“Gracious goodness! Is that true, Elizabeth? Dined at your house? — and one of them a lord! Will they come there again to-day?”
“I do not know,” replied Elizabeth, laughing in her turn; “but I am afraid not, — they do not come every day.”
“Why didn’t you speak to them, you stupid girl, if you know them so well?” demanded Martha, reproachfully.
“I don’t know them well,” replied her cousin; “I never see them, except for a very little while after dinner in the drawing-room.”
“Have they been there more than once?” inquired Martha.
“Yes, several times, I think — at least Lord William has. I don’t remember seeing the other so often.”
“Oh! how I wish? — I do think it was very—” But both sentences, warmly as they flowed from her heart, were cut short ere completed by the prudent Martha, who at that moment recalled her mother’s words concerning the importance of an intimate intercourse with the Hubert family. Never did the admonition of a parent come more forcibly upon the heart of a child.
“I must keep in with ’em, if I die for it!” was the mental exclamation which followed the remembrance of this maternal warning; and, perceiving, on once more turning round her head, that the officers had changed the direction of their walk, she again took the arm of her cousin, who had quitted her side for a moment to examine a choice morsel of sea-weed, and began a direct and deliberate attack upon her affections, by praising her eyes, and the handkerchief that was tied round her neck; hinting, that she thought her mamma kept her a great deal too back, and that her governess was already afraid of her; concluding with an assurance that she never liked any girl so well before in all her life, and that she hoped to her heart they should he very very intimate, and stick together like very near relations, as they really were.
To all this, Elizabeth answered gently and civilly, but reached home at last with a feeling of self-reproach for being so very tired of her cousin’s company.
Their tea-table awaited their return, and, notwithstanding the sublime speculations for the future, which filled the heart and head of Miss O’Donagough, the cherries and the cakes spread before her were sufficiently attractive to keep her tranquilly in the school-room, till the ladies had left the dinner-parlour.
“Now we will go up stairs, and see your mamma, shall we?” said Miss Hubert.
“Oh, yes! if you will — I’m quite ready when I’ve done eating this one queen-cake more. And you really don’t know if there’s any officers or not dining here?” replied her cousin.
“No, indeed, I do not,” was the unsatisfactory reply.
It is very probable that neither the aunt nor the niece were very sorry to have their tête-à-tête interrupted by the entrance of Miss Wilmot and the young ladies. Mrs. O’Donagough had already obtained all particulars respecting the present residence and manner of life of her “dear brother-in-law,” Mr. Willoughby, and of the number of grandchildren bestowed upon him by his daughter Nora — had expressed the most “heartfelt delight,” at hearing that she would be sure to see them all during the ensuing season in London, and was by that time quite ready to scrutinise the countenance of her daughter, in order to ascertain how the long day had answered.
Great was the contentment which attended this examination of a countenance exceedingly capable of showing whether its owner were pleased or the contrary. It was immediately evident to Mrs. O’Donagough that her daughter was in one of her most amiable moods; and though there had been no party at dinner, and consequently but little opportunity of displaying the studied elegance of her own appearance, still “the style of everything about her darling Agnes,” was such as to make her feel more sensibly than ever the immense importance of being united to her by the tenderest ties of affection. It could not, therefore, fail of being very delightful to her to perceive that Martha, whom, as she had told her husband, “she greatly feared she should find in the dumps,” was radiant in smiles and good humour, and apparently on the best possible terms with that “stupid shy-looking thing,” her cousin.
Not only, indeed, had the dinner, the servants, and the plate of her beloved Agnes, excited all the warm affections of Mrs. O’Donagough’s heart, but the observations she had made on her husband during the repast, tended to convince her very forcibly, that he, too, cautiously as he had hitherto expressed his feelings on the subject, attached great importance to the connection. Never had she before seen him as he appeared to her on this important day. Quiet, reserved, respectful, rather religious in his language, but with amiable humility abstaining from giving too serious a tone to the conversation, his wife gazed and listened with equal admiration and astonishment, while he developed a degree of talent, for which she, even in her fondest days, had never given him credit.
