Collected Works of Frances Trollope

by Frances Milton Trollope

  “Nay, dearest! Do not stand upon ceremony with me!” returned his gay little wife, bestowing a playful caress upon him. “Perhaps you have found out, you sharp-witted creature, that I have not the very highest possible opinion of Arabella myself. But it is possible, you know, that the becoming Rupert’s wife may improve her. I have often thought that it would be a monstrous good thing for her if she were married, because it would be impossible for her to make such a fool of herself then as she does now. But on the other hand, it is quite certain that her money will remain the same; and just think, Adolphe, what is to become of your dear friend when the old baron dies!.... He cannot leave him that great grand room, and all the books in it, by way of a legacy; and if he did, the poor dear fellow would be obliged to sit and starve there, in the midst of them, for I am sure he would not sell one of the books to save his life.”

  “Lucy!” replied her husband, rather solemnly, “I think Rupert Odenthal would rather starve, than marry a woman he disliked.”

  “Disliked! Oh, Adolphe! What strong words you do use!” exclaimed his wife. “I can’t think how you can talk of disliking such a beautiful creature as Arabella! It is very natural that I should not be very fond of Arabella, because she is so much older than I am, and has always wanted to tyrannize over me; but that is no reason at all why such a young man as Rupert should not both admire her beauty, and like her fortune.”

  “Perfectly true, my dear love,” replied Adolphe, laughing; “and though I don’t think I should like to propose the match to him, I promise you to do nothing to impede it. Heaven knows that if I did not think she would plague him, there is nothing I should like so much as seeing him placed in the possession of an independent fortune, and our both of us having, moreover, the privilege of calling him brother.”

  “Well, now! that is beautifully said, Adolphe!” exclaimed his wife, gaily. “And I may trust you then, may I not? I may trust, I mean, that you will say nothing to Rupert to set him against her?”

  “Certainly you may,” replied her husband. “Indeed, to say the truth,” he added, “I do not feel at all disposed to speak otherwise than kindly of her; for if you are right, Lucy, in believing that she wishes to marry my friend Rupert, it proves her to be of a very noble and disinterested character, for she must be quite aware what his position is.”

  “Oh, yes! She is quite perfectly, and altogether aware, of what his position is,” returned Lucy. “And the only thing necessary to render the marriage a happy one, is that Rupert too, after they are married, should be equally well aware what her position will be then. All wives, you know, my dear, are obliged to do exactly what their husbands choose; and as your friend Rupert is a very sensible man, he will not choose that his wife should behave like a fool; and that will make a great improvement in Arabella.”

  The conversation proceeded for some time longer, in a tone which seemed to hover between jest and earnest; but it ended, however, by Adolphe promising very seriously, that he would neither do, nor say anything, to prejudice his friend against Miss Morrison; nor, in short, do anything which might, in any way, impede the marriage which his wife so very greatly desired to bring about.

  And in truth, Count Adolphe himself, when left to take a sober, solitary view of the affair, began to think that such a marriage as Lucy contemplated for Rupert, was perhaps the only means by which such a degree of independence could be secured to him as might enable him, when his present patron was no more, to indulge his studious habits, without running any risk of being starved by doing so.

  Matters were in this state when the promised dancing party took place; and the whole neighbourhood, not a very large one, seemed assembled together with the pre-determination of being superlatively gay and happy.

  The venerable Baron von Schwanberg did not always think it necessary to attend his daughter to the parties assembled for the express purpose of dancing; considering her dame de compagnie a sufficient chaperon, and his librarian and private secretary a sufficient suite. But upon this particular occasion, he proclaimed his intention of accompanying her party, stating his reason for doing so, to be his wish to see the beautiful English heiress, Morrison, performing the national dance.

  This exceedingly flattering compliment was felt as he intended it should be by the beauty, who prepared herself accordingly to be more captivating than ever.

  It is possible, indeed, that the extreme care bestowed upon every part of her attire, might have had its origin in the silence of Rupert, rather than in the eloquence of his patron. In fact, Arabella began to feel a good deal surprised, and a little alarmed, at the no progress she had made in her resolutely-purposed conquest of Rupert: it was really the first time in her life that she had ever encountered so much difficulty in achieving this object; for her beauty was precisely of the kind to produce a sudden fever of admiration, while her demeanour was precisely of the kind to encourage the most frank declaration of it.

  It is likely enough, however, notwithstanding the intrinsic value of her fair hand, that many who had scrupled not to avow their adoration of her beauty, might have scrupled about giving their name in exchange for her wealth, even if her unbridled covetousness for new conquests had not led her to leave the victims she had subdued, for the sake of pursuing others who were still unscathed.

  There could be no doubt, however, that during the last ten years she might have been married, at least, as many times, if such had been her will; but hitherto she had evidently preferred hitting her game, to taking possession of it.

  Upon the present occasion, however, her feelings were wholly different; whether this difference arose from her having really received a deeper impression than she had ever felt before, or merely from the eagerness occasioned by the difficulty of obtaining her object, may be doubted. There might, perhaps, be a mixture of both; and moreover, it is by no means impossible that her having listened to a conversation between the young ladies, in which one was almost convulsed with laughter herself, while reducing the other to the same extremity, by relating how she had positively heard an old maid talking of women who were at least five-and-twenty, and calling them GIRLS!

