CHAPTER XXII
Mr. and Mrs. Douglas arrived at St. Mary's, bringing to Eliza satisfactory accounts of the Wentworth affair. Mrs. Douglas, to be sure, knew that there was no trust to be placed in any man on earth; they were all as hard as boards, and as fickle as the winds, and one more selfish than another. Therefore, if Mr. Wentworth jilted Sarah at last, it would not surprise her for a moment; but otherwise, she would have said, nobody could doubt his intentions.
"And, mamma," said Eliza, who had met her parents with unfeigned delight, "Sarah herself seems sure Mr. Wentworth likes her, and I am sure of it from what she says. So I dare say he is not so unfeeling as you think. I like him very much."
"Oh! my dear, I do not say there is any harm in him. In fact, I had rather have him for a son-in-law than such a Jerry as Sir William, such a goose as Lord Walden, or such a bashaw as Lord Teviot; but even if he is really attached to Sarah, that will not make me think better of men in general. And pray, Eliza, how does Lord Teviot behave to Helen, and at what time do they dine? It must be nearly dressing- time."
"You will hear the bell, mamma. It rings half an hour before dinner. Helen seems very happy, and Lord Beaufort and Colonel Beaufort and Miss Forrester are so fond of her, that she must be delighted while they are here."
There was an intonation in Eliza's voice, when the name of Colonel Beaufort occurred, that struck Mrs. Douglas's ear. No woman, be she ever so hardened or hackneyed in the ways of the world, can ever achieve an indifferent pronunciation, if the term may be allowed, of the name of the individual most interesting to her. There is no disguise she does not attempt; she drawls it out slowly, it will not be slighted. She runs it over quickly, it will not be slurred. She inserts it between two other commonplace names, it is still the guinea between the two halfpence. Still it is spoken in the tone of voice that belongs only to him.
"I have not seen Colonel Beaufort since he was quite a boy," said Mrs. Douglas. "I suppose he is like all the rest of the family, thoroughly grand and fine. I think you wrote word he was very conceited."
"No, mamma, affected. I thought him so at first; and perhaps he is a little affected. I do not think you will like him, mamma."
"I dare say not, my dear. I very seldom do like anybody; but probably he is not worse than Lord Teviot, nor so bad as Lord Beaufort. I have an idea that I shall prefer him to them."
Eliza was quite enchanted with such positive praise of her hero, but she defended Lord Beaufort valiantly; declared that he was the most good-natured man in the world, and not the least grand or fine.
"In short, the best of the two cousins?" asked Mrs. Douglas; "but now, my dear, we must dress, and when I have seen all your fine friends, I shall know better what to think of them. Ring for Hunt. How I hate these large rooms, where the bells are always a mile off!"
Mrs. Douglas found considerable food for observation in the party assembled at St. Mary's, and after the lapse of two or three days she had drawn from the events that were passing before her eyes the cheering conclusions,—that the Teviot ménage was not happy; that Lady Portmore, a beauty and a fine lady, was perfectly insupportable, and that it would be a virtuous action to be as disagreeable as possible to her; that Colonel Stuart was in his way quite as detestable; that there was no chance of Lord Beaufort's marrying Miss Forrester, and that Colonel Beaufort was a shade less languid when Eliza was talking to him than under any other circumstances.
The house was full of company, for the first week in September had arrived, and Lord Teviot's friends seemed to be unanimously possessed with an unusual eagerness to visit him. The breakfast table was covered every morning with letters from enterprising travellers who were naturally going to the other side of England; but who could make a détour to St. Mary's if they were wanted, and who added in a postscript that they should be there before an answer could arrive to stop them. Some, who did not know Lady Teviot, wrote to express their anxiety to make her acquaintance; and those who did were particularly desirous to renew it. Nobody said a word about partridges; but it was remarkable that from each carriage that arrived there was taken a long mahogany case, followed by a tin canister and a powder flask; and that each new-comer, in the course of the first evening, invariably asked if the harvest were well in, and if the birds were tolerably strong and numerous.
The crowd in which the Teviots lived was not favourable to the growth of their eventual happiness: at least, in nine cases out of ten, a young couple should be left very much to themselves during the first few months of their married lives. That complete dependence on each other, which insures habits of confidence and forbearance, is more easily acquired while the first dream of love lasts; and tastes and tempers amalgamate better in the end when there are no witnesses to observe that they do not quite fit at first.
Lord and Lady Teviot would, even if they had wished it, have found it impossible to be much together in their present train of life. He was out shooting all the morning with his friends; and in the afternoon she was riding or driving with hers: during dinner they were at opposite ends of a long table, and in the evening there were guests to be attended to, and the work of general amusement to carry on. Helen did not own it to herself, perhaps she did not know it, but it was a relief to her to be spared those tête-à-têtes with her husband, which she had found so alarming in the outset of her married life. Her youthful spirits were sufficient, and more than sufficient, to carry her through the many hours of amusement which each succeeding day presented. Joining great powers of enjoyment to a strong wish to please, and aided by adventitious circumstances, she moved amongst her guests the queen of a gay circle; and if she caught Lord Teviot's eyes fixed on her sometimes with sternness, sometimes with admiration, she merely thought, in the one case, that it was a pity he was so unlike everybody else, and in the other, that it was unfortunate she had not time to talk to him while he was in good humour; but in the meanwhile her impulse was to turn to her brother or her cousin for assistance in all her plans, and participation in all her gaieties.
