CHAPTER LXVI.
At the end of two days (at one period the common time of accomplishing a journey to or from Bath) Georgiana was set down in Welbeck Street, and eager inquiries from those who remained within the carriage were made, as to the health of Lady Anne, of the servant who admitted the young lady.
"Much the same, he believed," but, as "the same" was a term not easily defined, they were glad to perceive Helen running in the passage to answer them herself, snatching a kiss of Georgiana as she passed her—there was a buoyancy in her step, a smile on her countenance, which made her look the herald of good tidings, and her earnest manner of inquiring, "how they had borne the journey?" indicated an interest in the answer which showed her in the most endearing point of view; but, when she spoke of her mother, a sweet seriousness overspread her features, and she observed, "mamma was no better, apparently; but she was extremely busy, watching the progress of the election through the medium of the newspapers, and, when they asked how she felt, she answered, 'she had something else to do than to attend to her feelings;' from which they inferred she did not suffer much."
As they drove off, Mrs. Margaret said, very pointedly—
"Well, brother, that's the girl for my money—she's the flower of the flock, decidedly."
"Penrhyn's wife is the flower of the flock, and Helen resembles her much; but give me my pet lamb, Georgiana, and I ask no more."
"I do," said the old lady, with more of sternness than was her wont.
Lady Anne received her daughter by observing, sneeringly, "that she had been made a pretty complete April fool of," followed by the question of "how much of your money have you left?"—to which she replied, "two pounds, fifteen."
"Umph! you were quite right to spend nothing, as the sailor wouldn't look at you; give me back the sovereigns, and you may keep the silver."
"I will fetch them, mamma," said Georgiana, leaving the room, for oppression teaches cunning, and the poor girl well knew she had her uncle's gift in the same purse with her mother's loan; so, after appearing to take them from a box in which she deposited the notes, she laid them on the table, not having the slightest doubt that the whole would have been seized by her mother, had they been seen.
"I recollect, Mrs. Penrhyn," said Lady Anne, "borrowing some change of you at Brighton, which your husband was mean enough to remind me of; a proof that he looks pretty sharp after you."
"He is a very generous husband, indeed, mamma; but eighteen pounds, you know—"
"I know nothing about it—you may take those two sovereigns—I am not in a situation to be teazed; pray, be silent—I suppose Georgiana has a message for me, from Lord Rotheles."
Georgiana, in a low, distinct voice, repeated her uncle's words.
"I understand him—my family are to send for him, either if Georgiana marries, or if I die—neither circumstance is likely to happen in a hurry, I can assure him. A man who is so frightful he dare not look that girl in the face who is most likely to forgive its defects, cannot fail to be an object some time longer—and, for me, I have something else to do than to die—it's all very well for an idle man, like Rotheles, who never looked sharp after any thing but pleasure in his life, to suppose I have been long ill and must drop off; because, having no exertion himself, he supposes nobody else has any—did you tell him about the election?"
"Oh! yes, mamma, and he is exceedingly anxious Mr. Glentworth should get it; but he has no interest in that part of the country at all."
"Umph! no interest; I have as little, I apprehend, yet I have done great good already; so often as the Earl of Rotheles, and his handsome ladies, have been visitors at Granard Park, and shot with one, partaken a haunch with another, hunted with the 'squires, and flirted with their wives, he might surely remember some one name to whom a line, with a coronet on the seal, might have done wonders; he is lost in indolence, at least in my affairs; he could take a long journey to the Haleses; he ought to remember that Mrs. Glentworth is my daughter; of course, her husband's election is a thing that comes very near me."
"My uncle considered that I was your daughter in their case, mamma, and, of course, their circumstances were more pressing a few weeks ago than Mr. Glentworth's."
Lady Anne fixed her eyes, which were become very large looking ones, upon Georgiana, elevated her brows, and, in a measured tone of voice, indicative of extreme contempt, said, "You are my daughter! granted, Miss Georgiana Granard; and Mrs. Glentworth is my daughter, true! but how can you be equally my daughters, when the husband of one can lay down a thousand pounds, yes, at least a thousand pounds for every hundred the intended husband of the other can produce. Will any body venture to say, that any comparison can exist between two men so differently situated? or that it is not, in point of fact, a much more important thing, that Glentworth should secure his election, than Arthur James Hales preserve his life."
Georgiana burst into tears, which became hysterical sobbing.
"Really, mamma, you are very hard on poor Georgiana, who is just come from a long journey, and has of late suffered so much; nobody owes Mr. Glentworth more than I do; nobody loves and honours him more than I do; but I cannot see how," said Mrs. Penrhyn.
"You see! how should you see? people whose eyes are blinded by city fogs, city occupations, even city wealth, are not likely to see into any subject clearly."
"Yet Mr. Glentworth himself owes to the same medium."
