To the great satisfaction of Lady Dowling, this round little personage arose, as usual, when her principal rose, and waddled to the window after her. Many people are apt to overlook and forget companions, and the poor toady is as much used to be trod upon as the despised reptile whose name she bears. But if the world in general be found guilty of this scorn towards what is too lowly to turn, and scorn again, more especially was our knight liable to the weakness.
As he now hastened to offer his hand to Lady Clarissa in order to assist her in stepping over the window-sill, he very nearly overturned Miss Mogg as he passed her; but heeding neither the resistance her plump person offered to his passing elbow, nor yet the timid “oh!” which spoke her alarm, he hurried onward, and, manfully seizing the hand whose touch was honour, walked out side by side with the titled lady upon the lawn.
CHAPTER II.
A DELIGHTFUL RAMBLE — FRIENDSHIP AND THE MUSE — AN ADVENTURE — DANGER AND ESCAPE — GRATITUDE AND BENEVOLENCE.
“ONLY see that! How very extraordinary!” exclaimed Lady Dowling, suddenly rising, and addressing herself to no one in particular.
“Oh! how delightful!” cried several ladies at once. “How clever Lady Clarissa is! Such a delicious refreshment!”— “To be sure, it is the only thing in the world to do on such an evening as this,” exclaimed Miss Brotherton; who, as being the richest young lady in company, very properly thought she ought to speak first. “I am sure I shall follow her example and so saying, she rose and walked towards the window. Three of the most dauntless ladies in the party started up to follow her; which, strange as the manoeuvre appeared to the full-dressed Lady Dowling, she did not oppose, greatly preferring that the garden party should be enlarged. But, though not by her, the adventurous fair ones were stopped before they accomplished their design, by a chorus of remonstrances from all the rest of the company, male and female.
“My dear Miss Brotherton, you will catch your death!” cried one.
“Oh! look at your satin shoes!” screamed another. “What would Mr. Tomkins say if he was here, Mrs. Tomkins?” demanded a third.
“And your neck and shoulders, Miss Williamson!” whispered a fourth.
“And your blonde dress, Mrs. Simpkins!” vociferated a fifth; with a vast deal more in the same strain. So that before the sortie was accomplished, every lady, save Miss Brotherton, yielded before the storm of reasons that pelted them on all sides. The rich young lady, however, stood firm: what young lady with two hundred thousand pounds would not?
“Mr. Augustus Dowling,” said she, still pursuing her way window-ward, but pausing ere she stepped out, “will you have the excessive kindness, — vraiment j’ai honte; but will you have the charity to look in the hall for my pink satin mantelet, trimmed with swansdown; without it I fear my poor little shoulders will be arrosées— ‘too rudely, alas!’ with the dews of night.”
Now the young lady’s shoulders were really very pretty little shoulders, and, moreover, Mr. Augustus Dowling, notwithstanding all his elegant nonchalance, perfectly well remembered that she had two hundred thousand pounds; so, before she had stamped with her little foot twice, in her impatience to join those who, from their gaiety, seemed to be so greatly enjoying the fresh air, he returned with the mantelet, and having, as usual, adjusted his glass in the corner of his eye to prevent his making any mistakes, placed it on her shoulders.
“Now, then!” she cried, “give me your arm. Is not this good fun?”
The young gentleman obeyed, declaring it was delightful, and in a moment they were beside Lady Clarissa and Sir Matthew; good Miss Mogg keeping a step or two behind.
“Nobody but your ladyship had wit enough to find out that there was more air to be got out of doors than in,” said the heiress, venturing to pass her arm through that of her noble friend. But, upon this occasion, Lady Clarissa, though particularly intimate with Miss Brotherton, and seldom refusing to use her carriage and act as her chaperone to all the parties in the neighbourhood, seemed inclined to check her advances.
“My dear child,” said she, “I am delighted to see you come out. I am sure you must have been half stifled, as well as myself. But you and Mr. Augustus must wander away by yourselves, and you may take Mogg with you, if you like it, for I have just got into a discussion with Sir Matthew, that I would not break off for the world. So away with you, my dear, as fast as you can.”
