HONORABLE RESOURCES OF AN EXILE.
Now that the count thought himself secure of the means of payment, he
sent for a physician, to consult him respecting the state of the
general. When Dr. Cavendish saw and conversed with the venerable
Butzou, he gave it as his opinion that his malady was chiefly on the
nerves, and had originated in grief.
"I can too well suppose it," replied Thaddeus.
"Then," rejoined the physician, "I fear, sir, that unless I know
something of its cause, my visits will prove almost useless."
The count was silent. The doctor resumed--
"I shall be grieved if his sorrows be of too delicate a nature to be
trusted with a man of honor; for in these cases, unless we have some
knowledge of the springs of the derangement, we lose time, and
perhaps entirely fail of a cure. Our discipline is addressed both to
the body and the mind of the patient."
Thaddeus perceived the necessity of compliance, and did so without
further hesitation.
"The calamities, sir, which have occasioned the disorder of my friend
need not be a secret: too many have shared them with him; his sorrows
have been public ones. You must have learnt by his language, Dr.
Cavendish, that he is a foreigner and a soldier. He held the rank of
general in the King of Poland's service. Since the period in which
his country fell, his wandering senses have approximated to what you
see."
Dr. Cavendish paused for a moment before he answered the count; then
fixing his eyes on the veteran, who was sitting at the other end of
the room, constructing the model of a fortified town, he said--
"All that we can do at present, sir, is to permit him to follow his
schemes without contradiction, meanwhile strengthening his system
with proper medicines, and lulling its irritation by gentle opiates.
We must proceed cautiously, and I trust in Heaven that success will
crown us at last. I will order something to be taken every night."
When the doctor had written his prescription, and was preparing to
go, Thaddeus offered him his fee; but the good Cavendish, taking the
hand that presented it, and closing it on the guinea, "No, my dear
sir" said he; "real patriotism is too much the idol of my heart to
allow me to receive payment when I behold her face. Suffer me, Mr.
Constantine, to visit you and your brave companion as a friend, or I
never come again."
"Sir, this generous conduct to strangers--"
"Generous to myself, Mr. Constantine, and not to strangers; I cannot
consider you as such, for men who devote themselves to their country
must find a brother in every honest breast. I will not hear of our
meeting on any other terms." [Footnote: This generous man is no
fictitious character, the original being Dr. Blackburne, late of
Cavendish Square; but who, since the above was written, has long
retired from his profession, passing a revered old age in the
beautiful neighborhood of our old British classic scenes, the Abbey
of Glastonbury.]
Thaddeus could not immediately form a reply adequate to the sentiment
which the generous philanthropy of the doctor awakened. Whilst he
stood incapable of speaking, Cavendish, with one glance of his
penetrating eye, deciphered his countenance, and giving him a
friendly shake by the hand, disappeared.
The count took up his hat; and musing all the way he went on the
unexpected scenes we meet in life,--disappointment where we expected
kindness, and friendship where no hope could arise,--he arrived at
the door of Lady Dundas, in Harley Street.
He was instantly let in, and with much ceremony ushered into a
splendid library, where he was told the ladies would attend him.
Before they entered, they allowed him time to examine its costly
furniture, its glittering book-cases, bird-cages, globes, and
reading-stands, all shining with burnished gilding; its polished
plaster casts of the nine muses, which stood in nine recesses about
the room, draperied with blue net, looped up with artificial roses;
and its fine cut-steel Grecian stove, on each side of which was
placed, on sandal-wood pedestals, two five-feet statues of Apollo and
Minerva.
Thaddeus had twice walked round these fopperies of learning, when the
door opened, and Lady Dundas, dressed in a morning wrapper of Indian
shawls, waddled into the apartment. She neither bowed nor curtseyed
to the count, who was standing when she entered, but looking at him
from head to foot, said as she passed, "So you are come;" and ringing
the bell, called to the servant in no very soft tones, "Tell Miss
Dundas the person Lady Tinemouth spoke of is here." Her ladyship then
sat down in one of the little gilded chairs, leaving Thaddeus still
standing on the spot where he had bowed to her entrance.
