Collected Works of Frances Trollope

by Frances Milton Trollope

  “Yes, do, darling, and I will go too, and see if I can find my new friend, Mrs. Allen Barnaby.”

  “Pray, mamma,” said Annie, rising to depart, “have you said anything to papa yet about your travelling scheme?”

  “No, my dear, I have not,” replied her mother, with a smile; “but that is only because I have had no opportunity. I don’t fear any opposition, Annie, there. You know, pretty well as I do, deary, that if I take care that the piquet and the toddy go right, nothing else is likely to go wrong.”

  Annie knew that as far as the word wrong meant opposition, her mother had the best possible grounds, namely, that furnished by many years’ experience, for her confidence in having her own way; so she said no more, but walked off, shaking her head, however, rather mournfully as she went; for though she loved her mother, she loved her father too, and often regretted that his habitual indolence, which seemed to have absorbed everything like activity in his character, had permitted him to lay himself so completely on the shelf.

  CHAPTER XII.

  ANNIE was the first who succeeded in her quest, for she found the spinster sisters sitting most disconsolately in the great saloon, without even the semblance of an occupation, unless the ceaseless fanning of Miss Matilda could be called such, and by no means in a state of spirits to render any conversation they might have together soothing or consolatory to either party. As far as the exciting kind feelings in the breast of Miss Beauchamp could be advantageous to them, their palpable and evident forlornness was in their favour. She looked at them both for a moment, and felt that, English or not, they were thoroughly uncomfortable and forlorn, and had they sat with a pedigree in their hands (instead of a feather fan) — a pedigree proving them to be descended in a direct line from General Washington, she could not have smiled more sweetly, as she stepped forward to address them.

  “I am afraid, ladies, you must find it very dull here,” she said, seating herself opposite, and about midway between the two. “The New Orleans boarding-houses are not very famous for having many books, and it’s so hot here in the daytime, that strangers hardly dare venture into the streets either to look for books or anything else. But mamma and I have plenty up stairs in our own rooms, and we shall be very happy to lend you some if you like it.”

  From the moment she entered, Miss Matilda, who had for many hours been meditating on the possibility of coaxing Mrs. Beauchamp (evidently the principal personage of the boarding-house set) into presenting them to some of her New Orleans friends, changed her attitude of ill-at-ease indolence, into one of fascinating animation, and she immediately replied —

  “Thank you a thousand times, my dear Miss Beauchamp. How excessively kind and amiable! Yes, my dear Miss Beauchamp, I do indeed long for a few of the elegant indulgences to which I have ever been accustomed in my own country. Our residence is quite at the West End, and I am perfectly sure that you are sufficiently well informed to be aware, Miss Beauchamp, that in London nothing gives more decided fashion than that. In short, the fact is, that though I have no doubt in the world but that in a short time we shall like your country, and all the charming people in it excessively, yet just at this moment, that is, just at first, you know, we do find it rather dull.”

  Annie’s only answer to this was a sort of acquiescent bow; and turning her eyes from the elegant speaker, she fixed them then, almost by accident, on the pale face of poor Louisa. That really worthy, but very unfortunate person, felt at the bottom of her heart that in securing her beloved sister from suicide, she had given up everything in the shape of worldly comfort and enjoyment which, had hitherto made her own life so desirable. And that sister was now looking so exceedingly ugly, old, and thin, that Miss Louisa, who watched her with all the tender solicitude of a mother, was falling fast into a profound melancholy, from the conviction, that though the promise she had extorted from her as the price of her own consent to this unhappy expedition, might secure her from self-slaughter, it would not secure her from hating the life so preserved; for as she gazed upon her long, pale, peevish face, she felt most miserably certain that no gentleman on God’s earth, who was in his right senses, would ever think of such a thing as marrying her. When, therefore, Annie Beauchamp’s eye fell upon her, her quiet and usually tranquil features were somewhat agitated by the thoughts that had taken possession of her mind, and her light gray eyes, which were not very large, had more tears in them than they could conveniently hold; but when she caught the glance of the young American fixed upon her, she made an effort to smile, and said, in an accent that spoke a good deal of gratitude —

  “Indeed, young lady, you are very kind.”

  Annie immediately changed her seat for one that was close to her, and taking her hand, said, cheerfully —

  “Now then, Miss Perkins, tell me what sort of a book you like best. Shall it be grave or gay? English or American? Prose or verse?”

  “Any book,” replied Miss Louisa, very considerably comforted at being addressed so kindly! “any book or newspaper in the-world would certainly be greatly more agreeable than sitting with nothing at all to do, of any sort or kind. But the greatest kindness of all would be to give us something that my sister Matilda would like to read. She is a far greater reader than I am at all times, my pleasure being more in seeing that everything is tidy and comfortable at home. But poor Matilda is very fond of a novel, and if you chanced to have a pretty love story that she never happened to meet with before, I do think it would go further to raise up her spirits than anything. And if I could but see her looking a little happy again it would quite set me up.”

