Collected Works of Frances Trollope

by Frances Milton Trollope

  “Perhaps she will not,” said Agnes, blushing again for saying what she did not think; “but, at any rate, try the experiment, dearest Mary.... To know that you have thought of me will be comfort inexpressible.”

  “And suppose Mr. Frederick Stephenson were to ramble back to Clifton, Agnes, ... and suppose he were to ask me which way you are gone ... may I tell him?”

  “He never will ask you, Mary....”

  “But an’ if he should?” persisted Miss Peters.

  “Then tell him that it would be a great deal more kind and amiable if he never again talked about me to any one.”

  Arrived at Cheltenham, Mrs. Barnaby set about the business of finding a domicile with much more confidence and savoir faire than heretofore. A very few inquiries made her decide upon choosing to place herself at a boarding-house; and though the price rather startled her, she not only selected the dearest, but indulged in the expensive luxury of a handsome private sitting-room.

  “I know what I am about,” thought she; “faint heart never won fair lady, and sparing hand never won gay gentleman.”

  It was upon the same principle that, within three days after her arrival, she had found a tiger, and got his dress (resplendent with buttons from top to toe) sent home to her private apartments, and likewise that she had determined to enter her name as a subscriber at the pump-room.

  The day after all this was completed, was the first upon which she accounted her Cheltenham existence to begin; and having informed herself of the proper hours and fitting costume for each of the various stated times of appearing at the different points of re-union, she desired Agnes carefully to brush the dust from her immortal black crape bonnet, and with her own features sheltered by paille de fantaisie, straw-coloured ribbons, and Brussels lace, she set forth, leaning on the arm of her niece, and followed by her tiger and parasol, to take her first draught at the spring, at eight o’clock in the morning.

  Her spirits rose as she approached the fount on perceiving the throng of laughing, gay, and gossiping invalids that bon ton and bile had brought together; and when she held out her hand to receive the glass, she had more the air of a full-grown Bacchante, celebrating the rites of Bacchus, than a votary at the shrine of Hygeia. But no sooner had the health-restoring but nauseous beverage touched her lips, or rather her palate, than, making a horrible grimace, she set down the glass on the marble slab, and pushed it from her with very visible symptoms of disgust. A moment’s reflection made her turn her head to see if Agnes was looking at her; ... but no ... Agnes indeed stood at no great distance; but her whole attention seemed captivated by a tall, elegant-looking woman, who, together with an old lady leaning on her arm, appeared like herself to be occupied as spectators of the water-drinking throng.

  Satisfied that her strong distaste for the unsavoury draught had not been perceived, Mrs. Barnaby backed out of the crowd, saying, as she took the arm of her niece in her way, “This water must be a very fine medicine, I am sure, for those who want it; but I don’t think I shall venture upon any more of it till I have taken medical advice ... it is certainly very powerful, and I think it might do you a vast deal of good, Agnes.”

  These words being spoken in the widow’s audible tone, which she always rather desired than not should make her presence known at some distance ... excepting, indeed, when she was making love ... were very distinctly heard by the ladies above mentioned; and the elder of them, having witnessed Mrs. Barnaby’s look of disgust as she sat down her unemptied glass, laughed covertly and quietly, but with much merriment, saying, though rather to herself than her companion, “Good!... very good, indeed!... This will prove an acquisition.”

  A turn or two up and down the noble walk upon which the pump-room opens was rendered very delightful to the widow by shewing her that even at that early hour many dashing-looking, lace-frocked men, moustached and whiskered “to the top of her bent,” might be met sauntering there; and having enjoyed this till her watch told her the boarding-house breakfast hour was arrived, she turned from the fascinating promenade in excellent spirits, and after a few minutes passed at the mirror in arranging her cap and her curls, and refreshing her bloom, entered for the first time the public eating-room, well disposed to enjoy herself in every way.

