The Wanderer; or, Female Difficulties (Volume 5 of 5)

Alarmed, now, yet more powerfully than disgusted, she compelled herself to tap at the door of Mrs Howel, and to beg admission.

She received no answer. A second and a third attempt failed equally. Affrighted more seriously, she hastened to the outer room; where a man, Hilson, she supposed, was just quitting Mrs Rawlins.

'Mrs Rawlins,' she cried; 'I beseech you not to send any one off, till you have received fresh directions.'

Mrs Rawlins desired to know whether this were the command of her lady.

'It will be,' Juliet replied, 'when I have spoken to her again.'

Mrs Rawlins answered, that her lady was always accustomed to be obeyed at once; and told Hilson to make haste.

Juliet entreated for only a moment's delay; but the man would not listen.

Though from justice Juliet could have nothing to fear, the idea of being forced to own herself, when a peace-officer was sent for, to avoid being examined as a criminal, filled her with such horrour and affright, that, calling out, 'Stop! stop! I beseech you stop! – ' she ran after the man, with a precipitate eagerness, that made her nearly rush into the arms of a gentleman, who, at that moment, having just passed by Hilson, filled up the way.

Without looking at him, she sought to hurry on; but, upon his saying, 'I ask pardon, Ma'am, for barricading your passage in this sort;' she recognized the voice of her first patron, the Admiral.

Charmed with the hope of succour, 'Is it you, Sir?' she cried. 'Oh Sir, stop that person! – Call to him! Bid him return! I implore you! – '

'To be sure I will, ma'am!' answered he, courteously taking off his hat, though appearing much amazed; and hallooing after Hilson, 'Hark'ee, my lad! be so kind to veer about a bit.'

Hilson, not venturing to shew disrespect to the uniform of the Admiral, stood still.

The Admiral then, putting on his hat, and conceiving his business to be done, was passing on; and Hilson grinning at the short-lived impediment, was continuing his route; but the calls and pleadings of Juliet made the Admiral turn back, and, in a tone of authority, and with the voice of a speaking trumpet, angrily cry, 'Halloo, there! Tack about and come hither, my lad! What do you go t'other way for, when a lady calls you? By George, if they had you aboard, they'd soon teach you better manners!'

Juliet, again addressing him, said, 'Oh Sir! how good you are! how truly benevolent! – Detain him but till I speak with his lady, and I shall be obliged to you eternally!'

'To be sure I will, Ma'am!' answered the wondering Admiral. 'He sha'n't pass me. You may depend upon that.'

Juliet, meaning now to make her sad and forced confession, re-entered the first apartment; and was soliciting, through Mrs Rawlins, for an audience with Mrs Howel; when Hilson, surlily returning, preceded the petitioner to his lady; and complained that he had been set upon by a bully of the young woman's.

Mrs Howel, coming forth, with a wrath that was deaf to prayer or representation, gave orders that the master of the house should be called to account for such an insult to one of her people.

The master of the house appearing, made a thousand excuses for what had happened; but said that he could not be answerable for people's falling to words upon the stairs.

Mrs Howel insisted upon reparation; and that those who had affronted her people should be told to go out of the house; or she herself would never enter it again.

The landlord declared that he did not know how to do such a thing, for the gentleman was his honour the Admiral; who was come to spend two or three days there, from the shipping at Torbay.

If it were a general-officer who had acted thus, she said, he could certainly give some reason for his conduct; and she desired the landlord to ask it of him in her name.

In vain, during this debate, Juliet made every concession, save that of delivering her work-bag to the scrutiny of Mrs Rawlins; nothing less would satisfy the enraged Mrs Howel, who resisted all overtures for a tête à tête; determined publicly to humble the object of her wrath.

The Admiral, who was found standing sentinel at the door, desired an audience of the lady himself.

Mrs Howel accorded it with readiness; ordering Hilson, Mrs Rawlins, and the landlord, to remain in the room.

