FRIENDS
THE landlady came bouncing out, followed by her husband at a more
dignified gait, to receive the newcomers. Indifferent to their
salutations, Mr. Foxwell stepped quickly from the chaise and offered his
hand to his niece, who scarcely more than touched it in alighting. Caleb
meanwhile ran up to assist the maid, but was forestalled by Mr.
Betteridge, who performed the office with a stately gallantry quite
flustering to the young woman, causing her to blush, and her legs, stiff
with the constraint of the journey, to stumble. Miss Foxwell and the
maid followed the landlady immediately to the entry and up the stairs;
but Mr. Foxwell, as he saw Squire Thornby gazing at him in sullen
defiance, stopped to greet that gentleman in the suavest possible
manner.
“Ah, Mr. Thornby, you here?”
“Yes, sir,” replied the Squire, in the shortest of tones, and as if
determined to show himself proof against the other’s urbanity;
“attending to my own business.”
“An unusual circumstance, I suppose,” said Foxwell, pleasantly, “as you
think it worth mentioning. A dull sort of day.”
“I dare say,” was Thornby’s savage reply.
Not the least altering his amiable tone or half-smiling countenance,
Foxwell continued: “Smooth roads—that is to say, for these remote
parts.”
“Sir,” said Thornby, fiercely, conceiving himself and his county alike
disparaged, “I find these parts quite good enough for me.”
“Indeed, I envy you,” said Foxwell, with a slight plaintiveness. “I wish
from my heart I could say I find them good enough for me—since I am
doomed to live in them.”
That anything good enough for Thomas Thornby could not be good enough
for another man was not a proposition soothing to Thomas Thornby’s soul.
Having no fit retort within present grasp of his tongue, however, and
knowing that even if he had one, his adversary would find a better one
to cap it with, the Squire contented himself with a fiery glare and an
inward curse. Then saying abruptly to his servant, “See that my dinner
is served the moment it’s ready, Bartholomew,” he entered the inn and
tramped up the stairs with great weight of heel.
Foxwell laughed scarce audibly, and followed with a step as light as the
other’s was heavy. Emerging from the stair-head to a passage that
divided the rear from the front rooms, he went into one of the latter,
where he found the table set, and his niece and her maid at the window,
looking down at the street. Across the way were a baker’s shop, a
draper’s, a rival inn with gables and a front of timber and plaster; and
so forth. A butcher’s boy with a tray of meat, a townswoman with a child
by the hand, and two dogs tumbling over each other, were the moving
figures in the scene—until a clatter of horses and a rumble of wheels
were heard, and then the maid exclaimed:
“Lor, mistress, what a handsome coach, to be sure! And see the man
servant on the horse behind. People of great fashion, I’ll warrant. And
they’re coming to this very inn!”
Miss Foxwell watched listlessly till the vehicle—the private coach
already mentioned as approaching the town from the North—had disappeared
beneath the window from which she looked.
Foxwell had been standing at the empty fireplace, heedless of what might
be seen in the street. He now spoke, carelessly:
“You saw the amiable gentleman who stood below, Georgiana, and who
passed this door with so fairy-like a tread as I came up?”
“I didn’t observe him,” replied Georgiana. “Somebody passed very
noisily.”
“The same. I thought you might remember him from the days before you
left home. But, to be sure, you were a child then, and he, too, was
younger. He is one of our neighbours, Squire Thornby.”
“I remember the name, but I don’t think I ever knew the gentleman.”
“If you never did, you lost little; and you’ll count it no great
privilege when you do know him,—unless you have a tenderness for
rustical boobies.”
Georgiana making no answer, the maid said to her in a lowered voice,
“Lor, m’lady, your uncle had needs know _you_ better. _I_ saw the
gentleman, and a ojus-looking man servant he had with him. I never could
abide such bumpkin fellows.” The waiting-woman came from the town in
which her mistress had received her education; she had been promoted to
her present post from that of housemaid to Miss Foxwell’s aunt, and
naturally she brought superior notions with her to the North.
Foxwell, wondering why the dinner had not arrived, went impatiently to
the door. Steps were heard ascending the stairs, accompanied by the
voices of women.
“The party from the private coach, being shown to a room,” whispered the
maid to her mistress.