Lady Clarissa’s will was of course law, even to the heiress, but it was not without a little toss of the head that she turned off to another walk; nor was it without a considerable struggle between her inclination and a sense of propriety, which, all things considered, really did her honour, that she permitted poor Miss Mogg to obey the hint of her patroness, and follow after.
“And so you really have not seen this gifted young man yet, Sir Matthew?” resumed her ladyship, as soon as they were again alone. “You have never yet seen this Osmund Norval?”
“No, my lady, I have not,” replied the knight; “and to say the truth,” he added, venturing to press with his stout arm the slender one that rested on it, “to say the truth, though I have heard a monstrous deal about him, I was determined that I would have nothing to say to him, till I had heard your opinion, my lady.”
“How kind! how flattering, Sit Matthew! But you will let me bring him to you now?”
“Will I?” (again pressing the lean arm.) “Fancy me saying no, when you tell me to say yes! Ah! my lady, you know better than that, or I am greatly mistaken.”
“Oh! Sir Matthew, you are always so kind! What magnificent gardens you have! By the way, I think I never tasted such a pine as that we had to-day. I assure you, my brother, Lord Highland-loch, is celebrated for his pines — quite celebrated. They are the finest in all Scotland, but I give you my honour, I never saw one equal to it at his table.”
“Oh! my lady, that is only your amiable condescension,” replied Sir Matthew, greatly touched by this preference. “But if you really can be so polite as to think them good, I must entreat you just to let me knock at the head-gardener’s door, who lives close outside this gate. I don’t let him live inside, because of his children, Lady Clarissa. I know what birds peck the worst — ha! ha! ha! However, you must just let me pass through the gate to tell him to put up a brace for your ladyship. They shall be well taken care of now, my lady, trust me for that; I never valued them so much before, I promise you.”
“You are too kind a thousand times!” said the lady, stretching out her own hand to open the gate. “I will go with you; there is nothing I doat upon like visiting a gardener. Could he not take us into the hot-houses, Sir Matthew? You have no idea how I should enjoy it.”
By no means displeased to show off the high-born lady upon his arm, even to the eyes of his gardener, the knight joyfully assented to the proposal.
“Macnab!” he cried, knocking as he passed the cottage-window, “Macnab! come here directly, and bring a knife and a basket with you; you must come directly — this very moment, and unlock the hot-houses — her ladyship wishes to walk through them, and I must have one or two of the finest pines cut, and packed in a basket, to be put into Miss Brotherton’s carriage: but mind, they are for Lady Clarissa Shrimpton; so you had better give them in charge to her ladyship’s own man.”
Mr. Alexander Macnab promptly left the seeds he was sorting, and prepared himself, basket in hand, to follow his master. The knight and the lady left the cottage, arm-and-arm together; but before they again entered the garden, a fancy seized her lively ladyship, that a short ramble in the green lane outside it would be the most agreeable thing in the world.
“Dear me! what a poetical idea!” exclaimed Sir Matthew with enthusiasm “There’s only one thing,” he said, stopping short, “but that will spoil my pleasure altogether: I am so dreadfully afraid that your ladyship will take cold.”
“Ask the gardener’s wife to lend me one of her kerchiefs,” said Lady Clarissa, laughing. “But it will only be to satisfy you, Sir Matthew, for there is no catching
cold in such weather as this.”
It was with something quite like tender anxiety that the knight stepped back, asked for and obtained a neat shawl, and himself wrapped it round the slender person of his amiable companion.
“Thank you! thank you a thousand times! But, dear Sir Matthew, I must not lose my pines by my frolic: will you give the gardener orders to get them without waiting for us? and perhaps you would let him put up a bunch of grapes, and a few peaches at the same time — it is no good to let him wait for us, Sir Matthew; — when you and I get into a chat together, we shall neither of us think of the pines again.”