  Annie rose with the intention of immediately ransacking her little collection for love; but, as far as her own feelings were concerned, it was greatly more for the sake of the elder sister, than for the gratification of the younger; but Miss Matilda stopped her ere she reached the door, exclaiming —

  “Oh! do not go, my dear Miss Beauchamp! A little of your delightful conversation will do me more good than all the novels, in the world. My elder sister is one of the very best and most ladylike people in the world, I do assure you; though at present, of course, you see her to a disadvantage, so very little dressed as she is, and all that; but though she is quite superior as to her fortune and station in life, and all those sort of advantages, yet I won’t pretend that at her age she would be likely to enjoy su comfortable chat with a young person like you in the same way that I should do. I need not point out to you the difference there is between us in age; it is quite extraordinary, isn’t it? A great many people won’t believe that we are sisters. But I was going to say that if you happen to have a newspaper, there is nothing in the world that Louisa likes so well; and then while she is poring over that, you and I can talk.”

  Miss Beauchamp answered not a word to this, and we have therefore no right, perhaps, to be less discreet concerning her feelings than she was herself; but though she spoke not, she bit her beautiful under-lip severely, and if she had been sufficiently imprudent to speak at all, it would have been in a manner but little likely to assist the object confided to her by her mamma. She appeared, however, to be entirely occupied by taking a thorn out of her finger, and turned to the window in order to attain the degree of sight necessary to this delicate operation; and then, after the delay of a moment, she again turned to leave the room, saying that she would return again in a moment.

  “What a kind, sweet-tempered young thing!” said Miss Louisa, as soon as the door was closed.

  “A very nice girl indeed,” replied her sister. “Her eyes are rather too large, and her hair too abundant, and too dark, to satisfy my ideas of perfect feminine beauty; but nevertheless she is certainly very pretty looking, and most uncommonly agreeable, considering she has never seen London, nor even Cheltenham or Brighton. I hope we shall become exceedingly intimate, for I think we shall suit exactly. I have got dreadfully tired of poor dear Patty, and that’s the truth, though of course I don’t mean to let any of ’em find it out. But, upon my word, it is enough to make
anybody sick, hearing her run on so everlasting about her husband; and, to tell you the truth, Louisa, I am terribly afraid her husband begins to think so too; for it is not once, nor twice either, that I have seen him yawn as if his jaws would crack, when she has been kissing him; and it is plain enough, poor thing, that she does not at all approve his taking so much notice of any one else, for I have got some terrible sour looks from her on board ship when he has ventured to come where I was standing to watch the flying fish, or anything of that kind. Away she was, after him in a minute. But I am sure she need not have been afraid, for the very last thing I should ever think of doing would be encouraging the attentions of a friend’s husband.”

  “Oh! dear no! I am sure you would not do any such thing as that, Matilda,” said her sister, looking rather surprised and shocked at the suggestion; “but I can’t say—”

  ‘ Here she was interrupted by the return of Annie, with three thin volumes of unmistakable circulating library complexion in one hand, and a gray-tinted newspaper in the other. Setting the books down on a table by which she passed, Miss Beauchamp approached the meek Louisa with a newspaper.

  “I am afraid this will not entertain you so well as a London newspaper would do, Miss Perkins; but at least you will find one half-column down here that is all about England, and you must not be angry if you do not find it very civil, because our newspaper people think there is no opportunity of serving their own country at once so profitable and so cheap as by abusing yours.”

  This was said in a tone and spirit so very different from that in which, a short hour or so before, the same young lady had discoursed on the subject of England to Mr. Egerton, that any person, hearing both, may be well tempted to accuse her of inconsistency; and really I know no defence for her, save that she was a young lady — a class which from long usage, by this time grown into something like prescriptive privilege, holds itself exempt from the necessity of always being of the same opinion.

  “I am very much obliged to you, indeed,” said Miss Louisa, receiving the odd-looking pages with a smile of genuine pleasure and gratitude “It is so very kind of you to think about me!” And while Annie still stood beside her, she turned her eyes to the paper, and began reading it, to show, perhaps, that she really did take great interest in a newspaper. The first, and indeed as it seemed, the only thing which particularly attracted her attention, however, on the present occasion, was a succession of little dingy pictures, one of which appeared to adorn every paragraph in the page which first happened to meet her eye.

  “What are all these little men running meant for?” said Miss Louisa, looking up very innocently in the face of her new friend. “Is it to make the newspaper look pretty?”

  Annie laughed.

  “No, Miss Perkins,” she replied, “neither the portraits nor the originals of these running gentry are counted very pretty in the United States. No! these figures are intended for use, not ornament; they are placed there to call the attention of the reader to the advertisement which follows, which is always about some runaway slave or other, and is to give notice that any one who finds him or her — for the ladies sometimes run as well as the gentlemen — is to catch them, and send them back to their owners.”

  Miss Louisa, though, as I have said, a very worthy woman, was not a very well-informed one, and knew as little about the great transatlantic subject of negro slavery as most people. Nevertheless she had heard of such a thing, and in a general way considered it, like the rest of the European world, men, women, and children, to be something exceedingly atrocious and unchristian. Without the very slightest affectation, therefore, for there was no such thing in her, she shuddered visibly, as her beautiful companion uttered the above words, and exclaimed involuntarily, “Oh dear! oh dear! how very shocking that sounds!”