At that moment Foxwell, in the doorway, called out in pleased surprise,
“Why, as I live—certainly it is! Lady Strange, upon my soul!—and Mrs.
Winter! and Rashleigh!—George Rashleigh, or I’m a saint!”
He seized the hand of her whom he called Lady Strange, and kissed it
with a gallant fervour; treated the other lady in like manner, and then
threw his arms around the gentleman who was third and last of the
newcomers (not counting two servants) in an embrace such as was the
fashion at the time.
“Why, upon my honour, ’tis Bob Foxwell,” said Lady Strange.
She was a fair woman in the thirties, of the opulent style of beauty,
being of good height, and having a fine head, and a soft expression
wherein good nature mingled with worldly nonchalance. She was dressed as
a fashionable person of the town would dress for travelling, and her
presence brought to the north country inn something of the atmosphere of
St. James’s. As far as attire and manner went, this was true of her
companions also. The gentleman, whom Foxwell had saluted as Rashleigh,
was a good-looking man of medium age and size, retaining in face and
carriage the air of youth; he was the elegant town gentleman, free from
Foxwell’s discontent, easy-going and affable without apparently caring
much for anything in the world. The second lady, Mrs. Winter, formed a
contrast to Lady Strange: she was slight, though not angular; her eyes
were gray, and her complexion clear, yet the impression she left was
that of a dark beauty; and she had a cold incisiveness of glance.
“And your devoted slave as ever, Lady Strange,” said Foxwell, kissing
that lady’s hand again. “But in heaven’s name, what are you doing in
this part of the world? Come in, that I may see you better. Come, I am
dining in this room.”
They entered the chamber, regardless of the landlady’s eagerness to show
them to a room for their own use. Mrs. Betteridge would thereupon have
ushered their man servant and lady’s maid to the room she had chosen,
but these menials refused to proceed without orders, and so remained
outside Foxwell’s door, laden with small impedimenta of various sizes
and uses, from pistols to scent-bottles.
“One never knows who may turn up,” said Rashleigh. “I was thinking of
you only yesterday, Bob, and wondering if I should ever see you again.”
“And what ill wind for _you_,” asked Foxwell, “blows this good to
me?—for an ill wind it must be to any civilized person that blows him to
these wilds.”
“I have the honour to be escorting these ladies back to London from Lady
Strange’s country-seat by the Tweed, where they have been for the
recovery of their health.”
“And our good looks,—tell the truth, Cousin Rashleigh,” said Lady
Strange. “My dear Foxwell, we have rusticated till we are near dead of
dulness,—is it not so, Isabella?”
“Dead and buried, Diana,” said Mrs. Winter, in a matter-of-fact tone.
“And to think you are still alive, Foxwell? ’Tis so long since you
disappeared from the town, I swear I had forgot you.”
“Cruel Mrs. Winter!” replied Foxwell. “But ’tis not for you to speak of
being dead and buried. You know not what rustication is. You have
passed, I suppose, a month or so out of the world, and are now going
back to it; while I have been a recluse in this county these two years,
and may be so for the rest of my life. The town, as you say, has forgot
me, and God knows whether I shall ever return. See what poverty brings
one to, and take warning.”
The reader is doubtless aware that country-house life did not occupy in
the eighteenth century the place it does to-day in the routine of the
“smart” world. People of fashion had their town houses and their
country-seats then, of course; but many such were wont to pursue more
exclusively the one life or the other,—to be town mice who sometimes
went to the country, or country mice who sometimes came up to town.
Those who preferred the gaiety of the town were more prone to count that
time lost which they had to pass out of it, and to look down upon those
who spent most of their days in the country. When the town mice left
London by choice, it was to take the waters at Bath, or to make the
“grand tour” of the Continent. Week-end house-parties had not come in,
there were no seaside resorts, and the rich did not hie themselves in
August to the moors of Scotland. “Beyond Hyde Park all is desert,” said
the fop in the play; and Robert Foxwell and his friends were so far of
_Sir Fopling’s_ mind; they valued wit, and used “fox-hunter” as a name
of scorn. No wonder, then, that Foxwell declared himself miserable in
his exile.
“’Tis for your sins, Bob,” said Lady Strange. “You were a monstrously
wicked man in London, as I remember.”
