Madame de Bernstein was scarcely less pleased than her Virginian
nephews at the result of Harry's final interview with Lady Maria. George
informed the Baroness of what had passed, in a billet which he sent
to her the same evening; and shortly afterwards her nephew Castlewood,
whose visits to his aunt were very rare, came to pay his respects to
her, and frankly spoke about the circumstances which had taken place;
for no man knew better than my Lord Castlewood how to be frank upon
occasion, and now that the business between Maria and Harry was ended
what need was there of reticence or hypocrisy? The game had been played,
and was over: he had no objection now to speak of its various
moves, stratagems, finesses. “She is my own sister,” said my lord,
affectionately; “she won't have many more chances--many more such
chances of marrying and establishing herself. I might not approve of the
match in all respects, and I might pity your ladyship's young Virginian
favourite: but of course such a piece of good fortune was not to be
thrown away, and I was bound to stand by my own flesh and blood.”
“Your candour does your lordship honour,” says Madame de Bernstein, “and
your love for your sister is quite edifying!”
“Nay, we have lost the game, and I am speaking sans rancune. It is not
for you, who have won, to bear malice,” says my lord, with a bow.
Madame de Bernstein protested she was never in her life in better
humour. “Confess, now, Eugene, that visit of Maria to Harry at the
spunging-house--that touching giving up of all his presents to her, was
a stroke of thy invention?”
“Pity for the young man, and a sense of what was due from Maria to her
friend--her affianced lover--in misfortune, sure these were motives
sufficient to make her act as she did,” replies Lord Castlewood,
demurely.
“But 'twas you advised her, my good nephew?”
Castlewood, with a shrug of his shoulders, owned that he did advise his
sister to see Mr. Henry Warrington. “But we should have won, in spite
of your ladyship,” he continued, “had not the elder brother made his
appearance. And I have been trying to console my poor Maria by showing
her what a piece of good fortune it is after all, that we lost.”
“Suppose she had married Harry, and then cousin George had made his
appearance?” remarks the Baroness.
“Effectivement,” cries Eugene, taking snuff. “As the grave was to give
up its dead, let us be thankful to the grave for disgorging in time! I
am bound to say, that Mr. George Warrington seems to be a man of sense,
and not more selfish than other elder sons and men of the world. My poor
Molly fancied that he might be a--what shall I say?--a greenhorn perhaps
is the term--like his younger brother. She fondly hoped that he might be
inclined to go share and share alike with Twin junior; in which case, so
infatuated was she about the young fellow, that I believe she would have
taken him. 'Harry Warrington, with half a loaf, might do very well,'
says I, 'but Harry Warrington with no bread, my dear!'”
“How no bread?” asks the Baroness.
“Well, no bread except at his brother's side-table. The elder said as
much.”
“What a hard-hearted wretch!” cries Madame de Bernstein.
“Ah, bah! I play with you, aunt, cartes sur table! Mr. George only did
what everybody else would do; and we have no right to be angry with him,
really we haven't. Molly herself acknowledged as much, after her first
burst of grief was over, and I brought her to listen to reason. The
silly old creature! to be so wild about a young lad at her time of
life!”
“'Twas a real passion, I almost do believe,” said Madame de Bernstein.
“You should have heard her take leave of him. C'etait touchant, ma
parole d'honneur! I cried. Before George, I could not help myself. The
young fellow with muddy stockings, and his hair about his eyes, flings
himself amongst us when we were at dinner; makes his offer to Molly in a
very frank and noble manner, and in good language too; and she replies.
Begad, it put me in mind of Mrs. Woffington in the new Scotch play, that
Lord Bute's man has wrote--Douglas--what d'ye call it? She clings round
the lad: she bids him adieu in heartrending accents. She steps out of
the room in a stately despair--no more chocolate, thank you. If she had
made a mauvais pas no one could retire from it with more dignity. 'Twas
a masterly retreat after a defeat. We were starved out of our position,
but we retired with all the honours of war.”
“Molly won't die of the disappointment!” said my lord's aunt, sipping
her cup.
My lord snarled a grin, and showed his yellow teeth. “He, he!” he
said, “she hath once or twice before had the malady very severely, and
recovered perfectly. It don't kill, as your ladyship knows, at Molly's
age.”