CHAPTER LXXXVII

Mrs Howel received the Admiral, seated, with an air of state, upon her arm-chair; at one side of which stood Mrs Rawlins, and at the other Hilson. The landlord was stationed near the door; and Juliet, indignant, though trembling, placed herself at a window; determining rather, with whatever mortification, to seek the protection of the Admiral, than to avow who she was thus publicly, thus disgracefully, and thus compulsorily.

The Admiral entered with the martial air of a man used to command; and whose mind was made up not to be put out of his way. He bestowed, nevertheless, three low bows, with great formality, to the sex of Mrs Howel; to the first of which she arose and courtsied, returning the two others by an inclination of the head, and bidding Hilson bring the Admiral a chair.

The Admiral, having adjusted himself, his hat, and his sword to his liking, said, 'I wish you good morning, Ma'am. You won't take it amiss, I hope, that I make free to wait upon you myself, for the sake of having a small matter of discourse with you, about a certain chap that I understand to be one of your domestics; a place whereof, if I may judge by what I have seen of him, he is not over and above worthy.'

'If any of my people, Sir,' answered Mrs Howel, 'have forgotten what is due to an officer of your rank, I shall take care to make them sensible of my displeasure.'

The Admiral, much gratified, made her a low bow, saying, 'A lady, Ma'am, such as I suppose you to be, can't fail having a right way of thinking. But that sort of gentry, as I have taken frequent note, have an ugly kind of a knack, of treating people rather short that have got a favour to ask; the which I don't uphold. And this is the main reason that I think it right to give you an item of my opinion upon this matter, respecting that lad; who just now, in my proper view, let a young gentlewoman call and squall after him, till she was black in the face, without so much as once veering round, to say, Pray, Ma'am, what do you please to want?'

Hilson, now, triumphant that he could plead his haste to obey the commands of his lady, was beginning an affronted self-defence; when the Admiral, accidentally perceiving Juliet, hastily arose; and in a fit of unrestrained choler, clinching his double fist at Hilson, cried, 'Why what sort of a fellow are you, Sir? to bring me a chair while you see a lady standing? Which do you take to be strongest? An old weather beaten tar, such as I am; or a poor weak female, that could not lend a hand to the pump, thof the vessel were going to the bottom?'

Approaching Juliet, then with his own arm-chair, he begged her to be seated; saying, 'The lad will take care to bring another to me, I warrant him! A person who has got a scrap of gold-lace sewed upon his jacket, is seldom overlooked by that kind of gentry; for which reason I make no great account of complaisance, when I am dizened in my full dress uniform, – which, by the way, is a greater ceremony-monger than this, by thus much (measuring with his finger) more of tinsel!'

Juliet, gratefully thanking him, but declining his offer, thought this an opportunity not to be missed, to attempt, under his courageous auspice, to escape. She courtsied to him, therefore, and was walking away: but Mrs Howel, swelling with ire, already, at such civility to a creature whom she had condemned to scorn, now flamed with passion, and openly told the landlord, to let that young woman pass at his peril.

Juliet, who saw in the anger which was mixed with the amazement of the Admiral, that she had a decided defender at hand, collected her utmost presence of mind, and, advancing to Mrs Howel, said, 'I have offered to you, Madam, any explanation you may require alone; but in public I offer you none!'

'If you think yourself still dealing with a novice of the inexperience of sixteen,' answered Mrs Howel, 'you will find yourself mistaken. I will neither trust to the arts of a private recital, nor save your pride from a public examination.'

Then, addressing the Admiral, 'All yesterday morning, Sir,' she continued, 'I had sundry articles, such as rings, bank-notes, and letters of value, dispersed in my apartment, from a security that it was sacred; but the chambermaid informs me, that she caught this young woman entering it, under pretence of waiting upon a young lady, then in the inner room; and the same chambermaid, an hour after, found that she was still here; and endeavouring to conceal, in her work-bag something that she had wrapt into a sheet of paper, that was confessedly pilfered from my table.' —

The Admiral, observing, in the midst of the disturbance of Juliet at this attack, an air of offended dignity, which urged him to believe that she was innocent, unhesitatingly answered, ''Tis an old saying, Madam, and a wise one, that standers-by see the most of the game; and I have taken frequent note, that we are all of one mind, till we have heard two sides of the question: for which reason I hold it but fair, that the young gentlewoman should be asked what she has to say for herself.'