Quitting her highly-valued aristocratic arm for an instant, the flattered knight ran back and gave the necessary orders; and then, almost unconscious, in his full contentment, that his own gray head was as bare as that of the oak-crowned nymph by his side, he returned to his bewitching companion and led her gently onward over the mossy turf that bordered the road.
The gardener and his wife stood together for a moment looking after them. “Who would think now that she was one of the true old gentlefolks, and Scotch to boot, to see her pair off that way with our rogue of a spinner there? How, in God’s name, can she choose to be so free and friendly with such as he?” said the gardener.
“Just for the same reason as yourself, Sawny,” replied his wife; “to get all she can out of him.”
“And that’s true,” replied Sawny, setting off upon his business. “I had like to forget the pines, and the grapes, and the peaches. She’s not so far wrong after all; and yet ’tis a pity, too.”
* * * * *
The evening was still oppressively sultry, and hardly a breath of air disturbed either the leaves on the oaks beside the road, or those that mimicked them so abominably on the lady’s brow; but, nevertheless, there was a freshness in the smell of the hedges and the grass, which could not fail to be agreeable to any nerves that had endured the steaming dinner, and the irksome drawing-room of Dowling Lodge.
The shady lane in which the knight and the lady were thus recreating themselves, after skirting the extensive and lofty walls of the garden, turned at right angles both to the right and the left at the corner of it. The branch to the left followed the boundary of the garden, and led to the stable-yard and back entrance to the house; that to the right conducted to the factory, which was the source and head-spring of all the wealth that flowed over, and irrigated with its fructifying stream, meadows, parks, hot-beds and flower-gardens, till it made itself a prodigious cistern in the depths and heights of Dowling Lodge.
When the strangely-matched pair came to this point, Sir Matthew made a halt, till Lady Clarissa came to the end of a little poem, which the protégé whom she was so desirous of introducing to her rich and (to use her own words) “really very clever friend,” had inscribed in her album.
Nothing could be more agreeable to her ladyship than this pause.
In the first place it was the greatest possible relief to her lungs, for the lines she was reciting were much too full of deep feeling to be repeated without a painful effort, while walking; and in the second, the halt, accompanied as it was by a look of earnest attention from her apparently-delighted companion, furnished the most agreeable commentary in the world upon the poem itself, as well as on her manner of reciting it.
It said so plainly, “Stay! — move not! — lest a word, an intonation, a cadence, be lost to me!”
Lady Clarissa was really touched by it; and let Sawny the gardener, and his wife Janet, say or think what they would, neither peaches nor pines had any thing to do with the gratification she at this moment experienced in the society of the great manufacturer.
His eyes were fixed on her face, and she bore the gaze, and returned it with that sort of courage and confidence, which genuine enthusiasm alone can give.
She had just finished a stanza when Sir Matthew ceased to move, and feeling that he did so under the influence of a spell, which she well knew would be more powerful still were it spoken when she were at rest — for Lady Clarissa was aware that she was exceedingly short-breathed — she repeated the last eight lines in a manner that showed she felt the pleasure she was producing — a pleasure, as she thought, like that occasionally caused by the repetition of some delicious phrase in a musical composition, reiterated as if to fill the soul with its sweetness.
“And should the eye for which I write
By sun-lit morn, or moon-lit night,
Drop on this record of my soul.
Which tells a part — ah! not the whole,
Of hopes that trembling, faltering, timid.
Now fire my cheek, now turn it livid, —
Should that soft eye but drop one tear,
I’d hug my chain, and call it dear!”
The tear asked for, almost came as she ceased.
“You feel it, dear Sir Matthew!” she said, in a voice of considerable emotion.
“I’d hug my chain, and call it dear!” — she again murmured, hanging on his arm with such an evident degree of weakness, as showed the slender form to be less powerful than the ardent spirit it enshrined.
“Let us turn back,” said Sir Matthew. “My dear friend,” faintly ejaculated Lady Clarissa, “you are moved too strongly, — But — no, no! Sir Matthew! Believe me, it were far better for both of us that we should proceed. — Are we, either of us, my dear friend, in a state at this moment to meet the curious stare of idle eyes? — Come on, dear Sir Matthew!” — and she gently pulled him forward as she spoke—” this soft glade invites us.”
