Upon the entrance of the travellers into London, the curiosity of Mrs
Ireton was more than ever inflamed, to find that the journey, with all
its delays, was at an end, before she had been able to gratify that
insatiable passion in a single point. Yet every observation that she
could make tended to redouble its keenness. Neither ill humour nor
haughtiness, now the patches and bandages were removed, could prevent
her from perceiving that the stranger was young and beautiful; nor from
remarking that her air and manner were strikingly distinguished from the
common class. One method, however, still remained for diving into this
mystery; it was clear that the young woman was in want, whatever else
might be doubtful. Mrs Ireton, therefore, resolved to allow no
recompense for her attendance, but in consideration of what she would
communicate of her history.
At a large house in Grosvenor Square they stopt. Mrs Ireton turned
exultingly to the stranger: but her glance met no gratification. The
young woman, instead of admiring the house, and counting the number of
steps that led to the vestibule, or of windows that commanded a view of
the square, only cast her eyes upwards, as if penetrated with
thankfulness that her journey was ended.
Surprised that stupidity should thus be joined with cunning, Mrs Ireton
now intently watched the impression which, when her servants appeared,
would be made by their rich liveries.
The stranger, however, without regarding them, followed their mistress
into the hall, which that lady was passing through in stately silence,
meaning to confound the proud vagrant more completely, by dismissing her
from the best drawing-room; when the words, 'Permit me, Madam, to wish
you good morning,' made her look round. She then saw that her late
attendant, without waiting for any answer, was tranquilly preparing to
be gone. Amazed and provoked, she deigned to call after her, and desired
that she would come the next day to be paid.
'I am more than paid already, Madam,' the Incognita replied, 'if my
little services may be accepted as cancelling my obligation for the
journey.'
She had no difficulty, now, to leave the house without further
interruption, so astonished was Mrs Ireton, at what she thought the
effrontery of a speech, that seemed, in some measure, to level her with
this adventurer; though, in her own despite, she was struck with the air
of calm dignity with which it was uttered.
The Wanderer obtained a direction to the house of Mrs Maple, from a
servant; and demanded another to Titchfield Street. To the latter she
rapidly bent her steps; but, there arrived, her haste ended in
disappointment and perplexity. She discovered the apartment in which,
with her husband and child, the lady whom she sought had resided; but it
was no longer inhabited; and she could not trace whether her friend had
set off for Brighthelmstone, or had only changed her lodging. After a
melancholy and fruitless search, she repaired, though with feet and a
mind far less eager, to Upper Brooke Street, where she soon read the
name of Mrs Maple upon the door of one of the capital houses. She
enquired for Miss Joddrel, and begged that young lady might be told,
that a person who came over in the same boat with her from France,
requested the honour of admission.
To this message she presently heard the voice of Elinor, from the
landing-place, answer, 'O, she's come at last! Bring her up Tomlinson,
bring her up!'
'Yes, Ma'am; but I'll promise you she is none of the person you have
been expecting.'
'How can you tell that Tomlinson? What sort of figure is she?'
'As pretty as can be.'
'As pretty as can be, is she? Go and ask her name.'
The man obeyed.
The stranger, disconcerted, answered, 'My name will not be known to Miss
Joddrel, but if she will have the goodness to receive, I am sure she
will recollect me.'
Elinor, who was listening, knew her voice, and, calling Tomlinson up
stairs, and heartily laughing, said, 'You are the greatest fool in the
whole world, Tomlinson! It is she! Bid her come to me directly.'
Tomlinson did as he was ordered, but grinned, with no small
satisfaction, at sight of the surprise with which, when they reached the
landing-place, his young mistress looked at the stranger.
'Why, Tomlinson,' she cried, 'who have you brought me hither?'
Tomlinson smirked, and the Incognita could not herself refrain from
smiling, but with a countenance so little calculated to excite distrust,
that Elinor, crying, 'Follow me,' led the way into her dressing room.
The young woman, then, with an air that strongly supplicated for
indulgence, said, 'I am truly shocked at the strange appearance which I
must make; but as I come now to throw myself upon your protection, I
will briefly--though I can enter into no detail--state to you how I am
circumstanced.'
'O charming! charming!' cried Elinor, clapping her hands, 'you are
going, at last, to relate your adventures! Nay, no drawing back! I won't
be disappointed! If you don't tell me every thing that ever you did in
your life, and every thing that ever you said, and every thing that ever
you thought,--I shall renounce you!'
