Complete Novels of Maria Edgeworth

by Maria Edgeworth

  No — Lady Jane was firm to what she believed to be for Caroline’s interest, and she refused to take her into that set, and therefore declined the honour of chaperoning her ladyship to Lady Angelica Headingham’s.

  “Oh! my dear Lady Jane, you couldn’t, you wouldn’t be so cruel! When I am dying with impatience to see my cousin make herself ridiculous, as I hear she does more and more every day with that Baron Wilhelmberg — Wilhelmberg, I said, not Altenberg — Miss Caroline Percy need not have turned her head so quickly. Lady Angelica’s man is a German, and yours was a Pole, or Prussian, was not he? — Do you know, the ugliest man I ever saw in my life, and the handsomest, were both Poles — but they are all well-bred.”

  “But about Lady Angelica’s German baron?” interrupted Lady Jane.

  “Yes, what sort of a person is he?” said Caroline.

  “As unlike your Count Altenberg as possible — an oddish looking genius — oldish, too — like one’s idea of an alchymist, or a professor, or a conjuror — like any thing rather than a man of fashion; but, nevertheless, since he has got into fashion, the ladies have all found out that he is very like a Roman emperor — and so he is — like any head on an old coin.”

  “But how comes there to be such a value set on this head? — How came he into fashion?” said Lady Jane.

  “Is it possible you don’t know? Oh! it was when you were out of the world he first made the great noise — by dreaming — yes, dreaming — dreaming himself, and making every body else dream as he pleases; he sported last season a new theory of dreaming — joins practice to theory, too — very extraordinary — interprets all your dreams to your satisfaction, they say — and, quite on philosophical principles, can make you dream whatever he pleases. True, upon my veracity.”

  “Did your ladyship ever try his skill?” said Lady Jane.

  “Not I; for the duchess would not hear of him — but I long the more to know what he could make me dream. He certainly is very clever, for he was asked last winter everywhere. All the world ran mad — Lady Spilsbury, and my wise cousin, I understand, came to pulling wigs for him. Angelica conquered at last; you know Angelica was always a little bit of a coquette — not a little bit neither. At first, to be sure, she thought no more of love for the German emperor than I do this minute; but he knew how to coquet also — Who would have thought it? — So there were notes, and verses, and dreams, and interpretations, and I can’t tell you what. But, so far, the man is no charlatan — he has made Lady Angelica dream the very dream he chose — the strangest, too, imaginable — that she is in love with him. And the interpretation is, that she will take him ‘for better for worse.’”

  “That is your own interpretation, is not it, Lady Frances?” said Caroline.

  “Is it possible there is any truth in it?” said Lady Jane.

  “All true, positively, I hear. And of all things, I should like to see Lady Angelica and the baron face to face — tête-à-tête — or profile by profile, in the true Roman emperor and empress medal style.”

  “So should I, I confess,” said Lady Jane, smiling.

  “The best or the worst of it is,” continued Lady Frances, “that, after all, this baron bold is, I’ve a notion, no better than an adventurer: for I heard a little bird sing, that a certain ambassador hinted confidentially, that the Baron de Wilhelmberg would find it difficult to prove his sixteen quarterings. But now, upon both your honours, promise me you’ll never mention this — never give the least confidential hint of it to man, woman, or child; because it might get round, spoil our sport, and never might I have the dear delight of drawing the caricature.”

  “Now your ladyship is not serious, I am sure,” said Caroline.

  “Never more serious — never so serious in my life; and, I assure you,” cried Lady Frances, speaking very earnestly and anxiously, “if you give the least hint, I will never forgive you while I live; for I have set my heart on doing the caricature.”

  “Impossible that, for the mere pleasure of drawing a caricature, you would let your own cousin expose herself with an adventurer!” said Caroline.

  “La! Lady Angelica is only my cousin a hundred removes. I can’t help her being ridiculous: every body, I dare say, has ridiculous cousins — and laugh one must. If one were forbidden to laugh at one’s relatives, it would be sad indeed for those who have extensive connexions. Well, Lady Jane, I am glad to see that you don’t pique yourself on being too good to laugh: so I may depend on you. Our party for Lady Angelica’s is fixed for Monday.”

