Sandra Belloni. Volume 4

"Coquet et coquette," muttered Lady Charlotte, observing them from a distance; and wondered whether her sex might be strongly represented in this encounter.

It was not in the best taste, nor was it perhaps good policy (if I may quote the Tinley set), for the ladies of Brookfield to subscribe openly to the right of certain people present to be exclusive. Arabella would have answered: "Lady Gosstre and her party cannot associate with you to your mutual pleasure and profit; and do you therefore blame her for not attempting what would fail ludicrously?" With herself, as she was not sorry to show, Lady Gosstre could associate. Cornelia had given up work to become a part of the Court. Adela made flying excursions over the lawn. Laura Tinley had the field below and Mr. Pericles to herself. That anxious gentleman consulted his watch from time to time, as if he expected the birth of an event.

Lady Gosstre grew presently aware that there was more acrimony in Freshfield Sumner's replies to Sir Twickenham (whom he had seduced into a political argument) than the professional wit need employ; and as Mr. Powys's talk was getting so attractive that the Court had become crowded, she gave a hint to Georgiana and Lady Charlotte, prompt lieutenants, whose retirement broke the circle.

"I never shall understand how it was done," Adela said subsequently. It is hoped that everybody sees the importance of understanding such points.

She happened to be standing alone when a messenger came up to her and placed a letter in her hand, addressed to her sister Cornelia. Adela walked slowly up to the heights. She knew Mr. Barrett's handwriting. "Good heavens!"—her thought may be translated out of Fine Shades—"does C. really in her heart feel so blind to our situation that she can go on playing still?" When she reached the group it was to hear Mr. Powys speaking of Mr. Barrett. Cornelia was very pale, and stood wretchedly in contrast among the faces. Adela beckoned her to step aside. "Here is a letter," she said: "there's no postmark. What has been the talk of that man?"

"Do you mean of Mr. Barrett?" Cornelia replied:—"that his father was a baronet, and a madman, who has just disinherited him."

"Just?" cried Adela. She thought of the title. Cornelia had passed on. A bizarre story of Mr. Barrett's father was related to Adela by Sir Twickenham. She grappled it with her sense, and so got nothing out of it. "Disinherited him because he wrote to his father, who was dying, to say that he had gained a livelihood by playing the organ! He had a hatred of music? It's incomprehensible! You know, Sir Twickenham, the interest we take in Mr. Barrett." The masked anguish of Cornelia's voice hung in her ears. She felt that it was now possible Cornelia might throw over the rich for the penniless baronet, and absolutely for an instant she thought nakedly, "The former ought not to be lost to the family." Thick clouds obscured the vision. Lady Gosstre had once told her that the point of Sir Twickenham's private character was his susceptibility to ridicule. Her ladyship had at the same time complimented his discernment in conjunction with Cornelia. "Yes," Adela now thought; "but if my sister shows that she is not so wise as she looks!" Cornelia's figure disappeared under the foliage bordering Besworth Lawn.

As usual, Arabella had all the practical labour—a fact that was noticed from the observant heights. "One sees mere de famille written on that young woman," was the eulogy she won from Lady Gosstre. How much would the great dame have marvelled to behold the ambition beneath the bustling surface! Arabella was feverish, and Freshfield Sumner reported brilliant things uttered by her. He became after a time her attendant, aide, and occasional wit-foil. They had some sharp exchanges: and he could not but reflect on the pleasure her keen zest of appreciation gave him compared with Cornelia's grave smile, which had often kindled in him profane doubts of the positive brightness, or rapidity of her intelligence.

"Besworth at sunset! What a glorious picture to have living before you every day!" said Lady Charlotte to her companion.

Wilfrid flushed. She read his look; and said, when they were out of hearing, "What a place for old people to sit here near the end of life! The idea of it makes one almost forgive the necessity for getting old— doesn't it? Tracy Runningbrook might make a poem about silver heads and sunset—something, you know! Very easy cantering then—no hunting! I suppose one wouldn't have even a desire to go fast—a sort of cock-horse, just as we began with. The stables, let me tell you, are too near the scullery. One is bound to devise measures for the protection of the morals of the household."