  Miss Beauchamp coloured slightly, and turned away.

  “I have brought you some looks, ma’am,” she said, addressing herself to Matilda, after the silence of a moment. “I am sorry

  I cannot stay with you any longer, but I am obliged to be up stairs.”

  Miss Matilda began a flourishing speech, about sorrow at losing her, and gratitude for her books, but before she had half finished the young lady had given them both a valedictory nod, and disappeared. The situation of both sisters was, however, essentially improved. Louisa had not only her newspaper to read, which, despite its melancholy pictures, was a great deal better than nothing, but she had also the great, the very great consolation, of seeing her sister look ten years younger, and twenty times less discontented, than before the fair Annie had paid them her unexpected visit, and before she had got three volumes of native manufactory, concerning love and matrimony, to read. Nor did these favourable symptoms altogether disappear even when she discovered that her book, though exceedingly interesting, was not without its faults, the greatest of which, in her eyes, was the gross absurdity committed by the author in introducing his heroine, as already in the perfection of beauty at the ridiculous age of sixteen! This blunder so strongly affected her that she actually began to think aloud, and exclaimed, without any intention of consulting her sister on the subject, “What a pity to spoil the whole interest by such nonsense as that! Any rational person, who knows anything of human nature, must be constantly expecting to hear of her being whipped and put to bed for some childish naughtiness or other. There is but one way of my finding any interest in the story, I am quite sure, and that way I shall take, for it seems beautifully written, and full of the most touching sentiments — I shall just consider it a misprint, and correct sixteen into six-and-twenty at the very least.”

  Perhaps at the bottom of her heart might have lurked the thought that to produce the perfection of full-grown female sensibility another ten years might have been added, with very manifest advantage to the interest and the truth of the story.

  But notwithstanding these drawbacks of young love on the one hand, and negro slavery on the other, both the sisters felt themselves considerably better than they had done since they landed on the shores of the United States.

  The position, meanwhile, of the real heroine of these pages was still more essentially improved. At the same time that her daughter went to visit the Miss Perkinses, Mrs. Beauchamp, by the aid of the black waiting-maid, Cleopatra, sought and found the retreat of Mrs. Allen Barnaby. The major having, as usual, wandered to a billiard-table, his lady was left in undisturbed possession of “her chamber,” and was employing herself at the moment her new friend entered, in preparing for her important literary undertaking, being in the act of writing down, in a little blank-paper book, which she had just sewed up for the purpose, the heads of various subjects to which she immediately intended to direct her attention. Nothing could exceed the pleasure she felt at seeing Mrs. Beauchamp, except what she expressed. She immediately laid down her pen, and hastening towards her, performed a ceremonious courtesy, while she frankly extended her hand, which was intended to typify and express, as it were, all the stately dignity of the old world, combined with the unsophisticated cordiality of the new.

  “I hope I don’t break in upon you, ma’am, at a time that don’t convene?” said Mrs. Beauchamp. “I see that you are already got to your writing, which agrees with what your good gentleman told me, but now, was the employment as was most likely to occupy you just at the present.”

  “And for that very reason, my dearest Mrs. Beauchamp,” replied the animated Mrs. Allen Barnaby, “I am enchanted beyond what I am able to express, at your having the excessive kindness to call on me. It is here only, Mrs. Beauchamp, in the retirement of my own apartment, that such a visit can be duly appreciated. I dare say my excellent husband, Major Allen Barnaby — one of the best of men, Mrs. Beauchamp — I dare say he may have ventured to hint to you that my purpose in coming to this most interesting of countries is, in effect, to do the very exact thing of which you were so eloquently speaking last night?”

  “Yes, Mrs. Allen Barnaby, he has indeed, ma’am,” replied the visitor, “and I can
’t say but what I heard the news with very particular pleasure, seeing that you are a lady so every way qualified to perform the work proposed, with honour to yourself, and satisfaction to those about whose concerns it is your intention to instruct the world. And if you do this, ma’am, you will have the glory of achieving just what nobody else that has tried, has ever been able to do yet.”

  “If I should indeed be so happy,” replied Mrs. Allen Barnaby, modestly casting her eyes upon the ground, “I feel sure that I shall owe it to you. I certainly did come to this country solely for the purpose of writing upon it; but I always felt, even when most eager to undertake the task, that I must fail as so many others have done before me, unless I had the good fortune to form an acquaintance with some accomplished person of my own sex, who should be induced to assist me by counsel and information, suck as, of course, none but a native can give.”

  “And it is that very thought of yours, ma’am, I will venture to say, that will certify your success,” replied her new friend. “It is just exactly what nobody has ever done before, and it is for that very reason, I expect, that no traveller has ever yet produced a book upon the Union that can justly be called fit to be read.”

  “Heaven grant that by your assistance I may avoid their errors!” cried Mrs. Allen Barnaby, fervently casting her eyes towards the ceiling of the room. “I can safely say that no one ever undertook a task which caused greater anxiety, or a more ardent desire of success.”