Mrs. Betteridge now contrived to insinuate herself into the notice of
Rashleigh, addressing him as “my lord,” and begging to know the wishes
of himself and their ladyships upon the matter of dinner and rooms.
He turned to Lady Strange. “What say you, Cousin Di? I suppose we shall
be driving on as soon as we have dined—”
“You shall dine with me,” broke in Foxwell. “I’ll not lose sight of your
faces. I don’t meet a civilized being once in an age.—You will set more
places, landlady: my friends will dine here.” Without waiting for their
assent, he motioned the landlady out to the passage, and there gave
further orders.
The attention of the three Londoners now fell upon the two figures at
the window. Miss Foxwell, quite ignored by her uncle since the arrival
of his friends, had remained where she was, regarding the newcomers with
a side glance in which there was no great joy at their advent. Now that
she saw their looks directed to her, she turned her face again toward
the street, with a slight blush at the scrutiny.
“What a pretty girl it is at the window,” whispered Lady Strange to her
companions.
“And what is she doing here with Foxwell?” said Mrs. Winter, eying the
young lady critically.
“The dog!—he is to be envied,” said Rashleigh.
Resentfully conscious of the cool gaze upon her, Miss Foxwell whispered
to her maid, “How rudely those people stare at us!”
“They must be very great quality,” replied the maid, reverentially.
“Their waiting-gentleman looks the height of fashion,—but their woman
isn’t no great sights.” Miss Foxwell’s maid had been quick to inspect
the attendants of the travellers, and the lackey had already put himself
on ogling terms with her, a proceeding which the other maid regarded
superciliously.
As soon as Foxwell returned to his friends, Rashleigh called him to
account in an undertone: “I say, Foxwell, if this county produces such
flowers as that at the window, ’tis not so barren a wilderness.”
“That?” said Foxwell, carelessly. “Oh, that’s my niece, Miss Foxwell.
Come here, Georgiana.”
She obeyed without haste, and was introduced. She was not in the mood to
affect for civility’s sake a cordiality she did not feel, nor was she
conciliated by the easy graciousness of Lady Strange, the sharp,
momentary smile of Mrs. Winter, or the unrestrained admiration of Mr.
Rashleigh.
“You are a sweet child,” said Lady Strange, speaking in a sweet tone
herself, “to have such a naughty uncle.”
“I dare say my uncle is not much worse than other people,” said
Georgiana, coolly, with the intention, not of defending her relation,
but of being pert.
“She means you, Cousin Rashleigh,” said Lady Strange, smiling gaily.
“She sees your character in your face.—But, my dear, you can’t have
known much of your uncle in London. I’ll tell you some tales!”
Instead of carrying out her threat immediately, however, the lady turned
her attention to her maid, bidding her put down her burdens and go and
dine in the kitchen.
The man servant and Georgiana’s attendant being dismissed for a like
purpose, Foxwell and Rashleigh, to give the ladies that brief privacy
from masculine eyes which a toilet-marring journey makes welcome, went
down-stairs and paced the yard till dinner was ready.
“So this is the place of your retreat, Bob,” said Rashleigh; “or
hereabouts, I mean.”
“An old house and some beggarly acres eight miles from here. ’Tis my
last ditch. Perhaps I was lucky in having that to fall back into.
Fortune was set upon driving me from the field in London.”
“But you might still have contrived to live there one way or another.
Men do, who have lost their all.”
“By playing the parasite?—begging of people whom I scorn?—laughing at
great men’s stupid jests, or enslaving myself to great ladies’ caprices?
Not I. Neither could I play the common rook where I had once lived the
gentleman. Nor had I any fancy for the debtors’ prison. I might have
turned highwayman, but I am too old and indolent, and the risk is too
great. No; for a gentleman who had made the figure I had, and who could
no more keep up that figure,—curse the cards and the tables, the
mercenary women and the swindling tradesmen!—there was nothing but
self-banishment to the ancestral fields.”
“’Tis a wonder you’ve kept _them_. I should have thought, from your
habits of old, you’d have converted the last inch into the ready by this
time.”
“They are beyond my power to convert. The estate is mine only in part. I
share the possession with that young person you saw up-stairs.”
“The pretty niece?”
