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- Author: William Makepeace Thackeray
Book online «The Virginians by William Makepeace Thackeray (kiss me liar novel english txt) 📖». Author William Makepeace Thackeray
“Let Fanny take an English gentleman, Countess, not an American. With such a name and such a mother to help her, and with all her good looks and accomplishments, sure, she can't fail of finding a man worthy of her. But from what I know about the daughters of this house, and what I imagine about our young cousin, I am certain that no happy match could be made between them.”
“What does my aunt know about me?” asked Lady Fanny, turning very red.
“Only your temper, my dear. You don't suppose that I believe all the tittle-tattle and scandal which one cannot help hearing in town? But the temper and early education are sufficient. Only fancy one of you condemned to leave St. James's and the Mall, and live in a plantation surrounded by savages! You would die of ennui, or worry your husband's life out with your ill-humour. You are born, ladies, to ornament courts—not wigwams. Let this lad go back to his wilderness with a wife who is suited to him.”
The other two ladies declared in a breath that, for their parts, they desired no better, and, after a few more words, went on their way, while Madame de Bernstein, lifting up her tapestried door, retired into her own chamber. She saw all the scheme now; she admired the ways of women, calling a score of little circumstances back to mind. She wondered at her own blindness during the last few days, and that she should not have perceived the rise and progress of this queer little intrigue. How far had it gone? was now the question. Was Harry's passion of the serious and tragical sort, or a mere fire of straw which a day or two would burn out? How deeply was he committed? She dreaded the strength of Harry's passion, and the weakness of Maria's. A woman of her age is so desperate, Madame Bernstein may have thought, that she will make any efforts to secure a lover. Scandal, bah! She will retire and be a princess in Virginia, and leave the folks in England to talk as much scandal as they choose.
Is there always, then, one thing which women do not tell to one another, and about which they agree to deceive each other? Does the concealment arise from deceit or modesty? A man, as soon as he feels an inclination for one of the other sex, seeks for a friend of his own to whom he may impart the delightful intelligence. A woman (with more or less skill) buries her secret away from her kind. For days and weeks past, had not this old Maria made fools of the whole house,—Maria, the butt of the family?
I forbear to go into too curious inquiries regarding the Lady Maria's antecedents. I have my own opinion about Madame Bernstein's. A hundred years ago people of the great world were not so straitlaced as they are now, when everybody is good, pure, moral, modest; when there is no skeleton in anybody's closet; when there is no scheming; no slurring over old stories; when no girl tries to sell herself for wealth, and no mother abets her. Suppose my Lady Maria tries to make her little game, wherein is her ladyship's great eccentricity?
On these points no doubt the Baroness de Bernstein thought, as she communed with herself in her private apartment.
CHAPTER XVIII. An Old Story
As my Lady Castlewood and her son and daughter passed through one door of the saloon where they had all been seated, my Lord Castlewood departed by another issue; and then the demure eyes looked up from the tambour-frame on which they had persisted hitherto in examining the innocent violets and jonquils. The eyes looked up at Harry Warrington, who stood at an ancestral portrait under the great fireplace. He had gathered a great heap of blushes (those flowers which bloom so rarely after gentlefolks' springtime), and with them ornamented his honest countenance, his cheeks, his forehead, nay, his youthful ears.
“Why did you refuse to go with our aunt, cousin?” asked the lady of the tambour frame.
“Because your ladyship bade me stay,” answered the lad.
“I bid you stay! La! child! What one says in fun, you take in earnest! Are all you Virginian gentlemen so obsequious as to fancy every idle word a lady says is a command? Virginia must be a pleasant country for our sex if it be so!”
“You said—when—when we walked in the terrace two nights since,—O heaven!” cried Harry, with a voice trembling with emotion.
“Ah, that sweet night, cousin!” cries the Tambour-frame.
“Whe—whe—when you gave me this rose from your own neck,”—roared out Harry, pulling suddenly a crumpled and decayed vegetable from his waistcoat—“which I will never part with—with, no, by heavens, whilst this heart continues to beat! You said, 'Harry, if your aunt asks you to go away, you will go, and if you go, you will forget me.'—Didn't you say so?”
“All men forget!” said the Virgin, with a sigh.
“In this cold selfish country they may, cousin, not in ours,” continues Harry, yet in the same state of exaltation—“I had rather have lost an arm almost than refused the old lady. I tell you it went to my heart to say no to her, and she so kind to me, and who had been the means of introducing me to—to—O heaven!”
(Here a kick to an intervening spaniel, which flies yelping from before the fire, and a rapid advance on the tambour-frame.) “Look here, cousin! If you were to bid me jump out of yonder window, I should do it; or murder, I should do it.”
“La! but you need not squeeze one's hand so, you silly child!” remarks Maria.
“I can't help it—we are so in the south. Where my heart is, I can't help speaking my mind out, cousin—and you know where that heart is! Ever since that evening—that—O heaven! I tell you I have hardly slept since—I want to do something—to distinguish myself—to be ever so great. I wish there was giants, Maria, as I have read of in—in books, that I could go and fight 'em. I wish you was in distress, that I might help you, somehow. I wish you wanted my blood, that I might spend every drop of it for you. And when you told me not to go with Madame Bernstein...”
“I tell thee, child? never.”
“I thought you told me. You said you knew I preferred my aunt to my cousin, and I said then what I say now, 'Incomparable Maria! I prefer thee to all the women in the world and all the angels in Paradise—and I would go anywhere, were it to dungeons, if you ordered me!' And do you think I would not stay anywhere, when you only desired that I should be near you?” he added, after a moment's pause.
“Men always talk in that way—that is,—that is, I have heard so,” said the spinster, correcting herself; “for what should a country-bred woman know about you creatures? When you are near us, they
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