Both the young men were tall and handsome, and neither of the young ladies refused them the passing tribute of a stare. But what was the astonishment of the well-behaved Miss Matilda Perkins, when she felt the arm of her young friend suddenly withdrawn, and saw her stand with outstretched hands and starting eyes on the middle of the pavement, gazing On the features of one of the gentlemen, as if turned to stone by some male gorgon. The young guardsman, however, who was in earnest conversation with his companion, did not notice her, and pursuing their course, they presently turned together into a shop.
The petrified Patty then appeared in some degree to recover herself, and grasping convulsively the arm of her friend, heaved a sort of gasping sigh, and distinctly uttered the monosyllable “JACK!”
CHAPTER XXI.
“GRACIOUS heaven! you don’t say so,” cried the sympathising Matilda, entering at once into the nature of her friend’s feelings. “This is a most wonderful discovery, indeed! But you must compose yourself, my dear girl, you must, really. Lean on me, Patty, and walk gently on. When we pass the shop, you know, you may just look in; and if you can catch his face, you will be able to satisfy yourself whether you may not have made some mistake.”
“Mistake!” shouted Patty. “Do you think I don’t know him? Do you think, after all I have told you, that I should not know my darling Jack amongst a million?”
“But I am quite sure, Patty, that the gentleman did not know you.”
“Stuff and nonsense! How should he know me, when he was chattering as fast as he could speak to that other fellow, and never turned his eyes my way? But you don’t suppose I mean to part so? I shall go in after him, I promise you — and then you shall see whether he knows me or not.”
“For heaven’s sake, Patty, don’t follow two gentlemen in that way,” said Matilda, really frightened. “It is a saddler’s shop, my dear girl, and nothing but men ever do go into it. We shall be taken for something very, very bad, indeed we shall.”
But Patty, without paying the slightest attention to her remonstrance, continued to drag her on, and on reaching the shop-door, without uttering another syllable of warning, she fairly pulled her in, marching straight forward to the back of the shop, where stood the chase, in earnest examination of a set of harness.
Patty’s object was at that moment not so much to speak to him as to make him see her, and this she at length effected, by dauntlessly walking round his very elegant-looking companion, and finally stationing herself within about half a foot of his person.
Startled at this sudden vicinity of female drapery, the young man looked up, and his countenance most unequivocally acknowledged acquaintance with the remarkable figure that stood before him. Hot and agitated, her showy bonnet pushed backwards till it was almost off her head, her colour crimson, and her eyes extended with no mitigated stare, poor Patty really looked very far from respectable; while her terrified companion, whose more decent appearance and sober demeanour might have been some protection, retreated towards the door, utterly incapable of braving a scene which she thought likely to prove so exceedingly disagreeable. Neither her absence, nor presence, however, were capable of producing any great effect on the catastrophe. Patty’s acquaintance no sooner set his eyes upon her, than, with a complexion as glowing as her own, he suddenly dropped the article he had been examining, and, abruptly seizing her hand, led her through the shop, and into the street, without speaking a word.
With an agitated and hurried step he urged her forward some paces past the door, and then pausing, and changing the grasp he held of her hand for the usual salutation of a friendly greeting, he said, “My dear Miss O’Donagough, I sincerely hope I see you well — and truly glad should I have been to have shaken hands with you under other circumstances; but your referring to our acquaintance on board ship, before the friend with whom you saw me, or indeed before any friend I have, would be very mischievous to me; and I remember your former kindness too well, not to feel certain that you would be sincerely grieved to do me the injury which would inevitably ensue were you to betray me.”
“Betray you, Jack!” replied Patty, very innocently. “Good gracious, no! I would not do you any harm for the whole world; but you need not be afraid of speaking to me when we are by ourselves, you know. Tell me when you will come and see me, my dear, dear Jack!” and she grasped the hand which held hers with unscrupulous affection, causing thereby a degree of remorse and embarrassment to the young man, of which, assuredly, she had no idea, and which, if expressed to her would have been a mystery past finding out.