“It shall not be my fault,” said she internally, “if he is not rewarded for all this cleverness. He knows what he is about as well as most men, and he shan’t be stopped for want of a helping hand from me.”
Accordingly Mrs. O’Donagough was enchanted, beyond the power of language to express, with her “little great-niece, Emily,” declared Elizabeth “by far the loveliest creature she had ever seen,” and was obliged to pull out her pocket-handkerchief when speaking of their dear grandmother, and the astonishing likeness which they both bore her.
Mrs. Hubert listened to it all with great sweetness, but suffered no great time to elapse between the coffee and the tea, and hinted to Miss Wilmot that she did not wish Emily to be kept up beyond her usual hour.
Very soon after her departure, Mr. O’Donagough broke off his mild discussion with the general on the importance of enforcing a pure morality throughout the army, and rising said, “I am afraid it is getting very late, my dear; you know my habits, and must not suffer even the happiness of this blessed re-union to interfere with what we know to be our duty.”
On this Mrs. O’Donagough rose too, with a look of meekness that really seemed quite angelic, saying, “Oh! no — not for the world!” and, as if moved by the most perfect family sympathy, Martha slapped-to the volume of engravings she was examining at the same moment, so that the leave-taking was sudden and prompt, and in less than two minutes after it began, the Allen O’Donagough family found themselves enjoying the sea-breeze on the broad flag-stones of the Marine Parade.
“Thank God, that’s over!” cried Mr. Allen O’Donagough, as soon as they had fairly cleared the premises.
“I shall not be sorry to get home and have a draught of porter, it has been so dreadfully hot all day,” observed his lady. “But to be sure, nothing could be kinder or more flattering!”
“Oh, lor! I am as tired as a dog,” exclaimed Martha, stretching out her arms, and yawning vehemently; “but I don’t care a straw — I know what I know about the people that visit there, and I’ll be hanged if I don’t take care to be one of them.”
“You are your father’s own child, Patty!” said Mr. O’Donagough, recovering his usual tone; “we shall make something of ’em between us.”
“Well! to be sure it is a pleasure to introduce you both to my relations! and depend upon it, you will never repent being civil to them,” said his wife, with rather a mysterious nodding of the head, made visible as they reached their own door, by the light of the lamp that hung over it.
CHAPTER XIII.
“IT is quite bed-time, mamma, is it not?” said Elizabeth Hubert as the door closed after the O’Donagough family. “I am very, very sleepy!”
“Good night, my dear,” replied her mother, holding up her face to receive the farewell salute.
“Good night, papa,” said Elizabeth, passing on to her father. But before he accepted the kiss offered to him, he detained her by the hand for a moment, saying, “What makes you look so very weary to-night, my dear girl? Have you walked more than usual to-day?”
“No, papa. We have walked very little to-day,” replied the young lady.
“What is the matter then, dearest? You do not feel unwell, I hope. Do you?”
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Elizabeth stopped short in the middle of a yawn to laugh. “Oh! no, papa! Pray do not send for the doctor! I feel perfectly well, only very sleepy.”
“Perhaps you are tired of talking, Elizabeth? You and your young cousin have had time for a great deal of conversation. Did she tell you much about New South Wales?” demanded her father.
Elizabeth shook her head as she replied, “No, not a word.”
“What then did you talk about?” asked the general.
Elizabeth again laughed, and again shook her head.’
“Is that shake of the head to be considered as oracular as that of my Lord Burleigh? Does it mean a very great deal,” said her father.
“It means, papa, that I really and truly do not know what she talked about,” replied Elizabeth.
“That is to say, you forget it. I presume, my dear, that when the discourse was going on, you knew of what subject, or subjects, it treated?”
“No, indeed, papa, I did not,” was the quick reply. “My cousin said a great many things altogether, I believe, but I quite mean that I do not know what they were all about. I did not always understand her.”