"I deny it; Mr. Glentworth was the son of a gentleman, though a younger brother, who was very genteely provided for; he was a bad man, and left his son next to nothing, so he was glad to go into a commercial house rather than starve."
"My husband did the same."
"But Mr. Glentworth's pretensions at this time arise from the property of that old hunks, his uncle, whom I always expected to leave me a legacy, for I sent him game every year of my life; but he disappointed me and many others by making no will; of course, Glentworth owes me a legacy, in conscience. Now go away, you fatigue me dreadfully. Send Helen and Fanchette."
Louisa touched Fanchette's bell, and obeyed. Lady Anne forbade (very wisely) more than two persons in her room at a time, therefore, Helen had been chatting with Penrhyn in the parlour, whilst her sisters were up stairs. On entering, Mrs. Penrhyn said, "You must go up this moment, Helen, for poor mamma is so cross, Fanchette will be saucy, I fear."
"She has been so all day, but, thank God, I am able to bear it, because I am quite certain it does her good."
"I believe it does, provided she does not speak loud," said Georgiana; "anger would kill her, whereas scorn and contempt relieve her; but certainly they are the hardest to bear."
"Poor Helen! what she must have endured during this week of your absence, Georgiana!" transferring her pity from the indignant weeping girl to the one who was quitting the room, escaped Mrs. Penrhyn's lips.
Georgiana looked in Helen's face, and was certain the look of calm happiness she wore indicated some secret consolation; and so delighted was she with the thought, that her own passing trouble was instantly banished, and she gladly shared the very humble fare she found placed before Mr. Penrhyn, aware that she should not see Helen again until that hour when she would be called in the morning, and which in her kindness she would make a late one.
Our evils are not unfrequently attended with good. Louisa did not appear to need the lesson, for she was a happy wife, and an excellent one; but the close observation of what her sisters had to go through at this time (when Lady Anne's ambition and exhilaration caused her to appear to strangers, despite her sad state, a most charming person) made her own home appear a perfect paradise, and her husband a beneficent angel. Never did he fail to console her, by an assurance that Helen should always find a home in his house, and be to him as a dear sister; but there frequently were times, when he declared, "that even the visit of an hour must be relinquished, if she were rendered so miserable in paying it, as she too often appeared to be."
At this very time, his step-mother was much in the same situation as poor Lady Anne; therefore, his estate of eight hundred per annum, with a good house upon it, being nearly in possession, rendered him easy, as to money matters; and if Lady Anne had wanted a little cash, (and she did always want,) he would have furnished her with it; but Louisa did not mention the circumstance, having no doubt whatever that it would form a reason for a demand; and she could not reconcile herself to sending her husband's money to Howell and James's, through her mother's fingers, at the time when her sisters were kept in a state of poverty, no decent tradesman could have borne to witness in his daughters. That Isabella and Mary would help them as far as they could, she was certain; but she knew how they felt on the subject, from her own feelings, and she was aware, that although Isabella, from her alliance with great wealth, might be supposed to have the most money at command, she was, in some circumstances, more awkwardly circumstanced than any of her sisters. She was the wife of a man so much older than herself, she never could presume to dispute his judgment; he had done one such great thing for her family, (in her own case,) that he might omit little ones, and his very love to their father had rendered their mother an object of mistrust and dislike. At present, these feelings were suspended by one engrossing object, to which might be added the emotions naturally called forth by a return to his country after long absence, and the delight he evidently experienced in his child, of whose welfare she wrote every day of her life; but it would not be always thus. If he discovered how far her uncle Riccardini had relieved her mother, and to how little purpose, she was confident her conduct would be held unforgiveable, for it might be said, truly, that Glentworth doated on the Count, and the Count on him. How it happened, where they had formed their acquaintance, and conciliated their friendship, she knew not; but little as she had seen, she could not doubt the fact.
Upright and simple-minded, adding, of late, the obligations of religion to a native sense of integrity, Louisa was also an intelligent woman, of excellent capacity; and the trickery of her mother, though only partially understood, had taught her to know that "such things were" as deception. Lady Anne had asked repeatedly of late, what had become of the Count's cab? to which she truly replied, "she did not know; she had observed he did not use it, and she wondered why."
"He has sold his horse, his Hector he was so fond of. I think he was foolish not to sell the cab at the same time, for, if his love for his horse was a pleasure, because he fancied it loved him, we are quite certain that was not the case with the cab— the most sentimental Italian would hardly say the wheels smiled upon him, and the seat welcomed his continuations."
"But why should he sell either? He told me that he had ascertained his expences, and formed a plan for his future mode of life; he would live in the immediate neighbourhood of Exeter eight months in the year, two in London, and two with Glentworth. That he liked the first because he could attend the cathedral service; the second, because it permitted him to learn all the news of Europe, and placed him in the society he had a right to enjoy; and the third, because it gave his affections their proper and accustomed food, recalling memories he desired to cherish to the latest hour of existence."