  No — Lady Jane had, it is certain, some curiosity and some desire to laugh at her neighbour’s expense. So far, Lady Frances had, with address, touched her foible for her purpose; but Lady Jane’s affection for Caroline strengthened her against the temptation. She was persuaded that it would be a disadvantage to her to go to this conversazione. She would not upon any account have Miss Percy be seen in the blue-stocking set at present — she had her reasons. To this resolution her ladyship adhered, though Lady Frances Arlington, pertinacious to accomplish any purpose she took into her fancy, returned morning after morning to the charge. Sometimes she would come with intelligence from her fetcher and carrier of news, as she called him, Captain Nuttall.

  One day, with a very dejected countenance, her ladyship came in saying, “It’s off — it’s all off! Nuttall thinks it will never be a match.”

  The next day, in high spirits, she brought word, “It’s on — it’s on again! Nuttall thinks it will certainly be a match — and Angelica is more delightfully ridiculous than ever! Now, my dear Lady Jane, Tuesday? — next week? — the week afterwards? In short, my dearest Lady Jane, once for all, will you ever take me to her conversazione?”

  “Never, my dear Lady Frances, till Miss Caroline Percy is married,” said Lady Jane: “I have my own reasons.”

  “Then I wish Miss Caroline Percy were to be married to-morrow — I have my own reasons. But, after all, tell me, is there any, the least chance of Miss Percy’s being married?”

  “Not the least chance,” said Caroline.

  “That is her own fault,” said Lady Jane, looking mortified and displeased.

  “That cannot be said of me, there’s one comfort,” cried Lady Frances. “If I’m not married, ’tis not my fault; but my papa’s, who, to make an eldest son, left me only a poor 5000l. portion. What a shame to rob daughters for sons, as the grandees do! I wish it had pleased Heaven to have made me the daughter of an honest merchant, who never thinks of this impertinence: then with my plum or plums, I might have chosen the first spend-thrift lord in the land, or, may be, I might have been blessed with an offer from that paragon of perfection, Lord William —— . Do you know what made him such a paragon of perfection? His elder brother’s falling sick, and being like to die. Now, if the brother should recover, adieu to my Lord William’s perfections.”

  “Not in the opinion of all,” said Lady Jane. “Lord William was a favourite of mine, and I saw his merit long ago, and shall see it, whether his elder brother die or recover.”

  “At all events,” continued Lady Frances, “he will be a paragon, you will see, only till he is married, and then —

  ‘How shall I your true love know

  From any other man?’

  “By-the-bye, the other day, Lord William, in flying from the chase of matrons, in his fright (he always looks like a frightened hare, poor creature!) took refuge between you two ladies. Seriously, Lady Jane, do you know I think you manage vastly well for your protégée — you are not so broad as Mrs. Falconer.”

  “Broad! I beg your ladyship’s pardon for repeating your word,” cried Lady Jane, looking quite angry, and feeling too angry to parry, as she usually did, with wit: “I really don’t understand your ladyship.”

  “Then I must wish your ladyship a good morning, for I’ve no time or talents for explanation,” said Lady Frances, running off, delighted to have produced a sensation.

  Lady Jane rang for her carriage, and made no observations on what had passed. B
ut in the evening she declared that she would not take Lady Frances Arlington out with her any more, that her ladyship’s spirits were too much for her. “Besides, my dear Caroline, when she is with you, I never hear you speak a word — you leave it entirely to her ladyship. After all, she is, if you observe, a perfectly selfish creature.”

  Lady Jane recollected various instances of this.

  “She merely makes a tool of me — my carriage, my servants, my time, myself, always to be at her service, whenever the aunt-duchess cannot, or will not, do her ladyship’s behests. For the slightest errand she could devise, she would send me to the antipodes; bid me fetch her a toothpick from the farthest inch of the city. Well! I could pardon all the trouble she gives for her fancies, if she would take any trouble for others in return. No — ask her to do the least thing for you, and she tells you, she’d be very glad, but she does not know how; or, she would do it this minute, but that she has not time; or, she would have remembered it certainly, but that she forgot it.”