While she was speaking, Wilfrid's thoughts ran: "My time has come to strike for liberty."

This too she perceived, and was prepared for him.

He said: "Lady Charlotte, I feel that I must tell you…I fear that I have been calculating rather more hopefully…" Here the pitfall of sentiment yawned before him on a sudden. "I mean" (he struggled to avoid it, but was at the brink in the next sentence) "—I mean, dear lady, that I had hopes…Besworth pleased you… to offer you this…"

"With yourself?" she relieved him. A different manner in a protesting male would have charmed her better. She excused him, knowing what stood in his way.

"That I scarcely dared to hope," said Wilfrid, bewildered to see the loose chain he had striven to cast off gather tightly round him.

"You do hope it?"

"I have."

"You have hoped that I…" (she was not insolent by nature, and corrected the form) "—to marry me?"

"Yes, Lady Charlotte, I—I had that hope…if I could have offered this place—Besworth. I find that my father will never buy it; I have misunderstood him."

He fixed his eyes on her, expecting a cool, or an ironical, rejoinder to end the colloquy;—after which, fair freedom! She answered, "We may do very well without it."

Wilfrid was not equal to a start and the trick of rapturous astonishment. He heard the words like the shooting of dungeon-bolts, thinking, "Oh, heaven! if at the first I had only told the woman I do not love her!" But that sentimental lead had ruined him. And, on second thoughts, how could he have spoken thus to the point, when they had never previously dealt in anything save sentimental implications? The folly was in his speaking at all. The game was now in Lady Charlotte's hands.

Adela, in another part of the field, had released herself by a consummate use of the same weapon Wilfrid had so clumsily handled. Her object was to put an end to the absurd and compromising sighs of Edward Buxley; and she did so with the amiable contempt of a pupil dismissing a first instructor in an art "We saw from the beginning it could not be, Edward." The enamoured caricaturist vainly protested that he had not seen it from the beginning, and did not now. He recalled to her that she had said he was 'her first.' She admitted the truth, with eyes dwelling on him, until a ringlet got displaced. Her first. To be that, sentimental man would perish in the fires. To have been that will sometimes console him, even when he has lived to see what a thing he was who caught the budding fancy. The unhappy caricaturist groaned between triumph as a leader, and anguish at the prospect of a possible host of successors. King in that pure bosom, the thought would come—King of a mighty line, mayhap! And sentimental man, awakened to this disastrous view of things, endures shrewder pangs of rivalry in the contemplation of his usurping posterity than if, as do they, he looked forward to a tricked, perfumed, pommaded whipster, pirouetting like any Pierrot—the enviable image of the one who realized her first dream, and to whom specially missioned angels first opened the golden gates of her heart.

"I have learnt to see, Edward, that you do not honour me with a love you have diverted from one worthier than I am;" and in answer to the question whether, though having to abjure her love, she loved him: "No, no; it is my Arabella I love. I love, I will love, no one but her"—with sundry caressing ejaculations that spring a thirst for kisses, and a tender 'putting of the case,' now and then.

So much for Adela's part in the conflict. Edward was unaware that the secret of her mastering him was, that she was now talking common-sense in the tone of sentiment. He, on the contrary, talked sentiment in the tone of common-sense. Of course he was beaten: and O, you young lovers, when you hear the dear lips setting what you call the world's harsh language to this music, know that an hour has struck for you! It is a fatal sound to hear. Edward believed that his pleading had produced an effect when he saw Miss Adela's bosom rise as with a weight on it. The burden of her thoughts was—"How big and heavy Edward's eyes look when he is not amusing!" To get rid of him she said, as with an impassioned coldness, "Go." Her figure, repeating this under closed eyelids, was mysterious, potent. When he exclaimed, "Then I will go," her eyelids lifted wide: she shut them instantly, showing at the same time a slight tightening-in of the upper lip. You beheld a creature tied to the stake of Duty.