Though perfectly determined to find some excuse for not leading his fascinating companion within sight of his grim-looking factory, which another turn in the lane at no great distance would have made very unpicturesquely visible, it was impossible at that moment not to yield to the gentle violence which carried him forward; and, in what Lady Clarissa felt to be very eloquent silence, he proceeded for a few steps farther. Considerably, however, before they had reached the dreaded turning, his good star shot a ray upon him in the shape of a very large cow, with a pair of enormous horns, that slowly turned the corner, and fronted them.
“Good heaven!” he exclaimed in an accent of great alarm. “There is that horrid spotted cow! she is the worst beast in the whole parish. Turn back, dearest Lady Clarissa! turn back instantly.”
“How kindly considerate!” returned Lady Clarissa. “But you little know the strength of your friend’s mind, Sir Matthew. Were I alone, indeed, I might tremble and turn as pale as the veriest child that ever hid its face on a nurse’s lap; but with you!” — and here the lady turned a very flattering glance on the athletic form of her protector —
“Heaven knows,” replied Sir Matthew, once more pressing her lean arm, “Heaven knows that all which the strength of man could do to protect you, would not be left undone by me — but consider the dog!” he added, pointing to a little cur that always followed him; “its power of irritating an animal, of this kind is quite extraordinary.” And as he spoke, he whistled in a note which meant, as his dog Spite knew as well as he did, neither more nor less than—” At her, Spite!”
“If any thing can keep Spite quiet,” resumed the knight, “it is whistling to him.”
Obedient to the true meaning of the signal, however, the dog sprang forward, and of course there ensued the scene which always follows on such occasions. The dog yelped, and affected to spring at the nose of the cow, while she, somewhat accelerating her stately pace, threw up her tail, and bent down her head till her horns nearly touched the ground, offering so exact an image of “the cow with the crumpled horn,” with whose portrait her ladyship’s early studies had made her familiar, that her confidence in the prowess of Sir Matthew could sustain her no longer, and she rapidly uttered a succession of tremendous screams.
The purpose of the knight was accomplished, and he therefore indulged the fair lady by letting her scream on for at least a minute and a half, while he supported her with every appearance of the most pitying tenderness. Meanwhile, t
wo little boys, who were making their way from the factory homewards, across a field by the side of the lane, ran with terrified curiosity, and all the strength they had, to a gate, through which they could see the interesting spectacle of a fine full-dressed lady, screaming with all her might from between the sheltering arms of the magnificent Sir Matthew Dowling, and a little dog worrying an old half-starved cow.
“Come here, you young scamps!” cried the knight, on perceiving the two little heads peeping over the gate: “Don’t you see what’s going on? Clamber over the gate, can’t you, and drive back that devil of a beast.”
The youngest, but by far the stoutest and tallest of the two boys, instantly obeyed this command, and placing himself midway between the tormented cow and the fair creature, whose nerves her menacing attitude had so cruelly shaken, he stood manfully astride in the middle of the lane, flourished his ragged hat on high, and with a few lusty “wough! woughs!” repeated at the top of his young voice, succeeded in turning the front of the enemy, which was presently seen to wheel round, and, by a sort of feeble, ambling little trot, speedily got out of sight round the corner.
“Now, then,” said Sir Matthew, “let me lead you home, my dear lady!”
“Not till I have thanked my little deliverer,” exclaimed Lady Clarissa, with very sentimental fervour. “Good heaven! what might have been my fate without him! I know — I feel, Sir Matthew, that you never could have borne to leave me, and what then could have stopped the fearful approach of that most vicious animal? — Death, or worse than death — dislocation of limb, disfigurement of feature! Oh, Sir Matthew, your heart, I know, will go side by side with mine. Tell me, what can I do — what can we both do, to reward the astonishing bravery of that noble little fellow?”
Collected Works of Frances Trollope Page 164