So young and so lovely a mistress of a house was sure to attract; and Lady Portmore began to feel some frightful misgivings, not that Helen would eventually rival her in general admiration—no, she felt convinced that there never had been, and never could be such an universal favourite as herself, but she considered that she was at present in a false position, and had brought the real, genuine, well-established Portmore article into competition with a frivolous, tinselly, girlish plaything which derived a momentary value from peculiar circumstances. She began to think it time to assert herself, and to overthrow the usurper. She once tried to look bored, and apologized to the company for the dull evening which would necessarily ensue. But she found that it ended in her being left to nurse by herself the "touch of headache" she had announced, while the rest of the society were dancing in another room, and Mrs. Douglas took the opportunity of saying that she would come and sit quietly with her while the young people were amusing themselves.
So the next day she found it more expedient to declare that she was going to make the evening very amusing, and to arrange some charades.
"Come, Teviot, Ernest, all of you, you must each take a part."
"Who, I?" said Colonel Beaufort, looking at her with an air of astonishment from the very depths of his arm-chair, where he was sitting very contentedly by the side of Eliza. "My dear lady, you may just as well ask me to go and break stones for Teviot's new road; it would be quite as much in my line, and perhaps less trouble. I never shall forget what I went through last year at Kirwood Hall. I was asked there, and was foolishly good-natured enough to go. My mind misgave me the first evening that there was a screw loose,—that there was something sinister in the designs of the party. There were two or three abortive attempts at troublesome games, questions and answers, which entailed the bore of thinking; and forfeits which gave an infinity of trouble, as a penalty for having thought wrong. Well, I put down these atrocities by a contemptuous smile or two, but the next evening I was overborne in my turn; and I give you my honour, that I, who am by nature peaceable and inoffensive, and who had never done any harm to any human being in that house, was, during three hours, persecuted into being Lucius Junius Brutus, a village schoolmistress, the hind legs of a camelopard, and a wooden clock saying tick, tick, tick. The next morning I made an early transformation of myself into Colonel Beaufort in his travelling carriage; but I doubt whether my constitution has ever quite recovered the trial of Kirwood Hall. No, no charades, for the love of mercy."
"Well," said Eliza, "I wish you did not object to them; I think they must be very amusing, and then you would act so well; I wish Lady Portmore would arrange one."
"How odd that you should always be ready to be amused! I am quite sorry I have destroyed your entertainment for the evening. What is to be done? Lady Portmore whisks about so fast, it would be vain for me to attempt to catch her. Shall I write her a note, and ask her to act for your diversion?"
"Oh, no! besides, nothing diverts me more than to hear you talk. Pray go on, and tell me more about Kirwood Hall, and the charades there." And it was by this naïve and genuine attention to his conversation, and this open delight in his society, that the unformed, candid Eliza attracted the languid, blasé Colonel Beaufort. The simple and melancholy fact was that she had fallen in love with him, which was an undignified measure, and if she had had only a year's knowledge of the world, she would carefully have concealed the preference she felt; but, as it was, she thought only that he was very pleasant, and that she was quite happy when he came and sat down by her; and she showed this without disguise. It was something so new, that Ernest was flattered by it. He did not care much about it at present; but if the chair that stood near her was as comfortable as any other in the room, he let himself drop into that by preference. He would, perhaps, even have put up with a cushion less.
Lady Portmore did not quite like his manner of passing his evenings, and when her particular plan of charades failed, she had nothing for it but to try to disturb the general comfort of the society. "Come, Miss Douglas," she said, moving her hands about as if she were playing on the pianoforte, "are we to have no harmony this evening? I am in the mood for a little music."
"I do not think Lady Teviot wishes for it," said Eliza, who joined to a strong desire to contradict Lady Portmore a great disinclination to move.
"Oh, Lady Teviot has made over her powers to me this evening. I think, Teviot, your little wife has abdicated, and has become Helen Beaufort again. She and her brother have been reading letters and whispering to each other for the last half-hour. Are you shut out of their councils?"
"Lady Teviot has not had a very good account of her sister," he said, coldly, "and Beaufort was naturally anxious to see the letters."
"Dear, I am very sorry; I wish they had consulted me—I am a great homœopathist; I dare say Helen wishes us all away, that she might go to the Waldegraves; but really we have collected such a large party, that it will be difficult to disperse our forces. Pray who is that foreigner playing at whist?"
"Don't you know him? M. de la Grange; he comes over to England every year, and fancies himself a complete Englishman in language, pursuits, and habits, but without the slightest aptitude for either. He goes in the winter to any country-house of any description to which he can get himself invited, without much discrimination as to the society he meets there. 'It is all,' he says, 'the charming life of castle'; and between that and Melton, where he passes a miserable month of falls and fright, he makes out an existence which he thinks perfection. He is a good-natured animal, and I never grudge him a fortnight's shooting."
"You must introduce him to me; I dare say he has heard of me at Paris, and in London: all foreigners look to me as their patroness, as a matter of course. But come, Helen's colloquy is at an end. Beaufort, come here, I am so sorry your sister is ill, but I want you to sing. Miss Douglas is obdurate, but Mary will accompany you."
"Pardon me, Lady Portmore, but I must finish this bit of work to-night," said Miss Forrester.
"Oh, nonsense, only one song! Come, Beaufort"; but on looking round she discovered that Lord Beaufort had disappeared; and so that attempt fell to the ground, and Lady Portmore's gay evening was rather a greater failure than her dull one.