'Alas!' answered the Incognita, 'I am in so forlorn a situation, that I
must not wonder if you conclude me to be some outcast of society,
abandoned by my friends from meriting their desertion,--a poor destitute
Wanderer, in search of any species of subsistence!'
'Don't be cast down, however,' cried Elinor, 'for I will help you on
your way. And yet you have exactly spoken Aunt Maple's opinion of you.'
'And I have no right, I acknowledge, to repine, at least, none for
resentment: yet, believe me, Madam, such is not the case! and if, as you
have given me leave to hope, you will have the benevolence to permit me
to travel in your party, or in whatever way you please, to
Brighthelmstone, I may there meet with a friend, under whose protection
I may acquire courage to give a more intelligible account of myself.'
A rap at the street door made Elinor ring the bell, and order, that when
Mr Harleigh came, he should be shewn immediately up stairs.
Harleigh, presently appearing, looked round the apartment, with striking
eagerness, yet evident disappointment; and, slightly bowing to the
scarcely noticed, yet marked courtsie of the stranger, said, 'Tomlinson
told me that our fellow-traveller was at last arrived?'
Elinor, taking the young woman apart, whispered a hasty injunction that
she would not discover herself. Then, addressing Harleigh, 'I believe,'
she said, 'you dream of nothing but that dismal Incognita. However, do
not fancy you have all the mysterious charmers to yourself. I have one
of my own, now; and not such a dingy, dowdy heroine as yours!'
Harleigh turned with quickness to the stranger; but she looked down, and
her complexion, and bloom, and changed apparel, made a momentary
suspicion die away.
Elinor demanded what news he had gathered of their strayed voyager?
None, he answered; and uneasily added, that he feared she had either
lost herself, or been misled, or betrayed, some other way.
'O, pray don't waste your anxiety!' cried Elinor; 'she is in perfect
safety, I make no doubt.'
'I should be sorry,' he gravely replied, 'to think you in equal danger.'
'Should you?' cried she in a softened tone; 'should you, Harleigh, be
sorry if any evil befel me?'
'But why,' he asked, 'has Tomlinson given me this misinformation?'
'And why, Mr Harleigh, because Tomlinson told you that a stranger was
here, should you conclude it could be no other than your black
fugitive?'
Again Harleigh turned to the traveller, and fixed his eyes upon her
face: the patch, the bandage, the large cap, had hitherto completely
hidden its general form; and the beautiful outline he now saw, with so
entire a contrast of complexion to what he remembered, again checked, or
rather dissolved his rising surmizes.
Elinor begged him to be seated, and to quiet his perturbed spirit.
He took a chair, but, in passing by the young woman, her sex, her
beauty, her modest air, gave him a sensation that repelled his using it,
and he leant upon its back, looking expressively at Elinor; but Elinor
either marked not the hint, or mocked it. 'So you have really,' she
said, 'taken the pains to go to that eternal inn again, to enquire after
this maimed and defaced Dulcinea? What in the world can have inspired
you with such an interest for this wandering Creole?
''Tis not her face does love create,
For there no graces revel.'--
The bell of Mrs Maple now ringing, Elinor made a sign to the Incognita
not to avow herself, and flew down stairs to caution Tomlinson to
silence.
The chair which Harleigh had rejected for himself, he then offered to
the fair unknown. She declined it, but in a voice that made him start,
and wish to hear her speak again. His offer then became a request, and
she thanked him in a tone that vibrated certainty upon his ears, that it
could be no other than the voice of his fellow-voyager.
He now looked at her with an earnest gaze, that seemed nearly to draw
his eyes from their sockets. The embarrassment that he occasioned her
brought him to his recollection, and, apologising for his behaviour, he
added; 'A person--a lady--who accompanied us, not long since, from
abroad, had a voice so exactly resembling yours--that I find it rather
impossible than difficult not to believe that I hear the same. Permit me
to ask--have you any very near relation returned lately from France?'
She blushed, but without replying.
'I fancy,' he cried, 'I must have encountered two sisters?--yet you have
some reason, I own, to be angry at such a supposition--such a
comparison--'
He paused, and a smile, which she could not repress, forced her to
speak; 'By no means!' she cried; 'I know well how good you have been to
the person to whom you allude, and I beg you will allow me--in her
name--to return you the most grateful acknowledgements.'