Foxwell shrugged his shoulders. “She may be pretty—I really haven’t
concerned myself enough to study her looks. I shall doubtless find her
an intolerable drag upon me. Notwithstanding our relationship, we are
new acquaintances. She is my brother’s orphan—the only child. She was
born at Foxwell Court, the place of my retirement, and she spent her
childhood there. Both her parents died when she was very young; my
father survived them a year, and upon his death she was sent to be
reared by her mother’s elder sister. During all this time,—from before
my brother’s marriage till after this girl left Foxwell Court,—I never
came near the place. Most of the time, indeed, I was abroad, but even
when in England I preferred the South,—and my father perhaps was not
sorry for that, for, to tell the truth, I had never agreed with him and
my brother, and, as the old gentleman loved his peace, he could spare my
presence. After his death and the departure of the girl, Foxwell Court
was shut up for a long while,—that is to say, till I sought refuge there
two years ago. My father left the place to me and my niece, on such
terms that it cannot be divided till she marries, nor my share sold
during my lifetime.”
“You speak of it as a few beggarly acres. Had he nothing else to leave?”
“Not a farthing. Ours was a family of decayed fortune. You are wondering
how in that case I contrived to make the appearance I did in town and on
the Continent. By the bounty of my Uncle Richard—you remember him, of
course: the attorney who made a fortune in speculation. He looked upon
life much as I did, and not with the puritanical eyes of my father and
brother; so he provided for me while he lived, and left me half his
shares when he died,—to prove, I make no doubt, that virtue does not
always pay best. When I had melted his shares into pleasure, I resorted,
as you know, to the cards, and the tables in Covent Gardens, thinking
they might repay in my necessity what I had lost by them in my
prosperity. ’Twas a fool’s hope! For a roof to cover my head, I came
home to Foxwell Court. I have at least enjoyed liberty there. But now
that this niece has finished her education, and comes home in accordance
with my father’s plans, responsibility begins. I was never made to play
the guardian, George. The affectionate, solicitous, didactic uncle is no
part for me. And especially to a minx who has been taught to look upon
the frivolities of the gay world with virtuous horror. We have known
each other but four days, and we hate each other already. She hadn’t
been in my society an hour till I perceived righteous disapproval
written upon her face.”
“Oh, I think you mistake the girl altogether. From the glimpse I had of
her, brief as it was, I could swear she is no prude. There is, indeed, a
delicacy and sensibility in her face, but nothing the least
sanctimonious. She seems to me a young lady of spirit, a little annoyed
about something. No doubt you expected to find such a girl as you
describe, and you behaved accordingly: she was quick to take offence,
and now you mistake her natural resentment for self-righteous rebuke.”
“I know not what my expectations had to do with the matter, but I can
see plainly enough her dislike. And, damme, George, can you imagine what
a restraint upon my conduct the presence of a young unmarried female
will be?”
“Then you have only to get her married off your hands as soon as may
be,” said Rashleigh.
“Her marriage means the division of our estate, and my share then will
not suffice to feed a horse upon. But I won’t balk at that, for the sake
of freedom, if you’ll find me a man willing to take her with the little
she’ll have.”
“I grant, gentlemen of any fashion want a good settlement with their
wives, in this age. But consider her beauty:—that is an item on account
of which I, for one, would vastly abate my demands—if I were fool enough
to marry at all.”
“She wouldn’t have you, fool or no fool. I can see she will be as
fastidious when it comes to mating as if she had ten thousand a year. I
fear this region will not furnish a man to her liking—I can commend her
good taste in that. So heaven knows when I may be rid of her! But enough
of the chit: I’m saddled with her, and there’s an end. You must do
something for me, George,—you and Lady Strange and her friend.”
“Speaking for myself, I’m entirely at your service.”
“You must make me a visit at Foxwell Court,—now. Yes, you must. Your
time is your own, I am sure. It matters not whether you arrive in town
this month or the next. While I have you, I will hold you. When we have
dined, you will drive on with me, not to London, but to Foxwell Court.
You’ll give me a week—nay, a fortnight, at least—of civilized company,
for humanity’s sake.”