Distressed beyond measure, and moreover very firmly held, “Jack” felt himself terribly at a loss to know what he had best do or say next — a puzzle which was rather increased than diminished, when, on casting his eyes towards the door of the shop he had left, he beheld his friend stationed there, and looking towards him, evidently prevented from following him by a species of discretion most terribly injurious to the poor, unsuspicious girl, whose natural joy at meeting him again had thus undeservedly betrayed her into a situation calculated to excite the most disgraceful suspicions.
“Jack” was, or rather, perhaps, had been, a very harem-scarem sort of youth, but by no means framed to endure with composure the idea of producing serious mischief to a young girl, innocent of everything save a good-natured and friendly recognition of himself.
After the struggle and meditation of a moment, he said, “I will come and see you, my dear Miss Patty. Tell me where you are, and I will call upon you.”
Patty immediately drew forth her little pocket-book, and tearing out a leaf on which she had written her friend Matilda’s address, before they parted at Brighton, presented it to him.
“I am not with papa and mamma now, but visiting a friend,” said she, as she put it into his hands.
Greatly relieved by this intelligence, and choosing what appeared to him a lesser evil, in order to avoid a greater, he once more permitted her to see the smile which had so awakened her young susceptibilities, and said, “That being the ease, dear Patty, I shall come and see you with the greatest pleasure; but you must promise not to mention having met me either to father or mother. I grieve for the necessity which obliges me to impose such uncivil conditions, but I cannot help thinking that, when I assure you this mystery is essential to my interest, you will not refuse to comply with them.”
Nothing could be farther from the delighted Patty’s thoughts than making any difficulty about the matter; and perhaps at the bottom of her heart she was rather glad than otherwise that she was to be his only confidant. —
“I won’t say a single word or syllable to either of them,” she answered with great eagerness. “It was always you and me that was the great friends, you know, Jack, and so we shall be still — shan’t we? But tell me what your real name is before you go. It is not Jack, now, I’ll bet — it is something, that begins with an S, mamma says, because she saw it on the silver fork.”
The young man coloured, and laughed. “You must call me Mr. Steady now, Patty. Good bye — I shall be sure to call on you to-morrow at two o’clock exactly. Good bye!” And again shaking her hand, he withdrew, making her, as he departed, a very respectful bow, for the benefit of his friend, to whom, he pledged his word and honour, on rejoining him, that the young lady he had been talking to was perfectly respectable, and in fact hardly more than a child, whatever he might think to the contrary.
Patty’s first action upon his leaving her, was to clap her hands, which might be interpreted either as a symptom of violent and irrepressible joy, or as a signal to her friend, who was by this time at a considerable distance in advance of her. Miss Matilda Perkins was indeed in a state of very great agitation; and a little forgetful, perhaps, of the duties which her superior age imposed, and which might be thought to include the necessity of not leaving her dear young friend alone under such circumstances, she had pushed onward with all her might, and had by this time nearly reached the top of St. James’s street, relaxing her speed, however, a l
ittle before she turned into the vortex of Piccadilly, in which she suddenly remembered that the highly-connected Miss O’Donagough might possibly look for her in vain. She had not, in truth, the courage to turn her head; being persuaded that if she did, she might he involved as a party in an adventure of which, having “dwelt in decencies” for nearly six-and-thirty years, she was very heartily ashamed.—’
Patty, perceiving that there was some danger of her being left alone in the street, shouted the name of “Matilda!” with all the strength of her lungs, and then set off at full gallop, equally regardless of the elbows or the eyes she encountered.
“What do you run away for at such a rate, Matilda?” cried the panting girl, overtaking her, and once more seizing upon her arm. “What a fool you must be, to be sure! Why, what in the name of wonder did you think was going, to happen to you?”