  To an unmarried beauty of twenty-eight, there was a mixture of something terrific in this jest; and it might certainly have some effect in producing the resolution which she speedily came to, of marrying Rupert, as well as falling in love with him.

  She was not insensible to the fact, that Rupert had not as yet followed the example of all the other men on whom she had bestowed an equal degree of encouragement; that is to say, he had not declared himself her adorer.

  The anger which might have been created by this, was effectively checked by the persuasion, that his silence was occasioned by timidity, and not by indifference; and under the influence of this persuasion, she very deliberately made up her mind to let him understand that, in her estimation, love should for ever be “lord of all;” and that her beautifully fair hand, with her eighty thousand pounds sterling in it, were at his service.

  CHAPTER XL.

  IF any kind dickey-bird, or prophetic mesmerising friend, had whispered in Rupert’s ear, as he took his accustomed place, as suite, in the carriage which was to convey him to the promised waltzing party, “that a beautiful lady would very nearly make him an offer of marriage before he returned home,” he would probably have been seized with such a fit of the tooth-ache, as might have sufficed to excuse his bolting out of the carriage, and hiding himself in his bed-room. But as no such miracle was performed in his favour, he drove on, poor, unconscious youth, and made his entrée very nearly at the same time as his self destined bride. The scene was a very gay one, and as bright and beautiful as pretty women, flowering shrubs, and abundance of wax-lights could make it.

  Adolphe had not forgotten the promise he had given his wife respecting the arrangements for the first waltz; and it was, therefore, as the partner of the Baron von Schwanberg’s librarian, that the beautiful Arabella prepared to exhibit her unequalled loveliness, and her peculiarly bewitch
ing style of dancing.

  It was a searching glance that Rupert sent round the circle as he stood up with her. This glance was not in the hope of finding anything he wished to see, but precisely the contrary; and though carefully searching, it was perfectly satisfactory, for no Baron de Nordorffe was there. Poor Rupert was perhaps hardly conscious himself of the effect which this discovery produced on his spirits, but for the moment it was positively favourable to Arabella, for it caused him to dance with a much greater degree of animation than was usual to him.

  Arabella was aware of the animation, but altogether mistook the cause; and before the dance ended she had succeeded in fully persuading herself that all the coldness she had hitherto perceived in him, had arisen solely from his timidity, and the painful consciousness which accompanied it, that the librarian of Schloss Schwanberg must not lift his eyes with the audacity of love to the beautiful possessor of eighty thousand pounds sterling.

  There are, doubtless, to be found, in these rapidly improving latter days, a multitude of highly-educated young ladies, who, although conscious that their respective papas have acquired colossal fortunes by a traffic in money, or money’s worth, are yet aware that not quite every young man who dances with them, would be delighted to marry them, if he could.

  But our Arabella Morrison was not one of these. Her father had spent his entire life in successful industry, and being by nature of a confiding domestic temperament, he had been in the constant habit of indulging himself, when in the bosom of his family, with a good deal of comfortable, confidential boasting, all tending to show, and to prove, that money formed not only the sinews of war, but of everything else in civilised human society... that the man, or woman, who possessed it might, if they knew how to use it, possess anything, and everything, they wished for, from one end of the earth to the other... and that only those who had it not, were in any danger of finding themselves obliged to sacrifice their own inclinations to those of other people.

  “I could find in my heart something like pity,” he was wont to say, “for any poor devils who had got into mischief by reason of their poverty; but I have no pity whatever for rich folks, who don’t know the value of what they have got.” The ideas thus impressed upon the minds of his daughters concerning the importance of the wealth which it was in his power and purpose to bestow on them, was, doubtless, influential in forming the characters of both, but in a very unequal degree.

  Her own beauty, and her own fortune, filled the mind of the eldest too completely to leave room for any feelings not connected either with one or the other. But it was not so with the young Lucy. She was light-hearted and affectionate; and although her own large fortune, and her sister’s still larger one, were oftener in her thoughts than might have been the case had she been accustomed to a higher class of ideas as the theme of daily domestic talk, she had still enough of unspoiled native material about her to love what was good, and hate what was bad, without any reference to her own particular interest.

  It was this feeling which led her to wish very seriously, in the midst of all her fun and frolic, that Rupert might, in sober earnest, become the lover of her wealthy sister; and her inherited and habitual faith in the influence of wealth, led her to believe that there could be no difficulty whatever in bringing this about, provided the young man was made aware that the hand of her sister was really attainable.

  Arabella, meanwhile, on her side was, at least, equally confident that either her beauty, or her wealth, was sufficient to make him her slave (or, in vulgar parlance, her husband), and that nothing but his respect for her superior station was likely to impede his throwing himself at her feet.

  While the thoughts of the two English sisters were thus generously engrossed by this very obscure young man, he was, at the bottom of his ungrateful heart, as unmindful of them both, as if they had been a pair of pretty goldfinches, imported by his friend Adolphe, as specimens.

