and I knew
Mel had cloth from him, and,” the lady suggested bills delayed, with
two or three nods, “you know! and I’ll do my best for his son.”
“You are kind,” said the Countess, smiling internally at the vulgar
creature’s misconception of Evan’s requirements.
“Did he ever talk much about Mary Fence?” asked Mrs. Wishaw. “‘Polly
Fence,’ he used to say, ‘sweet Polly Fence!’”
“Oh! I think so. Frequently,” observed the Countess.
Mrs. Fiske primmed her mouth. She had never heard the great Mel allude
to the name of Fence.
The Goren-croak was heard:
“Painters have painted out ‘Melchisedec’ this afternoon. Yes,—ah! In
and out—as the saying goes.”
Here was an opportunity to mortify the Countess.
Mrs. Fiske placidly remarked: “Have we the other put up in its stead?
It’s shorter.”
A twinge of weakness had made Evan request that the name of Evan
Harrington should not decorate the shopfront till he had turned his
back on it, for a time. Mrs. Mel crushed her venomous niece.
“What have you to do with such things? Shine in your own affairs first,
Ann, before you meddle with others.”
Relieved at hearing that “Melchisedec” was painted out, and
unsuspicious of the announcement that should replace it, the Countess
asked Mrs. Wishaw if she thought Evan like her dear Papa.
“So like,” returned the lady, “that I would not be alone with him yet,
for worlds. I should expect him to be making love to me: for, you know,
my dear—I must be familiar—Mel never could be alone with you, without!
It was his nature. I speak of him before marriage. But, if I can trust
myself with him, I shall take charge of Mr. Evan, and show him some
London society.”
“That is indeed kind,” said the Countess, glad of a thick veil for the
utterance of her contempt. “Evan, though—I fear—will be rather engaged.
His friends, the Jocelyns of Beckley Court, will—I fear—hardly dispense
with him and Lady Splenders—you know her? the Marchioness of Splenders?
No?—by repute, at least: a most beautiful and most fascinating woman;
report of him alone has induced her to say that Evan must and shall
form a part of her autumnal gathering at Splenders Castle. And how he
is to get out of it, I cannot tell. But I am sure his multitudinous
engagements will not prevent his paying due court to Mistress Wishaw.”
As the Countess intended, Mistress Wishaw’s vanity was reproved, and
her ambition excited: a pretty doublestroke, only possible to dexterous
players.
The lady rejoined that she hoped so, she was sure; and forthwith
(because she suddenly seemed to possess him more than his son),
launched upon Mel’s incomparable personal attractions. This caused the
Countess to enlarge upon Evan’s vast personal prospects. They talked
across each other a little, till the Countess remembered her breeding,
allowed Mrs. Wishaw to run to an end in hollow exclamations, and put a
finish to the undeclared controversy, by a traverse of speech, as if
she were taking up the most important subject of their late colloquy.
“But Evan is not in his own hands—he is in the hands of a lovely young
woman, I must tell you. He belongs to her, and not to us. You have
heard of Rose Jocelyn, the celebrated heiress?”
“Engaged?” Mrs. Wishaw whispered aloud.
The Countess, an adept in the lie implied—practised by her, that she
might not subject herself to future punishment (in which she was so
devout a believer, that she condemned whole hosts to it)—deeply smiled.
“Really!” said Mrs. Wishaw, and was about to inquire why Evan, with
these brilliant expectations, could think of trade and tailoring, when
the young man, whose forehead had been growing black, jumped up, and
quitted them; thus breaking the harmony of the table; and as the
Countess had said enough, she turned the conversation to the always
welcome theme of low society. She broached death and corpses; and
became extremely interesting, and very sympathetic: the only difference
between the ghostly anecdotes she related, and those of the other
ladies, being that her ghosts were all of them titled, and walked
mostly under the burden of a coronet. For instance, there was the
Portuguese Marquis de Col. He had married a Spanish wife, whose end was
mysterious. Undressing, on the night of the anniversary of her death,
and on the point of getting into bed, he beheld the dead woman lying on
her back before him. All night long he had to sleep with this freezing
phantom! Regularly, every fresh anniversary, he had to endure the same
penance, no matter where he might be, or in what strange bed. On one
occasion, when he took the live for the dead, a curious thing occurred,
which the Countess scrupled less to relate than would men to hint at.
Ghosts were the one childish enjoyment Mrs. Mel allowed herself, and
she listened to her daughter intently, ready to cap any narrative; but
Mrs. Fiske stopped the flood.
“You have improved on Peter Smithers, Louisa,” she said.
The Countess turned to her mildly.