"You may sit down," cried she, stirring the fire, and not deigning to
look at him; "for my daughter may not choose to come this half-hour."
"I prefer standing," replied the count, who could have laughed at the
accuracy of Miss Egerton's picture, had he not prognosticated more
disagreeableness to himself from the ill manners of which this was a
specimen.
Lady Dundas took no further notice of him. Turning from her bloated
countenance, (which pride as well as high living had swollen from
prettiness to deformity,) he walked to a window and stationed himself
there, looking into the street, until the door was again opened, and
two ladies made their appearance.
"Miss Dundas," cried her ladyship, "here is the young man that is to
teach you German."
Thaddeus bowed; the younger of the ladies curtseyed; and so did the
other, not forgetting to accompany such condescension with a toss of
the head, that the effect of undue humility might be done away.
Whilst a servant was setting chairs round a table, on which was
painted the Judgment of Hercules, Lady Dundas again opened her lips.
"Pray, Mr. Thingumbob, have you brought any grammars, and primers,
and dictionaries, and syntaxes with you?"
Before he had time to reply in the negative, Miss Dundas interrupted
her mother.
"I wish, madam, you would leave the arrangement of my studies to
myself. Does your ladyship think we would learn out of any book which
had been touched by other people? Thomas," cried she to a servant,
"send Stephens hither."
Thaddeus silently contemplated this strange mother and daughter,
whilst the pretty Euphemia paid the same compliment to him. During
his stay, he ventured to look once only at her sylph-like figure.
There was an unreceding something in her liquid blue eyes, when he
chanced to meet them, which displeased him; and he could not help
seeing that from the instant she entered the room she had seldom
ceased staring in his face.
He was a little relieved by the maid putting the books on the table.
Miss Dundas, taking her seat, desired him to sit down by her and
arrange the lessons. Lady Dundas was drawing to the other side of
Thaddeus, when Euphemia, suddenly whisking round, pushed before her
mother, and exclaimed--
"Dear mamma! you don't want to learn!" and squeezed herself upon the
edge of her mother's chair, who, very angrily getting up, declared
that rudeness to a parent was intolerable from such well-bred young
women, and left the room.
Euphemia blushed at the reproof more than at her conduct; and Miss
Dundas added to her confusion by giving her a second reprimand.
Thaddeus pitied the evident embarrassment of the little beauty, and
to relieve her, presented the page in the German grammar with which
they were to begin. This had the desired effect; and for an hour and
a half they prosecuted their studies with close attention.
Whilst the count continued his directions to her sister, and then
turned his address to herself, Miss Euphemia, wholly unseen by him,
with a bent head was affecting to hear him though at the same time
she looked obliquely through her thick flaxen ringlets, and gazing
with wonder and admiration on his face as it inclined towards her,
said to herself, "If this man were a gentleman, I should think him
the most charming creature in the world."
"Will your task be too long, madam?" inquired Thaddeus; "will it give
you any inconvenience to remember?"
"To remember what?" asked she, for in truth she had neither seen what
he had been pointing at nor heard what he had been saying.
"The lesson madam, I have just been proposing."
"Show it to me again, and then I shall be a better judge."
He did as he was desired, and was taking his leave, when she called
after him:
"Pray, Mr. Constantine, come to-morrow at two. I want you
particularly."
The count bowed and withdrew.
"And what do you want with him to-morrow, child?" asked Miss Dundas;
"you are not accustomed to be so fond of improvement."
Euphemia knew very well what she was accustomed to be fond of; but
not choosing to let her austere sister into her predilection for the
contemplation of superior beauty, she merely answered, "You know,
Diana, you often reproach me for my absurd devotion to novel-reading,
and my repugnance to graver books; now I want at once to be like you,
a woman of great erudition: and for that purpose I will study day and
night at the German, till I can read all the philosophers, and be a
fit companion for my sister."