“Oh! nothing, my dear,” replied Miss Matilda, recovering herself on perceiving that the young lady was alone. “Of course, you know, I could not think there was anything going to happen to me. Whatever notice I get from gentlemen, my dear Patty, is in a very different way from being spoken to by strangers in the-streets. Good heaven! what would poor, dear Foxcroft say if he should hear of my being seen following officers into a saddler’s shop, in St. James’s-street.”
“I would not have believed, if I hadn’t seen it, that you could be such an excessive idiot, Matilda!” replied Patty, with some little warmth. “Do you call Jack a stranger? As for that matter, I am sure you are much more a stranger to me than he is. Dear, darling, delightful, lovely Jack! How I do adore him! And he shall find, too, that I am as true-hearted and faithful a girl as ever was. Why didn’t you look at him, you great goose? You never in all your born days beheld anything one half so handsome.”
“Well, my dearest Patty, now my fright is over, I wish you joy at meeting him with all my heart,” said her companion,” who recollected how exceedingly important to all her own dearest hopes, was the continued affection of her youthful friend. “You must not be angry with me, darling, for being a little frightened at first. You don’t know how particular London people are! I do assure you, that if anybody had seen us going into that shop after those gentlemen, it would have been thought perfectly improper and unladylike. And besides, my dear girl, I do believe that when a woman’s heart is so completely devoted as mine, it makes them always most scrupulously particular in everything they do about other men. I really should have felt that I was acting ungenerously by Foxcroft if I had not come away.”
“AU that may he very fine, and very right and proper for you. I really don’t know anything about middle-aged people like you and Captain Foxcroft. But if you fancy I shall ever meet my own darling Jack without speaking to him, you are quite entirely mistaken. I don’t care a straw whether it is a saddler’s shop, or a devil’s shop. Jack is Jack to me, all the world over.”
“Of course, my dear, he is an acquaintance of yours, and that makes all the difference; and I hope, my dearest girl, that he told you his name.”
“To he sure he did, dear fellow! His name is Steady; and he is to come and call upon me at your house exactly at two o’clock to-morrow.”
“Is he indeed? then we must just tell my sister Louisa, if you please Patty, that Mr. Steady is a friend of your papa’s, and don’t mention anything about St. James’s-street.”
“I don’t care half a farthing what you tell her, Matilda. You may say that he is one of my mother’s fine cousins, if you will. How that I have found him again, I don’t care for any earthly thing beside,” replied Patty. “But, by-the-by,” she added, drawing closer to her companion, and speaking with an air of mystery, “there is a secret about him that he won’t tell to anybody but me. Dear darling! I’ll keep his secret, you see if I don’t.”
“Of course you will, Patty, if he confides it to you. And I must say, that the glance I had of him showed plainly enough that he was somebody. But if he tells you the secret about his disguise on board ship, and all that, there is no doubt but he will tell it to your mamma and your papa too,” rejoined Miss Matilda.
“Ho, but he won’t though!” cried Patty, exultingly. “He told me, dear fellow! that he had very particular reasons indeed for not letting them know anything about it, and you don’t think I am going to be such a monster as to betray him? That’s just what he said himself, dear creature, ‘You won’t betray me, Patty,’ said he; and I’ll see father, mother, uncles, aunts, and cousins too, every one of them in the Bed Sea before I’d hurt a hair of his beautiful head. I can’t help your knowing it, Matilda, because I had told you everything before, and that I must make him understand; unless, indeed, you could be clever enough and kind enough to take yourself off, and your wise sister too, just before two o’clock to-morrow. I had rather five hundred times see him alone, and then he’ll tell me lots more about himself, I’ll be bound. Do you think you could get her out, and keep away for an hour or two, Matilda?”
This proposal very considerably embarrassed the fair individual to whom it was addressed. To disoblige Miss O’Donagough, or in any way to check the intimacy from which she hoped to derive advantages so very essential to her own happiness, was not to be thought of. Yet there was something that rather frightened her in the notion of leaving her friend Patty so entirely to her own discretion as she now proposed; and without answering very explicitly, she only pressed the arm that rested on hers with the caressing fondness so usual between them, and muttered something about its ever being, she was sure, her greatest delight to please her dear Patty in all things.