  As such, however, he treated them both with the sort of consideration and attention which he would have bestowed on anything considered as valuable or interesting by this much-loved Mend. But beyond this he certainly never bestowed a thought upon them; and upon this particular occasion, while one of these fair importations was bringing every faculty, and almost every muscle, into action in the hope of enchanting him, and the other generously working her active little brain to discover the best way of bringing a marriage between her wealthy sister, and his penniless self to a happy conclusion (before the fair Arabella changed her mind), he forgot as nearly as it was possible for him to do, that they existed.

  It is true, indeed, that he danced with them both, but he danced with Gertrude likewise; and though there was certainly no perceptible change in her gentle, equable manner to him, he felt, from some cause or other, which it would be difficult very clearly to define, that he had never enjoyed a ball so much in his life.

  The unhoped-for absence of the young Baron Nordorffe might have had something to do with it, or it might be that his recent conversation with his mother had made him conscious that he had indeed been unjust to Gertrude; and he was now, perhaps, feeling happy, because his heart told him that he was unjust to her no longer.

  In truth, as he looked at her beautiful face, and read there the noble calmness, the thoughtful intelligence, and the gentle content, which it expressed, he felt that, in the words which he had spoken to his mother respecting her, he had, indeed, done her great injustice.

  Nothing makes people so gracious and so agreeable as the sensation of happiness; and so gracious and so agreeable had Rupert been, that, far from feeling in despair, the beautiful Arabella laid her head that night upon her pillow, with the delightful conviction that the handsomest man her eyes had ever looked upon, only wanted a little more encouragement to throw himself at her feet.

  And before she closed her eyes in sleep, she very solemnly told herself that he should have whatever degree of encouragement might be still required to bring him there. Whatever deficiency she had seen in his apparent admiration of her universally acknowledged beauty, she attributed with great satisfaction, and the most undoubting confidence, to the awe naturally inspired in his mind, by the inequality of their stations in life.

  “Had he dared to make me an offer of marriage this evening, I should most assuredly have refused him.”... Thus ran her mental soliloquy; “for it would have been a presumption unpardonable, even in him, unequalled as he is! Nothing — no — nothing but the most frank and generous encouragement on my part could justify such audacity on his. I am thankful that he has not been guilty of this; for I must, in justice to my own elevated position, have refused him, if he had done so, devotedly as I am attached to him. Noble-looking, graceful, enchanting Rupert! I have often fancied myself in love, but I never knew what love really is, till now! And shall I, then, refuse to make both him and myself happy for life, merely because circumstances oblige me to speak first, instead of him? Young as I still am, I have lived long enough to know the symptoms of love when I see them. No man’s eyes ever sparkled and danced in his head as those of Rupert did to-night, without his being in love! Luckily for me, and my adored Rupert, there is no living soul in the whole wide world who has either the right or the power to control me! Our love shall be as faithful as it is fervent, for never can he, nor will he, forget the generosity which makes me indifferent to his total want of fortune; nor can I ever hope, or expect, or even wish, to see any other man looking so gloriously handsome as he did to-night!”

  Such were the last waking thoughts of the beautiful Arabella on her return from the ball, which, in a greater or less degree, had proved so very agreeable to some others of the party; nor were her waking thoughts on the following morning at all less passionately tender, or less devotedly generous.

  She had found the means of making herself a very decided favourite with the Baron von Schwanberg, probably because she had acted by him as her principles taught her to act by every created man. None were too young — none were too old — to be captivated; an
d the Baron von Schwanberg, like a great many other old gentlemen with whom she had made acquaintance, was ready to declare that she was by far the most charming young lady he had ever known.

  And she, on her side, declared herself on this occasion, as on many former ones, to be very proud of the admiration which old gentlemen in general expressed for her; for it proved clearly, she said, that she had a great and praiseworthy respect for old age. Her saucy sister, indeed, puzzled her a little one day by asking her, when she was boasting of this amiable feeling, why old ladies did not seem to like her as much as old gentlemen?

  It was from the stately Baron von Schwanberg himself that the invitation proceeded which led to the engagement, the remembrance of which so delightfully cheered the waking thoughts of Arabella. He had himself invited her and her sister to accompany Adolphe to the castle on that day, and to dine with them sans ceremonie. The two young men (Adolphe and Rupert) having previously made an arrangement to ride together to a little town at the distance of a dozen miles, where Rupert had some commission to execute for his patron.

  The invitation had been as cordially accepted as it was given, and the enamoured beauty had decided upon a plan before she closed her eyes in sleep, by which she flattered herself she should at once bring affairs to the happy crisis at which she was impatient to see them arrive.

  CHAPTER XLI.

  COUNT ADOLPHE escorted the carriage which conveyed the fair sisters to Schloss Schwanberg, and then proceeded with his friend upon their proposed expedition.

  Having paid their smiling compliments to the gracious baron, the ladies repaired with Gertrude to the library, where a portfolio of new caricatures, just arrived from Paris, promised to afford them considerable amusement.