  Having left the Peters family behind her, she no longer thought it necessary to restrain her fancy in the choice of colours; and, excepting occasionally on a provincial stage, it would be difficult to find a costume more brilliant in its various hues than that of our widow as she followed the obsequious waiter to the place assigned her. Agnes came after her, like a tranquil moon-lit night following the meretricious glare of noisy fireworks; the dazzled sight that had been drawn to Mrs. Barnaby as she entered, rested upon Agnes, as if to repose itself, and by the time they both were seated, it was on her fair, delicate face, and mourning garb, that every eye was fixed. The vicarial crape and bombasin which she wore in compliance with the arrangement of her too sensitive aunt, did Agnes at least one service among strangers, for it precluded the idea of any near relationship between her companion and herself; and though no one could see them together without marvelling at the discordant fellowship of two persons so remarkably contrasted in manner and appearance, none explained it by presuming that they were aunt and niece.

  The party assembled and assembling at the breakfast-table consisted of fourteen gentlemen and five ladies; the rest of the company inhabiting the extensive and really elegant mansion preferring to breakfast in their own apartments, though there were few who did not condescend to abandon their privacy at dinner. Of the gentlemen now present, about half were of that lemon tint which at the first glance shewed their ostensible reason for being there was the real one. Of the other half it would be less easy to render an account. The five ladies were well dressed; and, two being old, and three young, they may be said for the most part to have been well-looking. Any more accurate description of them generally would but encumber and delay the narrative unnecessarily, as such among them as may come particularly in contact with my heroine or her niece will of necessity be brought into notice.

  Our two ladies were of course placed side by side, Mrs. Barnaby being flanked to the right by a staid and sober gentleman of middle age, who happily acted as a wet blanket to the crackling and sparkling vivacity of the widow, obliging her, after one or two abortive attempts at conversation, and such sort of boarding-table agaceries as the participation of coffee and eggs may give room for, either to eat her breakfast in silence, or to exercise her social propensities on the neighbour of Agnes. This was an elderly lady, who, though like Mrs. Barnaby, but just arrived for the season, had, unlike her, been a constant visiter at Cheltenham for the last twelve years; and being an active-minded spinster of tolerably easy means, and completely mistress of them, was as capable of giving all sorts of local information as Mrs. Barnaby was desirous of receiving it. Miss Morrison (such was her name) being now, and having ever been, a lady of great prudence and the most unimpeachable discretion, might probably have taken fright had she chanced, at first meeting with our widow, to see her under full sail in chase of conquest; but luckily this was not apparent at their first interview, and the appearance and manner of Agnes offering something like a guarantee for the respectability of the lady to whose charge she was intrusted, she met Mrs. Barnaby’s advances towards making an acquaintance with great civility.

  Before many sentences had been exchanged between them, the spinster had the satisfaction of perceiving, that all her minute acquaintance with Cheltenham and its ways gave her an immeasurable superiority over her richly-dressed new acquaintance; while the widow with like facility discovered that all she most particularly desired to know, might be learned from the very respectable-looking individual near whom her good fortune had placed her.

  The consequence of this mutual discovery was so brisk an exchange of question and answer as obliged Agnes to lean back in her chair, and eat her breakfast by means of a very distant communication with the table; ... but she wa
s thankful her aunt had fallen upon a quiet though rather singular-looking female of forty, instead of another whiskered Major Allen, and willingly placed herself in the attitude least likely to interrupt their conversation.

  “Never been at Cheltenham before?... really!... Well, ma’am, I have little doubt that you will soon declare it shall not be your last visit, though it is your first,” said Miss Morrison.

  “Indeed, ma’am, I think you will prove right in that opinion,” replied Mrs. Barnaby, “for I never saw a place I admired so much. We are just come from Clifton, which is called so beautiful, ... but it is not to be compared to Cheltenham.”

  “You are just come from Clifton, are you, ma’am?... I understand it is a very beautiful place, but terribly dull, I believe, when compared to this.... If a person knows Cheltenham well, and has a little notion how to take advantage of all that is going on, he may pass months and months here without ever knowing what it is to have an idle hour.... I don’t believe there is such another place in the whole world for employing time.”