'Can you suppose, Sir,' said Mrs Howel, the veins of whose face and throat now looked bursting, 'that I mean to canvass this matter upon terms of equality? that I intend to be my own pleader against a pauper and an impostor?' —

Juliet here held her hand upon her forehead, as if scarcely able to sustain the indignant pain with which she was seized; and the fierce frown of the Admiral, showed his gauntlet not merely ready to be flung on the ground, but almost in the face of her adversary; Mrs Howel, however, went on.

'I do not pretend to affirm that any thing has been purloined; but the circumstances of the case are certainly extraordinary; and I should be sorry to run the risk of wrongfully suspecting, – should something hereafter be missing, – any of my own people. I demand, therefore, immediately, an explanation of this transaction.'

The Admiral, full of angry feelings as he looked at the panting Juliet, replied, himself; 'To my seeming, Madam, the short cut to the truth in this business, would be for you to cast an eye upon your own affairs; which I doubt not but you will find in very good trim; and if you should like to know what passes in my mind, I must needs make bold to remark, that I think the so doing would be more good natured, by a fellow-creature, than putting a young gentlewoman out of countenance by talking so high: which, moreover, proves no fact.'

'I am infinitely indebted to you, Sir, for the honour of your reprimand,' Mrs Howel, affectedly bowing, answered; 'which I should not have incurred, had it not appeared to me, that it would be far more troublesome to my people, to take an exact review of my various and numerous trinkets and affairs, than for an innocent person to display the contents of a small work-bag.'

'Nay, that is but reasonable,' said the Admiral; 'I won't say to the contrary. And I make small doubt, but that the young gentlewoman desires, in like manner with ourselves, that all should be fair and above board. The work-bag, I'll bet you all I am worth, has not a gimcrack in it that is not her own.'

Juliet, to whom the consciousness was ever uppermost of the suspicious bank-notes, felt by no means inclined to submit to an examination. Again, therefore, and with firmness, she declined giving any communication, but in a private interview with Mrs Howel.

Mrs Howel, now, had not a doubt remaining, that something had been stolen; and, still more desirous to disgrace the culprit, than to recover her property, she declared, that she was perfectly ready to add to the number of witnesses, but resolutely fixed not to diminish it; public shame being the best antidote that could be offered, against those arts by which youth and credulity had been duped.

Juliet now looked down; embarrassed, distressed, yet colouring with resentment. The Admiral, not conceiving her situation; nor being able to comprehend the difficulty of displaying the contents of a work-bag, approached her, and strove to give her courage.

'Come!' he cried, 'young gentlewoman! don't be faint-hearted. Let the lady have her way. I always like to have my own, which makes me speak up for others. Besides which, I have no great opinion of quarrelling for straws. We are none of us the nearer the mark for falling to loggerheads: for which reason I make it a rule never to lose my temper myself; except when I am provoked; so untie your work-bag, young gentlewoman. I'll engage that it will do you no discredit, by the very turn of your eye; for I don't know that, to my seeming, I ever saw a modester look of a face.'

This harangue was uttered in a tone of good-humoured benevolence, that seemed seeking to raise her spirits; yet with an expression of compassion, that indicated a tender feeling for her disturbance; while the marked integrity, and honest frankness of his own character, with a high sense of honour, and a sincere love of virtue, beamed benignly, as he looked at her, in every feature of his kind, though furrowed face.

Juliet was sensibly touched by his goodness and liberality, which surprized from her all precaution; and the concession which she had refused to arrogant menace, she spontaneously granted, to secure the good will of her ancient, though unconscious friend. Raising, therefore, her eyes, in which an expression of gratitude took place of that of sadness, 'I will not, Sir,' she said, 'resist your counsel; though I have in nothing forfeited my inherent right to the inviolability of my property.'

She then put her work-bag into his own hands.