“Why,” said Rashleigh, “’tis rather a change of plan—though I see
nothing against it, for my part. If the ladies are willing—”
“They _must_ be willing,” cried Foxwell. “You must persuade them:—if
naught else will do, you must be taken ill and be unable to go on to
London. Egad, I’ll poison you all with the bad wine they keep here, ere
I let you escape me!”
“Nay, let me try persuasion first. I can commend you to them as a host—I
know of old that you’ll stop at nothing that has promise of amusement in
it.”
“I’ll stop at nothing to amuse them as my guests—you may warrant that.
As for my house, you will not find it entirely uninhabitable. Some of
the company I have kept there of late, though it would amuse you well
enough, would scarce be acceptable to my Lady Strange; but fortunately,
in view of my niece’s home-coming, I have issued strict decrees of
banishment,—so we shall find no rustic rake-hells, drinking parsons, or
roaring trollops on the premises. ’Tis in such company I have found
solace in my exile—and I’ll do them the justice to say, they are better
lovers of wit and real mirth than the booby fox-chasing, dog-mongering,
horse-talking, punch-guzzling gentry and their simpering, formal
womankind.”
“You are beginning to practise self-denial, Bob,—driving your boon
companions away,” said Rashleigh, smiling.
“As a gentleman I could not do otherwise, of course. Since Miss must
needs come, they must go. I must learn to seek my amusements, such as
they are, out of the house. But I sha’n’t think of that, or of anything
to come, while you and these ladies are with me. You see I have set my
heart on having you.”
They continued in this strain, walking to and fro between the street end
of the passage and the rear of the inn yard, in which different vehicles
were standing idle, until Caleb appeared with the announcement that
dinner for the whole party was ready. Ascending, they found the ladies
on terms of cool politeness as between Georgiana and the other two.
During the course of the meal, it could be seen that Mrs. Winter had
incurred the greater part of that disfavour which the girl evidently
disdained to conceal. Good cause for this could be found, not only in
the steeliness of nature suggested by the London lady’s voice and look,
but by the great freedom of topic and remark she allowed herself. Time
and again was a hot blush called to Georgiana’s cheek, and she was fain
to fix her eyes upon her plate in indignation at the disregard of her
modesty. That was an age when many young ladies were accustomed to
liberties of speech from their elders in their presence—liberties
nowadays incredible. How they contrived to ignore them while they were
necessarily conscious of them, as it is certain they did, calls for
admiration. Nothing that we know of that most delightful of young women,
Sophia Western, makes us esteem and love her more than the way in which
she endured the coarse talk of her father, never receiving from it the
slightest taint herself, never seeming to notice the outrageous portions
of it. But it was from men only, or chiefly, that tender ears were used
to hearing conversation so free. Had she been subjected to it by one of
her own sex, even Sophia Western would have made the protest of a blush.
Not that Mrs. Winter’s anecdotes and observations were of the crude
plainness of Squire Western’s language. The lady’s tongue was a rapier,
not a bludgeon, and there would have been little if anything to reprove
in the use she made of it on the present occasion, had Georgiana been
absent or ten years older. As it was, besides the offence to her modesty
itself, Georgiana felt that she was being treated with intentional lack
of consideration. She thought the lady guilty of spite as well as
license: she noted, too, and placed to her account against him, the lack
of any protest on her uncle’s part on behalf of her innocence. He
laughed and was merry, in his easy, fine-gentlemanly way; and the young
lady, in her sense of careless outrage, could scarce restrain the tears
of injury, loneliness, and revolt.
It was not till the dinner was nearly over, and a comfortable
disinclination to resume their travels had been created in his friends,
that Foxwell put his invitation before the ladies. At first they
declared such a visit impossible, but as they could mention no respect
wherein the impossibility lay, and as Foxwell knew how to mingle
flattery with appeals to their compassion, they soon yielded.
Poor Georgiana! It may be imagined how far she shared the joy of her
uncle at the prospect of playing hostess to these people, though, as he
had called upon her openly to second his invitation, she had
perfunctorily done so. This matter settled, the rest of the company
became merrier, and Georgiana more miserable, than ever.
Meanwhile, though she knew it not, nor could have dreamt how deeply it
would affect her life, the stage-coach had arrived and left a passenger;
and the two horsemen from the North, guided by the postboy, were even
now riding into the passage beneath the room in which she sat.
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