How should her ladyship know? She did not marry Doctor Tusher until she
was advanced in life. She did not become Madame de Bernstein until still
later. Old Dido, a poet remarks, was not ignorant of misfortune, and
hence learned to have compassion on the wretched.
People in the little world, as I have been told, quarrel and fight, and
go on abusing each other, and are not reconciled for ever so long. But
people in the great world are surely wiser in their generation. They
have differences; they cease seeing each other. They make it up and come
together again, and no questions are asked. A stray prodigal, or a stray
puppy-dog, is thus brought in under the benefit of an amnesty, though
you know he has been away in ugly company. For six months past, ever
since the Castlewoods and Madame de Bernstein had been battling for
possession of poor Harry Warrington, these two branches of the Esmond
family had remained apart. Now, the question being settled, they were
free to meet again, as though no difference ever had separated them: and
Madame de Bernstein drove in her great coach to Lady Castlewood's rout,
and the Esmond ladies appeared smiling at Madame de Bernstein's drums,
and loved each other just as much as they previously had done.
“So, sir, I hear you have acted like a hard-hearted monster about your
poor brother Harry!” says the Baroness, delighted, and menacing George
with her stick.
“I acted but upon your ladyship's hint, and desired to see whether it
was for himself or his reputed money that his kinsfolk wanted to have
him,” replies George, turning rather red.
“Nay, Maria could not marry a poor fellow who was utterly penniless, and
whose elder brother said he would give him nothing!”
“I did it for the best, madam,” says George, still blushing.
“And so thou didst, O thou hypocrite!” cries the old lady.
“Hypocrite, madam! and why?” asks Mr. Warrington, drawing himself up in
much state.
“I know all, my infant!” says the Baroness in French. “Thou art very
like thy grandfather. Come, that I embrace thee! Harry has told me all,
and that thou hast divided thy little patrimony with him!”
“It was but natural, madam. We have had common hearts and purses since
we were born. I but feigned hard-heartedness in order to try those
people yonder,” says George, with filling eyes.
“And thou wilt divide Virginia with him too?” asks the Bernstein.
“I don't say so. It were not just,” replied Mr. Warrington. “The land
must go to the eldest born, and Harry would not have it otherwise: and
it may be I shall die, or my mother outlive the pair of us. But half of
what is mine is his: and he, it must be remembered, only was extravagant
because he was mistaken as to his position.”
“But it is a knight of old, it is a Bayard, it is the grandfather
come to life!” cried Madame de Bernstein to her attendant, as she was
retiring for the night. And that evening, when the lads left her, it was
to poor Harry she gave the two fingers, and to George the rouged cheek,
who blushed, for his part, almost as deep as that often-dyed rose, at
such a mark of his old kinswoman's favour.
Although Harry Warrington was the least envious of men, and did honour
to his brother as in all respects his chief, guide, and superior, yet no
wonder a certain feeling of humiliation and disappointment oppressed the
young man after his deposition from his eminence as Fortunate Youth and
heir to boundless Virginian territories. Our friends at Kensington might
promise and vow that they would love him all the better after his fall;
Harry made a low bow and professed himself very thankful; but he
could not help perceiving, when he went with his brother to the state
entertainment with which my Lord Castlewood regaled his new-found
kinsman, that George was all in all to his cousins: had all the talk,
compliments, and petits soins for himself, whilst of Harry no one took
any notice save poor Maria, who followed him with wistful looks, pursued
him with eyes conveying dismal reproaches, and, as it were, blamed him
because she had left him. “Ah!” the eyes seemed to say, “'tis mighty
well of you, Harry, to have accepted the freedom which I gave you; but I
had no intention, sir, that you should be so pleased at being let off.”
She gave him up, but yet she did not quite forgive him for taking her
at her word. She would not have him, and yet she would. Oh, my young
friends, how delightful is the beginning of a love-business, and how
undignified, sometimes, the end! What a romantic vista is before young
Damon and young Phillis (or middle-aged ditto ditto) when, their artless
loves made known to each other, they twine their arms round each other's
waists and survey that charming pays du tendre which lies at their feet!