“You are certainly thinking of Peter Smithers,” Mrs. Fiske continued,
bracing her shoulders. “Surely, you remember poor Peter, Louisa? An old
flame of your own! He was going to kill himself, but married a
Devonshire woman, and they had disagreeables, and SHE died, and he was
undressing, and saw her there in the bed, and wouldn’t get into it, and
had the mattress, and the curtains, and the counterpanes, and
everything burnt. He told us it himself. You must remember it, Louisa?”
The Countess remembered nothing of the sort. No doubt could exist of
its having been the Portuguese Marquis de Col, because he had confided
to her the whole affair, and indeed come to her, as his habit was, to
ask her what he could possibly do, under the circumstances. If Mrs.
Fiske’s friend, who married the Devonshire person, had seen the same
thing, the coincidence was yet more extraordinary than the case. Mrs.
Fiske said it assuredly was, and glanced at her aunt, who, as the
Countess now rose, declaring she must speak to Evan, chid Mrs. Fiske,
and wished her and Peter Smithers at the bottom of the sea.
“No, no, Mama,” said the Countess, laughing, “that would hardly be
proper,” and before Mrs. Fiske could reply, escaped to complain to Evan
of the vulgarity of those women.
She was not prepared for the burst of wrath with which Evan met her.
“Louisa,” said he, taking her wrist sternly, “you have done a thing I
can’t forgive. I find it hard to bear disgrace myself: I will not
consent to bring it upon others. Why did you dare to couple Miss
Jocelyn’s name with mine?”
The Countess gave him out her arm’s length. “Speak on, Van,” she said,
admiring him with a bright gaze.
“Answer me, Louisa; and don’t take me for a fool any more,” he pursued.
“You have coupled Miss Jocelyn’s name with mine, in company, and I
insist now upon your giving me your promise to abstain from doing it
anywhere, before anybody.”
“If she saw you at this instant, Van,” returned the incorrigible
Countess, “would she desire it, think you? Oh! I must make you angry
before her, I see that! You have your father’s frown. You surpass him,
for your delivery is more correct, and equally fluent. And if a woman
is momentarily melted by softness in a man, she is for ever subdued by
boldness and bravery of mien.”
Evan dropped her hand. “Miss Jocelyn has done me the honour to call me
her friend. That was in other days.” His lip quivered. “I shall not see
Miss Jocelyn again. Yes; I would lay down my life for her; but that’s
idle talk. No such chance will ever come to me. But I can save her from
being spoken of in alliance with me, and what I am, and I tell you,
Louisa, I will not have it.” Saying which, and while he looked harshly
at her, wounded pride bled through his eyes.
She was touched. “Sit down, dear; I must explain to you, and make you
happy against your will,” she said, in another voice, and an English
accent. “The mischief is done, Van. If you do not want Rose Jocelyn to
love you, you must undo it in your own way. I am not easily deceived.
On the morning I went to her house in town, she took me aside, and
spoke to me. Not a confession in words. The blood in her cheeks, when I
mentioned you, did that for her. Everything about you she must know—how
you bore your grief, and all. And not in her usual free manner, but
timidly, as if she feared a surprise, or feared to be wakened to the
secret in her bosom she half suspects—‘Tell him!’ she said, ‘I hope he
will not forget me.’”
The Countess was interrupted by a great sob; for the picture of frank
Rose Jocelyn changed, and soft, and, as it were, shadowed under a veil
of bashful regard for him, so filled the young man with sorrowful
tenderness, that he trembled, and was as a child.
Marking the impression she had produced on him, and having worn off
that which he had produced on her, the Countess resumed the art in her
style of speech, easier to her than nature.
“So the sweetest of Roses may be yours, dear Van; and you have her in a
gold setting, to wear on your heart. Are you not enviable? I will
not—no, I will not tell you she is perfect. I must fashion the sweet
young creature. Though I am very ready to admit that she is much
improved by this—shall I call it, desired consummation?”
Evan could listen no more. Such a struggle was rising in his breast:
the effort to quench what the Countess had so shrewdly kindled;
passionate desire to look on Rose but for one lightning flash: desire
to look on her, and muffled sense of shame twin-born with it: wild love
and leaden misery mixed: dead hopelessness and vivid hope. Up to the
neck in Purgatory, but his soul saturated with visions of Bliss! The
fair orb of Love was all that was wanted to complete his planetary
state, and aloft it sprang, showing many faint, fair tracts to him, and
piling huge darknesses.
As if in search of something, he suddenly went from the room.
“I have intoxicated the poor boy,” said the Countess, and consulted an
attitude by the evening light in a mirror. Approving the result, she
rang for her mother, and sat with her till dark; telling her she could
not and would not leave her dear Mama that night. At the supper-table
Evan did not appear, and Mr. Goren, after taking counsel of Mrs. Mel,
dispersed the news that Evan was off to London. On the road again, with
a purse just as ill-furnished, and in his breast the light that
sometimes leads gentlemen, as well as ladies, astray.