"He is an extraordinary creature," said Lady Anne; "somebody says somewhere, 'He who gives his money never feigns.' I often wish when I am thinking about it that he had not sold his horse, it gives me the fidgets when it crosses my mind."
Lady Anne's words were not addressed to her daughters, so much as herself, but they conveyed clearly to Mrs. Penrhyn's mind the belief that the poor Count's horse had been the sacrifice to her mamma's passion for luxury now abandoned, or finery more indulged in than ever. She felt that it was her duty to tell her husband her suspicions, and that there ought to be some interference, in fact, some investigation of her mother's affairs, since Helen had repeatedly complained of duns, more especially the butcher, "whom her mamma peremptorily refused to pay, though she had plenty of money;" but, whilst these thoughts were passing her mind, one single glance at the subject of them put all to flight. Either pity and habitual respect for one so fragile, so reduced, operated on the tenderness of her nature; or the fear of her mother's flashing eye, and the tongue that could speak daggers, deterred her.
Lady Anne early in life studied how best despotic power could be exercised on a small scale; like Henry VII.,*<ref>* See Bacon's Life of that monarch.>/ref> she preferred the homage exacted by respect and fear, to that which is offered by love, and she had firmly abided by her choice, being neither drawn aside by a husband whom any other woman would have found irresistibly seducing, nor by five sweet children, all calculated to win a mother's heart to weakness, and all imbued remarkably with domestic attachments. Some weeks ago she began to entertain doubts as to the excellence of her system, though she never divulged them, but at this time she was fully confirmed in its value, by the respect paid to her letters, and the hospitable manner in which her family had been received in the neighbourhood where she had reigned for years a queen, at once dazzling and commanding.
"Yes. yes, it is all very right," she observed to Helen, to whom alone she disclosed what was really passing in her mind; "every one of the half dozen letters are quite satisfactory, for, the writers, as Hamlet says, are 'tolerably honest,' and will help my son Glentworth heart and hand, but, certainly, not from love of me. I don't believe, Helen, in all that great county, from its people of rank, down to its cowherds and artisans, one human being had the feeling for me generally distinguished as love, the same kind of attachment the Palmers feel for you, and which, in point of fact, is a very silly affair. A quarrel may break such a tie in a moment, absence will wear it out, and misconduct ruin it. Look at the different effect my mode of impressing my acquaintance made on them, how much more useful and lasting? Admiration and fear, respect for my rank, my talent, and my taste, were the engines by which I drilled them for my own purposes, whilst amongst them, and knowing that not one loved me, I escaped all pain in leaving them, and."
"Pardon me, little as I was, I remember many, many tears being shed, mamma, when we left Granard Park."
"Yes, many tears were shed in memory of the last Granard they knew, and, on sight of his five little girls in their black frocks—country people, having few exciting scenes, make the most of them, and, undoubtedly, talk of the handsome widow and her fair children to this day, all stuffed into the family coach, which went a snail's pace, while the elder girls cried, and waved their cambric handkerchiefs, and my lady sank into the corner. That part of the thing had its effect for the moment, but, I tell you again, of all our own domestics who went weeping by our side to the park-gates, of all the crowd that received us on the outside, the men bare-headed, and the women crying, there was not one that had any love for me, and not more than half a dozen that had any pity."
Helen thought it was a very odd thing to boast of, yet, certainly, Lady Anne spoke in an exulting tone of voice: for herself, she could only "answer with a sigh," nor was more required, for when her mother had taken breath, she continued:—
"Yet there was not one creature in that crowd that would not have obeyed any command I might have willed to issue, because they were accustomed to obey; accustomed to hold the master mind in awe, not that I was always proud and stern, certainly not: 'honey catches more flies than vinegar,' and occasions arose then, as now, when a few soft words assuaged an angry creditor, or an offended neighbour, but my system was that of being proud and unapproachable, and you see how it answers, they have never forgotten me, never ceased to honour me; and now I deign to appear amongst them again by my representatives, every one flocks to my standard, every one regards my notice as a distinction; having taught him in past days to shrink from my hauteur, he now exults in my smile, and is proud to be one of my train. My mode of government, too, had the greatest of all advantages, it subsists to the end of life; you know, Helen, nobody loves old women, but many people fear them; I have mentioned this before, but it cannot be repeated too often."
Helen remembered, also, that her heart, both then and now, denied the assertion, but, wishing the subject to go by, she ventured to say:—
"The butcher is very angry, and says he shall send an execution into the house; surely he will not kill the poor creatures under this roof?"
"If he kills a simpler mutton than you, I shall wonder—he said an execution?"
"Yes, mamma. Pray, mamma, what is it?"
"When it comes you will see, and your sweet simplicity be properly enlightened, but, remember this, come what will, you get no money out of me."