Into that country, so linked together, they will wander from now until
extreme old age. There may be rocks and roaring rivers, but will not
Damon's strong true love enable him to carry Sweetheart over them? There
may be dragons and dangers in the path, but shall not his courageous
sword cut them down? Then at eve, how they will rest cuddled together,
like two pretty babes in the wood, the moss their couch, the stars their
canopy, their arms their mutual pillows! This is the wise plan young
folks make when they set out on the love journey; and--O me!--they have
not got a mile when they come to a great wall and find they must walk
back again. They are squabbling with the post-boy at Barnet (the first
stage on the Gretna Road, I mean), and, behold, perhaps Strephon has not
got any money, or here is papa with a whacking horsewhip, who takes Miss
back again, and locks her up crying in the schoolroom. The parting
is heart-breaking; but, when she has married the banker and had eight
children, and he has become, it may be, a prosperous barrister,--it may
be, a seedy raff who has gone twice or thrice into the Gazette; when,
I say, in after years Strephon and Delia meet again, is not the meeting
ridiculous? Nevertheless, I hope no young man will fall in love, having
any doubt in his mind as to the eternity of his passion. 'Tis when a
man has had a second or third amorous attack that he begins to grow
doubtful; but some women are romantic to the end, and from eighteen to
eight-and-fifty (for what I know) are always expecting their hearts to
break. In fine, when you have been in love and are so no more, when the
King of France, with twenty thousand men, with colours flying, music
playing, and all the pomp of war, having marched up the hill, then
proceeds to march down again, he and you are in an absurd position.
This is what Harry Warrington, no doubt, felt when he went to Kensington
and encountered the melancholy, reproachful eyes of his cousin. Yes! it
is a foolish position to be in; but it is also melancholy to look into
a house you have once lived in, and see black casements and emptiness
where once shone the fires of welcome. Melancholy? Yes; but, ha! how
bitter, how melancholy, how absurd to look up as you pass sentimentally
by No. 13, and see somebody else grinning out of window, and evidently
on the best terms with the landlady. I always feel hurt, even at an inn
which I frequent, if I see other folks' trunks and boots at the doors
of the rooms which were once mine. Have those boots lolled on the sofa
which once I reclined on? I kick you from before me, you muddy, vulgar
highlows!
So considering that his period of occupation was over, and Maria's
rooms, if not given up to a new tenant, were, at any rate, to let, Harry
did not feel very easy in his cousin's company, nor she possibly in his.
He found either that he had nothing to say to her, or that what she had
to say to him was rather dull and commonplace, and that the red lip of
a white-necked pipe of Virginia was decidedly more agreeable to him now
than Maria's softest accents and most melancholy moue. When George went
to Kensington, then, Harry did not care much about going, and pleaded
other engagements.
At his uncle's house in Hill Street the poor lad was no better amused,
and, indeed, was treated by the virtuous people there with scarce any
attention at all. The ladies did not scruple to deny themselves when
he came; he could scarce have believed in such insincerity after their
caresses, their welcome, their repeated vows of affection; but happening
to sit with the Lamberts for an hour after he had called upon his aunt,
he saw her ladyship's chairmen arrive with an empty chair, and his aunt
step out and enter the vehicle, and not even blush when he made her a
bow from the opposite window. To be denied by his own relations--to have
that door which had opened to him so kindly, slammed in his face! He
would not have believed such a thing possible, poor simple Harry said.
Perhaps he thought the door-knocker had a tender heart, and was not made
of brass; not more changed than the head of that knocker was my Lady
Warrington's virtuous face when she passed her nephew.
“My father's own brother's wife! What have I done to offend her? Oh,
Aunt Lambert, Aunt Lambert, did you ever see such cold-heartedness?”
cries out Harry, with his usual impetuosity.
“Do we make any difference to you, my dear Harry?” says Aunt Lambert,
with a side look at her youngest daughter. “The world may look coldly at
you, but we don't belong to it: so you may come to us in safety.”
“In this house you are different from other people,” replies Harry. “I
don't know how, but I always feel quiet and happy somehow when I come to
you.”
“Quis me uno vivit felicior? aut magis hac est
Optandum vita dicere quis potuit?”
calls out General Lambert. “Do you know where I got these verses, Mr.
Gownsman?” and he addresses his son from college, who is come to pass
an Easter holiday with his parents. “You got them out of Catullus, sir,”
says the scholar.
“I got them out of no such thing, sir. I got them out of my favourite
Democritus Junior--out of old Burton, who has provided many indifferent
scholars with learning;” and who and Montaigne, were favourite authors
with the good General.