But she was exceedingly youthful, and had not reckoned upon man's being a live machine, possessing impulses of his own. A violent seizure of her waist, and enough of kisses to make up the sum popularly known as a 'shower,' stopped her performance. She struggled, and muttered passionately to be released. "We are seen," she hazarded. At the repetition, Edward, accustomed to dread the warning, let her go and fled. Turning hurriedly about, Adela found that she had spoken truth unawares, and never wished so much that she had lied. Sir Twickenham Pryme came forward to her, with his usual stiff courtly step.

"If you could have been a little—a little earlier," she murmured, with an unflurried face, laying a trembling hand in his; and thus shielded herself from a suspicion.

"Could I know that I was wanted?" He pressed her hand.

"I only know that I wish I had not left your side," said she—adding,

"Though you must have thought me what, if I were a man, you Members of

Parliament would call 'a bore,' for asking perpetual questions."

"Nay, an apposite interrogation is the guarantee of a proper interest in the subject," said the baronet.

Cornelia was very soon reverted to.

"Her intellect is contemplative," said Adela, exhibiting marvellous mental composure. "She would lose her unerring judgement in active life. She cannot weigh things in her mind rapidly. She is safe if her course of action is clear."

Sir Twickenham reserved his opinion of the truth of this. "I wonder whether she can forgive those who offend or insult her, easily?"

A singular pleasure warmed Adela's veins. Her cheeks kindling, she replied, giving him her full face. "No; if they are worthy of punishment. But—" and now he watched a downcast profile—"one must have some forgiveness for fools."

"Indeed, you speak like charity out of the windows of wisdom," said the baronet.

"Do you not require in Parliament to be tolerant at times?" Adela pursued.

Ho admitted it, and to her outcry of "Oh, that noble public life!" smiled deprecatingly—"My dear young lady, if you only knew the burden it brings!"

"It brings its burden," said Adela, correcting, with a most proper instinct, another enthusiastic burst. "At the same time the honour is above the load. Am I talking too romantically? You are at least occupied."

"Nine-tenths of us to no very good purpose," the baronet appended.

She rejoined: "If it were but a fraction, the good done would survive."

"And be more honourable to do, perhaps," he ejaculated. "The consolation should be great."

"And is somehow small," said she; and they laughed softly.

At this stage, Adela was 'an exceedingly interesting young person' in Sir Twickenham's mental register. He tried her on politics and sociology. She kept her ears open, and followed his lead carefully—venturing here and there to indicate an opinion, and suggesting dissent in a pained interrogation. Finally, "I confess," she said, "I understand much less than I am willing to think; and so I console myself with the thought that, after all, the drawing-room, and the…the kitchen?—well, an educated 'female' must serve her term there, if she would be anything better than a mere ornament, even in the highest walks of life—I mean the household is our sphere. From that we mount to companionship—if we can."

Amazement of Sir Twickenham, on finding his own thought printed, as it were, on the air before him by these pretty lips!

The conversation progressed, until Adela, by chance, turned her eyes up a cross pathway and perceived her sister Cornelia standing with Mr. Barrett under a beech. The man certainly held one of her hands pressed to his heart; and her attitude struck a doubt whether his other hand was disengaged or her waist free. Adela walked nervously on without looking at the baronet; she knew by his voice presently that his eyes had also witnessed the sight. "Two in a day," she thought; "what will he imagine us to be!" The baronet was thinking: "For your sister exposed, you display more agitation than for yourself insulted."

Adela found Arabella in so fresh a mood that she was sure good news had been heard. It proved that Mrs. Chump had sent a few lines in a letter carried by Braintop, to this effect: "My dears all! I found your father on his back in bed, and he discharged me out of the room; and the sight of me put him on his legs, and you will soon see him. Be civil to Mr. Braintop, who is a faithful young man, of great merit, and show your gratitude to—Martha Chump."

Braintop confirmed the words of the letter: and then Adela said—"You will do us the favour to stay and amuse yourself here. To-night there will be a bed at Brookfield."

"What will he do?" Arabella whispered.

"Associate with the Tinleys," returned Adela.