“Did you find her upon the whole an agreeable companion, Elizabeth?”
In reply to this direct inquiry, Miss Hubert, after hanging down her head a little, and looking for a minute or two rather embarrassed, replied, “No, papa, I did not; and I do not think that my cousin Martha found me an agreeable companion either. Nor do I believe that we shall ever be very great friends.”
“Why so, my dear?” said her father, drawing her somewhat closer to him.
“Because she does not seem to know or care the least in the world about anything that I like; and I do not know or care at all more concerning all she talks about.”
“Well, Elizabeth!” replied her father, “this is unfortunate, but perhaps not very extraordinary. However, you know we may he all very kind and obliging to her, nevertheless.”
“Oh! certainly, papa! of course, because she is a very near relation. Only perhaps, as she is so very womanly, mamma would invite her next time to dine with you, and let Emily and me come into the drawing-room before you come up stairs, as usual. And then, for the rest of the evening, and when we were all together, I should not mind it at all.”
Mrs. Hubert, who had changed her place while this conversation was going cm, and seated herself close behind her husband, whose arm was thrown round his daughter, could hardly repress a smile at this improved plan of operations, but she did not permit it to be seen, and said, with much matter-of-fact gravity, “I believe you are right, my dear; and if her mamma makes no objection, I certainly will do so. Accident, education, perhaps the climate in which she was born, seem to have made this young cousin prematurely a woman, and throwing you together as girls of the same age, must, I have no doubt, be equally irksome to both. We will not do so again, Elizabeth. Good night, dearest.”
Miss Hubert repaid this expression of maternal sympathy with a very tender kiss, and bestowing one also on her father, with rather more fondness than usual, as if to show that she was exceedingly obliged by having encountered no opposition to the extraordinary measures she had been bold enough to recommend, she left the room apparently in excellent spirits, and without any external symptoms remaining of the extreme weariness of which she had complained.
“Miss Wilmot is right,” exclaimed Mrs. Hubert, as soon as the door was closed. “There is evidently no danger of Elizabeth’s liking this terrible cousin too well.”
“Why, yes, my dear,” replied the general, “I think you may be tolerably easy on that point. And now, Agnes, to speak without any jesting at all, I trust that your spirits will recover their tranquillity, and that you will cease to look every now and then as if you had just recollected some dreadful calamity that was hanging over you. The cause, my love, is really not sufficient to justify the effect. We are not the first people in the world, depend upon it, who have had a queer looking set of cousins arrive from distant lands to claim kindred with them. Will you promise not to worry yourself about it any more?”
“Yes, Montague. I shall behave better now. But I cannot tell you how I have dreaded the seeing my pure-minded, ingenuous Elizabeth falling into any tone of intimacy with my unfortunate young cousin; and yet it seemed almost inevitable, when two young things of equal age were thrown together. But I did not do our girl justice. Dear creature! I ought to have felt from the first that it was impossible.”
“I think so, madonna,” replied General Hubert, rather reproachfully. “However, I will forgive this misdoubting of the wisdom and good taste of fourteen, if you will promise to support with perfect equanimity whatever effervescence may chance to arise from the superabundance of these good gifts at threescore and ten. I confess to you, Agnes, I rather dread the arrival of aunt Betsy.”
“And so do I too,” replied his wife, laughing; “but it is with a very different sort of dread from what I felt, when in doubt as to the effect that might be produced by this new acquaintance on Elizabeth, and my dear, kind-hearted father, too! He will be here in a fortnight. And I perfectly well know what will happen. At first, he will feel that he cannot be too kind, too cordial in his welcome to my aunt — whereupon she will stun him with her eloquence, smother him with her affection, wear his spirits out by her incessant calls upon his admiration for her daughter, till he grows nervous — falls into a fit of the gout, and instead of benefiting by the sea breezes we have promised him, he will shut himself up in his room without saying a word about his sufferings to anybody, but suffering martyrdom nevertheless.”
