When a lady of such temperament as Lady Aimwell takes upon herself
the trouble of going into a fit of the sullens, though she may in the
first instance be speechless and even resolve not to open her lips
upon the subject of her wrath, or to utter any expressions of anger
against the object of her indignation, yet she finds at the last that
there is no other mode of getting rid of the oppressive burden than
by throwing it off in words. In like manner, also, when two gentlemen
quarrel about any subject, whether it be geology, or theology, and they
cannot convince one another, then they are angry and sulky, and they
treat one another with what they call silent contempt, and yet they
make a mighty noise and a great trumpeting about the silence of their
contempt. So again, when an author who has written the best possible
book on any subject, and another author reviews that same book and
proves by most ingenious argument that it is utterly worthless, the
writer of the book runs about among the circle of his acquaintance
foaming at the mouth to shew how cool he is, and dinning every one’s
ears with the noise that he makes in proclaiming his silent contempt
of the scrub who has criticized him. And what else can he do? Who is
to know anything of the existence of silent contempt unless it be
advertized? We have heard the phrase, “proclaiming silence;” it has its
origin perhaps in this silence of contempt, which by the way seems to
be rather a contempt of silence.
If the reader does not by this time understand the state of mind
in which Lady Aimwell was, on the occasion referred to, he must be
obtuse; if he does not pity Arabella Glossop, he must be inhuman and
unfeeling.
On the morning which followed Colonel Crop’s last mentioned visit
to Neverden Hall, Lady Aimwell took her seat in the drawing-room as
usual, and spread before her eyes the accustomed Stackhouse. But her
ladyship found it difficult to command her attention, and to find
room in her mind for any other thoughts than those which related to
Arabella Glossop. And the young lady as usual made her appearance. At
her entering the apartment Lady Aimwell lifted her eyes and fixed them
frowningly on the young lady.
It is not pleasant to be frowned at, even though it be but by an
automaton. There is in the human mind, especially in the minds of the
young, a love of cheerfulness, and this principle was exceedingly
strong in Arabella Glossop.
Lady Aimwell had never been very courteous to this gay-spirited young
woman, and yet her ladyship expected, or seemed to expect, that Miss
Glossop ought to be most especially courteous to her. Lady Aimwell
made herself as repulsive as she possibly could to Miss Glossop, and
then with a most diverting simplicity expressed her wonderment that
the young lady should seem so readily to avoid her company. Lady
Aimwell had certain obsolete notions of decorum, and divers crotchets
about propriety which she had learned from her grandmother’s sampler,
and curiously did she profess herself astonished that the hoydenish
daughter of a successful attorney should not have the same starched
notions and the same precise formality.
It has been said that Lady Aimwell looked frowningly upon Miss Glossop,
as soon as the young lady entered the drawing-room. But Miss Glossop,
with all her rudeness and vulgarity, was not so rude or vulgar as to
return the frown. On the contrary, she very kindly asked her ladyship
if she had recovered from her yesterday’s indisposition. The question
was asked very civilly, and with the most conciliating intonation
of voice; but it was answered with great incivility and with a most
sneering cadence.
“You care much about my health,” replied Lady Aimwell.
To this no reply was made; and Miss Glossop, seeing that her ladyship
was in an ill-humour, thought it best to let that humour take its
course. But as the young lady had no very great desire to undergo
a dissertation on propriety, she was preparing to leave the room.
Thereupon Lady Aimwell was roused to greater volubility; and, closing
the great book with a great noise, she said, “It is very unaccountable,
Miss Glossop, that you have so great a dislike to me that you take
every opportunity to avoid me.”
At hearing this Miss Glossop returned, and would have made something of
a reply, but Lady Aimwell prevented her by continuing the oration.
“I cannot imagine what I can have done or said to make you dislike me
so much. I have never said anything to you but for your good. But young
people now-a-days think themselves so prodigiously wise, that they will
not condescend to be advised. I know that when I was a young woman, if
any one had taken so much pains with me as I have with you, I should
have been grateful for it, instead of turning my back upon my best
friends.”