  Caroline admitted that Lady Frances was thoughtless and giddy, but she hoped not incurably selfish, as Lady Jane now seemed to suppose.

  “Pardon me, she is incurably selfish. Her childishness made me excuse her for a great while: I fancied she was so giddy that she could not remember any thing; but I find she never forgets any thing on which she has set her own foolish head. Giddy! I can’t bear people who are too giddy to think of any body but themselves.”

  Caroline endeavoured to excuse her ladyship, by saying that, by all accounts, she had been educated in a way that must make her selfish. “Idolized, and spoiled, I think you told me she was?”

  “True, very likely; let her mother, or her grandmother, settle that account — I am not to blame, and I will not suffer for it. You know, if we entered like your father into the question of education, we might go back to Adam and Eve, and find nobody to blame but them. In the mean time, I will not take Lady Frances Arlington out with me any more — on this point I am determined; for, suppose I forgave her selfishness and childishness, and all that, why should I be subject to her impertinence? She has been suffered to say whatever comes into her head, and to think it wit. Now, as far as I am concerned, I will teach her better.”

  Caroline, who always saw the best side of characters, pleaded her freedom from art and dissimulation.

  “My dear Caroline, she is not half so free from dissimulation as you are from envy and jealousy. She is always in your way, and you never see it. I can’t bear to hear you defend her, when I know she would and does sacrifice you at any time and at all times to her own amusement. But she shall not stand in your light — for you are a generous, unsuspicious creature. Lady Frances shall never go out with me again — and I have just thought of an excellent way of settling that matter. I’ll change my coach for a vis-à-vis, which will carry only two.”

  This Lady Jane, quick and decided, immediately accomplished; she adhered to her resolution, and never did take Lady Frances Arlington out with her more.

  Returning from a party this evening — a party where they met Lord William, who had sat beside Caroline at supper — Lady Jane began to reproach her with having been unusually reserved and silent.

  Caroline said she was not conscious of this.

  “I hope and trust I am not too broad,” continued Lady Jane, with a very proud and proper look; “but I own, I think there is as much indelicacy in a young lady’s hanging back too much as in her coming too forward. And gentlemen are apt to over-rate their consequence as much, if they find you are afraid to speak to them, as if you were to talk — like Miss Falconer herself.”

  Caroline assented fully to the truth of this remark; assured Lady Jane that she had not intentionally hung back or been reserved; that she had no affectation of this sort. In a word, she promised to exert herself more in conversation, since Lady Jane desired it.

  “I do wish it, my dear: you don’t get on — there’s no getting you on. You certainly do not talk enough to gentlemen when they sit beside you. It will be observed.”

  “Then, ma’am, I hope it will be observed too,” said Caroline, smiling, “that the gentlemen do not talk to me.”

  “No matter — you should find something to say to them — you have plenty of gold, but no ready change about you. Now, as Lord Chesterfield tells us, you know, that will never do.”

  Caroline was perfectly sensible of this — she knew she was deficient in the sort of conversation of the moment, requisite for fine company and public places.

  “But when I have nothing to say, is not it better for me to say nothing, ma’am?”

  “No, my dear — half the world are in that predicament; but would it mend our condition to reduce our parties to quakers’ silent meetings? My dear, you must condescend to talk, without saying any thing — and you must bear to hear and say the same words a hundred times over; and another thing, my dear Caroline — I wish you could cure yourself of looking fatigued. You will never be thought agreeable, unless you can endure, without showing that you are tired, the most stupid people extant—”

  Caroline smiled, and said she recollected her father’s telling her that “the Prince de Ligne, the most agreeable man of his day, declared that his secret depended, not on his wit or talents for conversation, but on his power of concealing the ennui he felt in stupid company.”

  “Well, my dear, I tell you so, as well as the Prince de Ligne, and let me see that you benefit by it to-morrow.”