This speech from Euphemia (who had always been so declared an enemy
to pedantry as to affirm that she learnt German merely because it was
the fashion) would have awakened Miss Dundas to some suspicion of a
covert design, had she not been in the habit of taking down such
large draughts of adulation, that whenever herself was the subject,
she gave it full confidence. Euphemia seldom administered these doses
but to serve particular views; and seeing in the present case that a
little flattery was necessary, she felt no compunction in sacrificing
sincerity to the gratification of caprice. Weak in understanding, she
had fed on works of imagination, until her mind loathed all kinds of
food. Not content with devouring the elegant pages of Mackenzie,
Radcliffe, and Lee, she flew with voracious appetite to sate herself
on the garbage of any circulating library that fell in her way.
The effects of such a taste were exhibited in her manners. Being very
pretty, she became very sentimental. She dressed like a wood nymph,
and talked as if her soul were made of love and sorrow. Neither of
these emotions had she ever really felt; but in idea she was always
the victim of some ill-fated passion, fancying herself at different
periods in love with one or other of the finest young men in her
circle.
By this management she kept faithful to her favorite principle that
"love was a want of her soul!" As it was the rule of her life, it
ever trembled on her tongue, ever introduced the confession of any
new attachment, which usually happened three times a year, to her
dear friend Miss Arabella Rothes. Fortunately for the longevity of
their mutual friendship, this young lady lived in an ancient house,
forty miles to the north of London. This latter circumstance proved a
pretty distress for their pens to descant on; and Arabella remained a
most charming sentimental writing-stock, to receive the catalogue of
Miss Euphemia's lovers; indeed, that gentle creature might have
matched every lady in Cowley's calendar with a gentleman. But every
throb of her heart must have acknowledged a different master. First,
the fashionable sloven, Augustus Somers, lounged and sauntered
himself into her good graces; but his dishevelled hair, and otherwise
neglected toilette, not exactly meeting her ideas of an elegant
lover, she gave him up at the end of three weeks. The next object her
eyes fell upon, as most opposite to her former fancy, was the
charming Marquis of Inverary. But here all her arrows failed, for she
never could extract from him more than a "how d'ye do?" through the
long lapse of four months, during which time she continued as
constant to his fine figure, and her own folly, as could have fallen
to the lot of any poor despairing damsel. However, my lord was so
cruel, so perfidious, as to allow several opportunities to pass in
which he might have declared his passion; and she told Arabella, in a
letter of six sheets, that she would bear it no longer.
She put this wise resolution in practice, and had already played the
same game with half a score, (the last of whom was a young guardsman,
who had just ridden into her heart by managing his steed with the air
of a "feathered Mercury," one day in Hyde Park,) when Thaddeus made
his appearance before her.
The moment she fixed her eyes on him, her inflammable imagination was
set in a blaze. She forgot his apparent subordinate quality in the
nobleness of his figure; and once or twice that evening, while she
was flitting about, the sparkling cynosure of the Duchess of Orkney's
masquerade, her thoughts hovered over the handsome foreigner.
She viewed the subject first one way and then another, and, in her
ever varying mind, "he was everything by turns, and nothing long;"
but at length she argued herself into a belief that he must be a man
of rank from some of the German courts, who having seen her somewhere
unknown to herself, had fallen in love with her, and so had persuaded
Lady Tinemouth to introduce him as a master of languages to her
family that he might the better appreciate the disinterestedness of
her disposition.
This wild notion having once got into her head, received instant
credence. She resolved, without seeming to suspect it, to treat him
as his quality deserved, and to deliver sentiments in his hearing
which should charm him with their delicacy and generosity.
With these chimeras floating in her brain, she returned home, went to
bed, and dreamed that Mr. Constantine had turned out to be the _Duc
d'Enghien_, had offered her his hand, and that she was conducted
to the altar by a train of princes and princesses, his brothers and
sisters.
She woke the next morning from these deliriums in an ecstasy, deeming
them prophetic; and, taking up her book, began with a fluttering
attention to scan the lesson which Thaddeus had desired her to learn.