“That won’t do, Matilda,” cried Patty, suddenly standing stock-still, and very nearly overturning a butcher’s tray, intended to swing innoxiously round her as she passed. “That sort of answer is not worth a pin. I really have a monstrous deal that I want to say to my own dear Jack Steady, and there is more still that I want to have him say to me, and I feel most positively sure that he will be quite glum if there is anybody by but me to hear him. I’m sure, Matilda, I shall always be ready to do as I’d be done by, and I promise faithfully, upon my word and honour, that if you will but go out to-morrow at two o’clock, and take your sister Louisa along with you, I will contrive to let you have a tête-à-tête in our drawing-room with Foxcroft, for just as long as you like, as soon as ever papa has got his nice new house, you know. For papa says he is quite sure that Foxcroft will contrive to get leave of absence on account of his health, or for some excuse or other. He is quite sure of it. So you see, Matilda, that if you will do what I tell you, there is no need that I should he long in your debt.”
The argument thus urged went straight to the heart of Miss Matilda. “Well, my dear,” she replied, “I will see what I can do — but Louisa, of course, is her own mistress, and if she does not choose to take a walk just at that time, you know I can’t make her.”
“But I know that you can,” replied Patty, sharply; “as if I had not seen you come over her hundreds and hundreds of times! And when she has set off with saying, ‘I don’t think I can do that, Matilda,’ haven’t I heard her end at last by, ‘Well, to be sure, I dare say you know what is best, my dear!’”
This being said in Patty’s best style of mimicry, it produced the accustomed meed of admiration from her friend, testified as usual by an assurance that she never did, no, never in her life, hear such a mimic! But ere this oft-recurring expression was well spoken, Patty suddenly stood still, and having a tight hold of Miss Matilda’s arm, caused her to stand still also.
“What is the matter, my dear?” demanded the elder lady.
“Matter!” ejaculated the younger one. “I certainly shall go distracted, that’s all — I certainly shall, Matilda, if you don’t turn back this very instant, and scud along with me to my own bedroom as fast as your legs can carry you.”
“What for, my dear? Shan’t we be very tired, Patty?” demanded Matilda, in a languid voice.
“Tired! What signifies being tired, I should like to know, compared to my not having one
single bit of any ribbon for my neck, or my waist, or my wrists, but that ugly dark blue that papa bought at Brighton? They make such a fuss, both of ’em, about my not spending too much money in ribbons, that I am obliged to be as stingy as a miser over my best, and that’s the reason I left all my pink pinned up safe in silver paper in my drawer. I know it couldn’t make any great difference with you and your sister whether my skin looked better or worse; — but Jack! I vow and declare I would not let Jack come and see me in those nasty, hideous, narrow blue bows, if you’d give me a thousand pounds!”
“I do assure you, Patty,” replied her friend, “that you can’t look more beautiful in anything than you do in those identical blue ribbons. I have said so to Louisa scores of times.”
“Come along, my dear!” was the only reply which the steadfast-minded Miss O’Donagough made to this friendly assurance, and being considerably the stronger of the two, her will proved irresistible, and the two young ladies once more jostled their way along the ever-busy pavement of Piccadilly, and in process of time again reached the O’Donagough lodgings in — street.
The ample face of Mrs. O’Donagough was perceptible above the blind of the parlour window considerably before Patty’s impatient knocking had concluded, and she burst forth upon them into the passage with all the eagerness of maternal anxiety, just as her daughter raised one foot to mount the stairs.
“What in the world is all this for?” demanded Mrs. O’Donagough, laying her hand on the shoulder of Miss Matilda; for by an active movement forward, Patty had escaped her. “What are you come back for?”
Collected Works of Frances Trollope Page 255