  “I am sure that’s a blessing,” replied Mrs. Barnaby earnestly. “If there is one thing I dread and hate more than another, it is having nothing to do with my time. Idleness is indeed the root of all evil.”

  “I’m pleased to hear you say so, ma’am,” said Miss Morrison, “because it is so exactly my own opinion, and because, too, you will find yourself so particularly well off here as to the avoiding it; and I shall be very happy, I’m sure, if any advice of mine may put you in the way of making the most of the advantages in that line that Cheltenham offers.”

  “You are exceedingly kind and obliging, ma’am,” returned Mrs. Barnaby very graciously; “and I shall be very grateful for any counsel or instruction you can bestow. With my handsome fortune I should consider it quite a crime if I did not put my time to profit in such a place as Cheltenham.”

  This phrase produced its proper effect; Miss Morrison eyed the speaker not only with increased respect, but increased good-will.

  “Indeed, my dear madam, you are quite right,” she said; “and by merely paying attention to such information as I shall be able to give you, I will venture to say that you will never have the weight of an idle hour upon your hands while you remain here; for what with the balls, and the music at the libraries, and the regular hours for the walks, and attendance at all the sales, (and I assure you we have sometimes three in a day,) and shopping, and driving between the turnpikes, if you have a carriage, and morning visits, and evening parties, and churches and chapels, if you have a taste for them, and looking over the new names, and the pump-room, and making new acquaintance, and finding out old ones, there is not a day of the week, or an hour in the day, in which one may not be well employed.”

  “I am sure, ma’am, it is perfectly a pleasure to a person of my active turn of mind to listen to such a description; and it is a greater pleasure still to meet with a lady like yourself, with taste and good sense to value what is valuable, and to find out how and where to enjoy it.... I hope we shall become better acquainted; I have a private drawing-room here where I shall be delighted to see you.... Give me leave to present you with my card.”

  A gilt-edged and deeply-embossed card, inscribed —

  MRS. BARNABY,

  The —— Hotel and Boarding House.

  No. 5.

  was here put into Miss Morrison’s hand, who received it with an air of great satisfaction, and reiterated assurances that she would by no means fail of paying her compliments.

  Unlike many vain persons who receive every civility under the persuasion that it is offered for their own beaux yeux, Miss Morrison had sufficient good sense and experience to understand that any convenience or advantage she might derive from Mrs. Barnaby, or Mrs. Barnaby’s private drawing-room, must be repaid by accommodation of some sort or other. All obligations of such kind were, for a variety of excellent reasons, always repaid by Miss Morrison with such treasure as her own lips could coin, aided by her wit and wisdom, without drawing on any other exchequer; and now, having placed her little modest slip of pasteboard, bearing in broad and legible, though manuscript characters, —

  MISS MORRISON,

  The —— Hotel and Boarding House.

  by the side of Mrs. Barnaby’s buttered roll, she began at once, like an honest old maid as she was, to pay the debt almost before it was incurred.

  “I don’t know how they do those sort of things at Clifton, Mrs. Barnaby,” she said, “but here the medical gentlemen, or at least many of them, always call on the new-comers; and though I hope and trust that neither you nor this pretty young lady, — who, I suppose, is your visiter, — though I hope with all my heart that you won’t, either of you, have any occasion in the world for physic or doctors, yet I advise you most certainly to fix on one in your own mind beforehand, and just let him know it. There are not more kind and agreeable acquaintances in the world than gentlemen of the medical profession ... at least, I’m sure it is so here. There are one or two apothecaries in particular, — surgeons, though, I believe they are called, — who certainly are as elegant, conversable gentlemen, as can be met with in London or anywhere, unless, indeed, just in Paris, where I certainly found the apothecaries, like everything else, in a very out-of-the-common-way style of elegance, toutafay par fit, as we say on the Continent. Of course, you have been abroad, Mrs. Barnaby?”

  “No, Miss Morrison, I have not,” replied the widow, making head against this attack with great skill and courage. “I am obliged to confess that the extreme comfort and elegance of my own home, have absolutely made a prisoner of me hitherto; ... but since I have lost my dear husband I find change absolutely necessary for my health and spirits, and I shall probably soon make the tour of Europe.”