All this was what is called too bad. It was villanously tedious and
generally untrue. Lady Aimwell could very well imagine what it was
rendered her company unacceptable to Miss Glossop; nor could her
ladyship think it very likely that all which she had been pleased to
say for the good of the young lady, should be considered by her as
really pleasant and agreeable. And in good truth we really believe
that, though what had been said by Lady Aimwell might, by a little
ingenuity, be interpreted as being said for the young lady’s good,
yet the principal motive which urged her ladyship to say all this,
was the gratification of her own ill humour and the indulgence of her
own spleen. And when the wife of the exemplary magistrate of Neverden
Hall said, that had any one in her younger days so administered the
tediousness of snarling exhortation, she should have been grateful
for it, we are of opinion that imagination had usurped the throne of
memory, or that invention had taken the place of veracity. For, unless
Lady Aimwell had greatly changed since the days of her youth, or unless
we have grossly misapprehended the character of her mind, we are of
opinion that she would not have borne so patiently, as Miss Glossop
did, the tediousness of prosy exhortation.
To all that Lady Aimwell was pleased to remark as touching the
ingratitude of Miss Glossop and the degeneracy of the present
generation of juvenile spinsters, the belectured young lady only
replied, and that most meekly, “I am sure, Lady Aimwell, I never had
the slightest intention of treating you disrespectfully. As you were
unwell last night, and as I thought you did not seem quite recovered
this morning, I could not do otherwise than enquire after your health.”
“Not quite recovered!” echoed Lady Aimwell, with great briskness of
tone and peculiar sharpness of manner--“Not quite recovered! So, I
suppose you mean to insinuate that I was out of humour? Yes, yes, I
understand what you mean by not quite recovered.”
At this remark, Miss Glossop smiled inwardly, but she took especial
care not to manifest any outward and visible signs of mirth, lest
she might provoke her ladyship to exercise some inconvenient mode
of retaliation. Nor, on the other hand, could the young lady so far
attempt the mask of hypocrisy as expressly and explicitly to disavow
all thought and suspicion of ill-humour on the part of Lady Aimwell.
Being however somewhat indignant at the pertinacity with which her
ladyship kept up the hostility, and thinking that a little semblance of
opposition would be better than a placid and unyielding acquiescence
in the gratuitous accusations and assumptions of her ladyship, Miss
Glossop, with some degree of her natural tartness, replied:
“I think, Lady Aimwell, that you are treating me very ill to put an
unfavourable construction on everything I say or do; I am sure I
have not the slightest wish to behave disrespectfully to you; but
you will not give me leave to pay you ordinary civilities without
misinterpreting them.”
Now her ladyship knew that there was truth in this, therefore, fearing
that she might be worsted in a regular argument, she thought it
advisable to change the mode of attack, and, instead of continuing the
discussion in that line, Lady Aimwell replied, “You may talk as long
as you please, Miss Glossop, but nobody can make me believe that your
conduct towards Lord Spoonbill the other day was at all becoming, or
even decent.”
This was a repetition of a former attack, and as in the first instance
this attack had driven the young lady to passionate weeping, Lady
Aimwell was in expectation that a renewal of it would produce a
renewal of the young lady’s sobs and tears. But in this calculation the
baronet’s lady reckoned wrong. The conversation which Miss Glossop had
had the preceding evening with Colonel Crop, and the bright prospects
which lay before her, of rank and opulence and luxury and homage,
rendered an allusion of this nature rather agreeable than otherwise.
Instead therefore of yielding, as before, to the down-rushing tear and
the passionate sobbing, the possible countess replied with spirit and
vivacity, “Lord Spoonbill is as well qualified to judge of propriety as
any one. And if I said or did anything disrespectful to his lordship,
it is his concern.”
In this reply we by no means vindicate Miss Glossop; we rather think
that she was much to blame; for young men are not such good judges
of propriety as old ladies; and it is not to be supposed, that if a
pretty-looking young woman, as Miss Glossop certainly was, should
behave with impertinent forwardness towards so gay and gallant a young
gentleman as Lord Spoonbill, that his lordship would reprove her, and
administer a wholesome lesson on the subject of decorum.
Lady Aimwell was precisely of our opinion on this point, and answered
accordingly, “Miss Glossop, are you a downright simpleton? Or what do
you mean by such language? Nothing could be better amusement for Lord
Spoonbill, than to see you make a fool of yourself.”
Here Lady Aimwell had clearly the advantage of Miss Glossop. It was
indeed true, that Lord Spoonbill had been mightily amused with seeing
the ridiculous and fantastic airs which the young lady shewed off at
the castle. But though Lady Aimwell was right, the young lady thought
she was wrong. And from what Miss Glossop had heard on the preceding
evening from Colonel Crop, there was not in her mind the remotest
suspicion that Lord Spoonbill had regarded her demeanour with any other
feeling than that of approbation.