“Yes, that will be the progress exactly from benignity that desires the happiness of ail the world, to a gentle melancholy meekly resigning every hope of it for himself. Nevertheless, I think that, by keeping guard over him pretty watchfully, I may be able, perhaps, to save him from a good deal of it. But who can keep guard over aunt Betsy? Who can prevent her seeing everything, hearing everything, comprehending everything, and — acting accordingly?”
“If she is very outrageous, we must laugh at her,” replied Agnes; “not but it will be hers to laugh at us first. Do you remember her prognostications and her prophecies, Montague, when Mrs. O’Donagough first renewed the intercourse with us? Will she not have some cause to triumph now?”
“No, no, no, dear — not the least in the world,” replied the general. “There will be room enough in our little island, depend upon it, both for the O’Donagough race and the Huberts too; and we must be very silly folks, certainly, if we cannot contrive to see as little of them as our own sense of propriety will permit us to do.”
“Unquestionably it should be so,” returned Agnes, musingly, “and, therefore, we will trust that so it will be. But tell me, Montague, what sort of conversation did that solemn-looking Mr. O’Donagough entertain you with, after we left the table? He is a singular-looking man, with an expression of countenance that seems to hover between natural audacity and affected sanctification.”
“Yes,” replied the general, “it is a remarkably puzzling face — and manner too. I cannot make him out.”
“Did he talk much?”
“No; very little — and I doubt if aunt Betsy herself could have found much to object to in anything he uttered. Nevertheless, I dislike him, without being able exactly to explain why.”
“Nay, General Hubert, I think that riddle may be easily read,” replied Agnes; “both in person and manner he is coarse and ungentlemanlike.”
“True! yet that seems hardly sufficient to explain the feeling I have about him. There was an evident air of restraint in every word he uttered, yet it did not seem to proceed from what is usually called shyness either, for his conversation, such as it was, consisted chiefly of questions concerning all our family connections, and in a style of pertinacity too, which shyness, I think, ‘would gambol from.’ Your father, in particular, and Frederick seemed to possess a strong hold upon his travelled memory.”
“I suppose that was because my fathe
r was so very civil and good-natured the night of the famous leave-taking in Mrs. Peter’s drawing-room,” replied Mrs. Hubert.
“Yes, certainly, that may account for it as far as your father is concerned. But of the two, I think Mr. O’Donagough’s interest seemed to be most keenly awake respecting everything of and concerning Frederick Stephenson — and I do not remember that Frederick did anything towards making an acquaintance with him on that memorable evening, beyond reconnoitring him from a distant sofa, through Nora’s eyeglass, which was, if you remember, the mode by which at that time Fred constantly assisted all defects real or imaginary in his visual organs.”
“Oh! I can see him now!” returned Agnes, laughing. “How well I remember his attitude as she, naughty girl, hid her laughing face behind him! — I am sure it is very good-natured in Mr. O’Donagough, if he saw all that and forgave it.”
“He appears perfectly to have forgiven it, I assure you — inquired with an air of great interest where Frederick chiefly resided, asked if he was as gay and lively as ever, and, if I mistake not, begged to know how many children he had — summing up the whole by assuring me that it would give him great pleasure to meet him again.”
“Well, certainly that does look like being in a very friendly and affectionate frame of mind!” replied Mrs. Hubert, “and fortunately Nora never hears their names mentioned without declaring that she wished for nothing so much as to meet my aunt Barnaby again. I therefore see nothing to stop the renewal of the acquaintance so auspiciously begun through Nora’s eyeglass.”
“By the way, Agnes,” resumed the general, “did not your aunt Barnaby on that occasion introduce her bridegroom as the reverend Mr. O’Donagough?”
“Oh, yes! — certainly she did. And I presume he is the reverend Mr. O’Donagough still, is he not?” returned Mrs. Hubert.
Collected Works of Frances Trollope Page 240