  “Indeed!... Oh dear! how I envy you!... But you speak all the languages already?”

  “Oh! perfectly.”

  “I’m so glad of that, Mrs. Barnaby, ... for, upon my word, I find it quite out of my power to avoid using a French word every now and then since I came from abroad, and it is so vexing when one is not understood. A lady of your station has, of course, been taught by all sorts of foreigners; but those who can’t afford this indulgence never do get the accent without going abroad.... I’m sure you’ll find, before you have been a week on the Continent, a most prodigious difference in your accent, though I dare say its very good already. But, a prop po, about the apothecaries and surgeons that I was talking about.... I hope you will give orders at the door that, if Mr. Alexander Pringle calls, and sends in his card, he shall be desired to walk up; and then, you know, just a prop po de nang, you can talk to him about whatever you wish to know; ... and you can say, if you like it, that Miss Morrison particularly mentioned his name.... There is no occasion do too that you should give him any fee; but you may ask him a few questions about the waters cum sa, and you will find him the most agreeable, convenient, and instructive acquaintance do mund.”

  The breakfast was now so evidently drawing to its close, that the new friends deemed it advisable to leave the table; and Mrs. Barnaby having repeated her invitation, and Miss Morrison having replied to it by kissing her fingers, and uttering “Mercy! Mercy! O revor,” they parted ... the widow to give orders, as she passed to her drawing-room, that if Mr. Alexander Pringle called on her, he should be admitted; and the spinster to invent and fabricate, in the secret retirement of her attic retreat, some of those remarkably puzzling articles of dress, the outline of which she had studied during a three weeks’ residence in Paris, and which passed current with the majority of her friends and acquaintance for being of genuine Gallic manufacture.

  The prediction of Miss Morrison was speedily verified; Mr. Alexander Pringle did call at the hotel to leave his card for Mrs. Barnaby, and, in consequence of the orders given, was immediately admitted to her presence.

  She was alone; for Agnes, though unfortunately there was no little dear miserable closet for her, had received the welcome congé, now always expressed by the words, “There,
you may go to your lessons, child, if you will,” and had withdrawn herself to an out-of-the-way corner in their double-bedded room, where already her desk, and other Empton treasures, had converted about four feet square of her new abode into a home. The sofa, therefore, with the table and its gaudy cover, adorned with the widow’s fine work-box, a boarding-house inkstand of bright coloured china, and THE ALBUM (still sacred to the name of Isabella d’Almafonte), had all been set in the places and attitudes she thought most becoming by Mrs. Barnaby herself, and, together with her own magnificent person, formed a very charming picture as the medical gentleman entered the room; ... but it is probable Mr. Alexander Pringle expected rather to find a patient than to be ushered into the presence of a lady in a state of health apparently so perfect.

  “Pray, sit down, sir!... Mr. Pringle, I believe?” said Mrs. Barnaby, half rising, and pointing to a chair exactly opposite her place upon the sofa.

  Mr. Pringle took the indicated chair; but before he was well seated in it, the idea that some mistake might be the source of this civility occurred to him, and he rose again, made a step forward, and laid his card, specifying his name, profession, and address, on the table immediately before the eyes of the lady.

  “Oh yes!” said she, smiling with amiable condescension, “I understand perfectly; ... and should myself, or my young niece, or any of my servants, require medical assistance, Mr. Pringle, this card (placing it carefully in her work-box) will enable us to find it. But, though at present we are all pretty well, I am really very glad to have an opportunity of seeing you, sir.... Miss Morrison ... I believe you know Miss Morrison?... (Mr. Pringle bowed).... Miss Morrison has named you to me in a manner that made me extremely desirous of making your acquaintance.... Gentlemen of your profession, Mr. Pringle, have so much knowledge of the world, that it is a great advantage for a stranger, on first arriving at a new place, to find an opportunity of conversing with them. Will you afford me five minutes while I explain to you my very peculiar situation?”