Several times was Miss Glossop on the very brink of exultingly avowing
to her ladyship what had been said by Colonel Crop concerning the
approbation which that discriminating judge of propriety Lord Spoonbill
had been pleased to express of herself. But as frequently she checked
herself, since she thought that the mode in which Lord Spoonbill had
conveyed to her his approbation and admiration were not quite according
to the etiquette of Lady Aimwell’s grandmother’s sampler.
The inward consciousness however that Lord Spoonbill was graciously
disposed towards her, gave her unusual calmness and composure, so that
she could patiently bear much of the rebuke that was addressed to her
by Lady Aimwell.
But at last came the grand, decisive, interrogatory, which referred
to Colonel Crop’s negociation. Now we cannot approve Lady Aimwell’s
conduct in leaving her young friend exposed to such negociation; for
it was very obvious, that on the preceding evening her ladyship had
retired early, because she was displeased with the visible symptoms
of Colonel Crop’s extraordinary attention to the young lady. With
an exulting and almost triumphing confidence did Lady Aimwell say,
“Now, pray, Miss Glossop, may I take the liberty to ask, did your
friend Colonel Crop deliver any message to you from your favorite Lord
Spoonbill?”
There was a sneer in the phraseology of this question, there was
also a still stronger expression of contempt in the tone and cadence
of it. And thereat Miss Glossop coloured, not blushed merely with
maiden diffidence and modesty, but coloured with mighty and puissant
indignation at the question, at the language in which it was conveyed,
and at the tone in which it was uttered. The consciousness that she was
destined to a high rank in society, and that she was honored with the
approbation of so great a man as Lord Spoonbill, gave her an additional
confidence, and increased her natural pertness, and she replied, “If
your ladyship must know, I can tell you that Colonel Crop did deliver a
message to me from Lord Spoonbill. What that message was, your ladyship
may know hereafter.”
At this reply Lady Aimwell was struck with tenfold astonishment. And
we will here do her ladyship the justice to acknowledge, that whatever
might be the spirit of her endeavours, they were certainly directed
with a view to the young lady’s good. For Lady Aimwell, though not the
brightest woman in the world, could easily see that a negociation of
this kind was not very likely to terminate in making Miss Glossop a
countess. Therefore, when this acknowledgment had been thus extorted
from the young lady, her more sagacious relative replied with a very
natural expression of astonishment, mingled also with an indication of
pity and a slight tincture of contempt:
“Surely, Miss Glossop, you will not suffer yourself to be led away by
such idle and foolish stories! Do you, can you for a moment, imagine
that if Lord Spoonbill had any serious and honorable intentions, he
would send messages to you by a third person. I must insist upon it
that you will not give Colonel Crop any farther encouragement to talk
such nonsense. What would your father say to us if he knew that such
folly, such wickedness I may say, was encouraged under our roof?”
Lady Aimwell’s intention was good, but it was not duly appreciated
by the young lady in whose behalf it was manifested. And, instead of
gratefully acknowledging her ladyship’s kindness, and humbly promising
to follow her ladyship’s good advice, Miss Glossop, with a most
arrogant air, rejected the good counsel and said, “I think I know how
to govern myself without your ladyship’s assistance. You make pretty
pretensions enough to what you say is all for my good. The plain fact
is, you are merely mortified at my good fortune.”
There was something so outrageously insulting in this last speech,
that Lady Aimwell was absolutely unable to make an immediate reply,
and the contending parties looked at each other for a few moments in
perfect silence, and with flushed and angry countenances. Lady Aimwell
after a while, as soon as she could recover from her overwhelming
astonishment, replied, “Very pretty language, Miss Glossop; very
grateful and respectful, indeed! However, I will take care that I shall
not be so insulted again; and perhaps if I cannot persuade you, I may
find some one who can.”
So saying Lady Aimwell left the apartment, and Miss Glossop remained
alone to think over the meaning and interpretation of her ladyship’s
threat. Not long did the young lady exercise her conjectures; for
it was very clear to her that Lady Aimwell designed to write to Mr
Glossop, of whom Miss Arabella stood more in awe than of any other
human being. But as she knew that her father’s views for her were of
the aspiring and ambitious cast, and as she had no other thought
concerning the negociation of Colonel Crop, than that her own sweet
person and graceful manners and accomplishments had won the affection
of Lord Spoonbill, she felt very much at ease even under Lady Aimwell’s
threat, and had no fears that her father would throw any obstacle
in the way of her marriage with a person of such high rank and
consideration.