Harleigh, now, yet more curiously examining her, said, 'It would not
have been easy to have forborne taking an interest in her fate. She was
in evident distress, yet never suffered herself to forget that she had
escaped from some yet greater. Her mind seemed fraught with strength and
native dignity. There was something singular, indescribable, in her
manner of supporting the most harassing circumstances. It was impossible
not to admire her.'
The blush of the stranger now grew deeper, but she remained silent, till
Elinor, re-entering, cried, 'Well, Harleigh, what say you to my new
demoiselle? And where would you have looked for your heart, if such had
seemed your Dulcinea?'
'I should, perhaps, have been but the safer!' answered he, laughing.
'Pho! you would not make me believe any thing so out of nature, as that,
when you were in such a tindery fit as to be kindled by that dowdy, you
could have resisted being blown into flames at once by a creature such
as this?'
'Man is a perverse animal, Elinor; that which he regards as pointed for
his destruction, frequently proves harmless. We are all--boys and
libertines alone excepted--upon our guard against beauty; for, as every
sense is up in arms to second its assault, our pride takes the alarm,
and rises to oppose it. Our real danger is where we see no risk.'
'You enchant me, Harleigh! I am never so delighted as when I hear beauty
set at nought--for I always suspect, Harleigh, that you do not think me
handsome?'
'If I think you better than handsome, Elinor--'
'Pho! you know there is no such better in nature; at least not in such
nature as forms taste in the mind of man; which I certainly do not
consider as the purest of its works; though you all hold it, yourselves,
to be the noblest. Nevertheless, imagination is all-powerful; if,
therefore, you have taken the twist to believe in such sublimity, you
may, perhaps, be seriously persuaded, that your heart would have been
more stubborn to this dainty new Wanderer than to your own
walnut-skinned gypsey.'
'Walnut-skinned?'
'Even so, noble knight-errand, even so! This person whom you now behold,
and whom, if we believe our eyes, never met them till within this half
hour, if we give credit to our ears, scrambled over with us in that
crazy boat from France.'
Harleigh was here summoned to Miss Maple, and Elinor returned to her
interrogatories; but the stranger only reverted to her hopes, that she
might still depend upon the promised conveyance to Brighthelmstone?
'Tell me, at least, what it was you flung into the sea?'
'Ah, Madam, that would tell every thing!'
'You are a most provoking little devil,' cried Elinor, impatiently, 'and
I am half tempted to have nothing more to say to you. Give me, however,
some account how you managed matters with that sweet tender dove Mrs
Ireton.'
The recital that ensued of the disasters, difficulties, and choler of
that lady, proved so entertaining to Elinor, that she soon not only
renewed her engagement of taking her unknown guest free to Lewes, but
joined the warmest assurances of protection. 'Not that we must attempt,'
she cried, 'to get rid of the spite of Aunt Maple, for if we do, alter
so completely the basis of her composition, that she won't know how to
stand upright.'
'But now,' she continued, 'where are you to dine? Aunt Maple is too
fusty to let you sit at our table.'
The stranger earnestly solicited permission to eat alone: Elinor
consented; assigned her a chamber, and gave orders to Mrs Golding, her
own maid, to take care of the traveller.
The repast below stairs was no sooner finished, than Elinor flew back to
summon the Incognita to descend for exhibition. 'I have told them all,'
she said, 'that you are arrived, though I have revealed nothing of your
metamorphosis; and there is a sister of mine, a conceited little thing,
who is just engaged to be married, and who is wild to see you; and it is
a rule, you know, to deny nothing to a bride elect; probably, poor
wretch, because every one knows what a fair way she is in to be soon
denied every thing! That quiz, Harleigh, would not stay; and that
nothingly Ireton has nearly shrugged his shoulders out of joint, at the
very idea of so great a bore as seeing you again. Come, nevertheless; I
die to enjoy Aunt Maple's astonishment at your new phiz.'
The stranger sought to evade this request as a pleasantry; but finding
that it was insisted upon seriously, protested that she had neither
courage nor spirits for being produced as an object of sport.
Elinor now again felt a strong temptation to draw back from her promise;
but while, between anger and generosity, she hung suspended, a message
arrived from Mrs Maple, to order that the woman from France should be
sent to the kitchen.
Elinor, changing the object of her displeasure, now warmly repeated her
resolution to support the stranger; and, hastening to the
dining-parlour, declared to her aunt, and to the party, that the woman
from France should not be treated with indignity; that she was evidently
a person who had been too well brought up to be consigned to domestics;
and that she herself admired, and would abet her spirit, in refusing to
be stared at like a wild beast.