  The next night they went to a large party at a very fine lady’s. It was dull, but Caroline did her best to look happy, and exerted herself to talk to please Lady Jane, who, from her card-table, from time to time, looked at her, nodded and smiled. When they got into their carriage, Lady Jane, before she had well drawn up the glass, began to praise her for her performance this evening. “Really, my dear, you got on very well to-night; and I hear Miss Caroline Percy is very agreeable. And, shall I tell you who told me so? — No; that would make you too vain. But I’ll leave you to sleep upon what has been said — to-morrow you shall hear more.”

  The next morning, Caroline had stolen away from visitors, and quietly in her own room was endeavouring to proceed in her copy of the miniature for Mr. Gresham, when Lady Jane came into her apartment, with a letter and its cover in her hand. “A letter in which you, Caroline, are deeply concerned.”

  A sudden hope darted across Caroline’s imagination and illuminated her countenance. As suddenly it vanished, when she saw on the cover of the letter, no foreign post-mark, no foreign hand — but a hand unknown to her.

  “Deeply concerned! How can I — how — how am I concerned in this, ma’am?” she asked — with difficulty commanding her voice to articulate the words.

  “Only a proposal for you, my dear,” said Lady Jane, smiling: “not a proposal for which you need blush, as you’ll see if you’ll read.”

  But observing that Caroline was not at this moment capable of reading, without seeming to notice the tremor of her hand, and that she was holding the letter upside down before her eyes, Lady Jane, with kind politeness, passed on to the picture at which her young friend had been at work, and stooping to examine the miniature with her glass, made some observations on the painting, and gave Caroline time to recover. Nor did her ladyship look up till Caroline exclaimed, “John Clay! — English Clay!”

  “Yes — Clay, of Clay-hall, as Mrs. Falconer would say. You see, my love, I told you truly, it was no blushing matter. I am sorry I startled you by my abruptness. Surprises are generally ill-judged — and always ill-bred. Acquit me, I beseech you, of all but thoughtlessness,” said Lady Jane, sitting down by Caroline, and kindly taking her hand: “I hope you know I am not Mrs. Falconer.”

  “I do, indeed,” said Caroline, pressing her hand: “I feel all your kindness, all your politeness.”

  “Of course, I knew that a proposal from Clay, of Clay-hall, would be to you — just what it is to me,” said Lady Jane. “I hope you cannot apprehend that, for the sake of his seven or ten thou
sand, whatever he has per annum, I should press such a match upon you, Caroline? No, no, you are worth something much better.”

  “Thank you, my dear Lady Jane,” cried Caroline, embracing her with warm gratitude.

  “Why, child, you could not think me so — merely mercenary. No; touch me upon family, or fashion — any of my aristocratic prejudices as your father calls them — and I might, perhaps, be a little peremptory. But John Clay is a man just risen from the ranks, lately promoted from being a manufacturer’s son, to be a subaltern in good company, looking to rise another step by purchase: no, no — a Percy could not accept such an offer — no loss of fortune could justify such a mésalliance. Such was my first feeling, and I am sure yours, when you read at the bottom of this awkwardly folded epistle, ‘Your ladyship’s most devoted, &c. John Clay’—”

  “I believe I had no feeling, but pure surprise,” said Caroline. “I scarcely think Mr. Clay can be in earnest — for, to the best of my recollection, he never spoke five words to me in his life!”

  “English Clay, my dear. Has not he said every thing in one word? — I should have been a little surprised, but that I have been seeing this good while the dessous des cartes. Don’t flatter yourself that love for you offers Clay-hall — no; but hatred to Mrs. and Miss Falconer. There have been quarrels upon quarrels, and poor Lady Trant in the middle of them, unable to get out — and John Clay swearing he is not to be taken in — and Miss Falconer buffeting Lady Trant with the willow he left on her brows — and Mrs. Falconer smiling through the whole, and keeping the secret, which every body knows: in short, my dear, ’tis not worth explaining to you — but John Clay certainly hopes to complete the mortification of the Falconers by giving himself to you. Besides, you are in fashion. Too much has been said about him — I’m tired of him. Write your answer, my dear — or I’m to write, am I? Well, give me some gilt paper — let us do the thing properly.” Properly the thing was done — the letter folded, not awkwardly, was sealed and sent, Caroline delighted with Lady Jane, and Lady Jane delighted with herself.