You, Captain Miles Warrington, have the honour of winning the good graces of a lady — of ever so many ladies — of the Duchess of Devonshire, let us say, of Mrs. Crew, of Mrs. Fitzherbert, of the Queen of Prussia, of the Goddess Venus, of Mademoiselle Hillisberg of the Opera — never mind of whom, in fine. If you win a lady’s good graces, do you always go to the mess and tell what happened?”
“Not such a fool, Squire!” says the Captain, surveying his side curl in the glass.
“Have you, Miss Theo, told your mother every word you said to Mr. Joe Blake, junior, in the shrubbery this morning?”
“Joe Blake, indeed!” cries Theo junior.
“And you, mademoiselle? That scented billet which came to you under Sir Thomas’s frank, have you told us all the letter contains? Look how she blushes! As red as the curtain, on my word! No, mademoiselle, we all have our secrets” (says the Squire, here making his best French bow). “No, Theo, there was nothing in the shrubbery — only nuts, my child! No, Miles, my son, we don’t tell all, even to the most indulgent of fathers — and if I tell what happened in a landau on the Hampstead Road, on the 25th of May, 1760, may the Chevalier Ruspini pull out every tooth in my head!”
“Pray tell, papa!” cries mamma: “or, as Jobson, who drove us, is in your service now, perhaps you will have him in from the stables! I insist upon your telling!”
“What is, then, this mystery?” asks mademoiselle, in her pretty French accent, of my wife.
“Eh, ma fille!” whispers the lady. “Thou wouldst ask me what I said? I said ‘Yes!’— behold all I said.” And so ’tis my wife has peached, and not I; and this was the sum of our conversation, as the carriage, all too swiftly as I thought, galloped towards Hampstead, and flew back again. Theo had not agreed to fly in the face of her honoured parents — no such thing. But we would marry no other person; no, not if we lived to be as old as Methuselah; no, not the Prince of Wales himself would she take. Her heart she had given away with her papa’s consent — nay, order — it was not hers to resume. So kind a father must relent one of these days; and, if George would keep his promise — were it now, or were it in twenty years, or were it in another world, she knew she should never break hers.
Hetty’s face beamed with delight when, my little interview over, she saw Theo’s countenance wearing a sweet tranquillity. All the doctor’s medicine has not done her so much good, the fond sister said. The girls went home after their act of disobedience. I gave up the place which I had held during a brief period of happiness by my dear invalid’s side. Hetty skipped back into her seat, and Charley on to his box. He told me in after days, that it was a very dull, stupid sermon he had heard. The little chap was too orthodox to love dissenting preachers’ sermons.
Hetty was not the only one of the family who remarked her sister’s altered countenance and improved spirits. I am told that on the girls’ return home their mother embraced both of them, especially the invalid, with more than common ardour of affection. “There was nothing like a country ride,” Aunt Lambert said, “for doing her dear Theo good. She had been on the road to Hampstead, had she? She must have another ride tomorrow. Heaven be blessed, my Lord Wrotham’s horses were at their orders three or four times a week, and the sweet child might have the advantage of them!” As for the idea that Mr. Warrington might have happened to meet the children on their drive, Aunt Lambert never once entertained it — at least spoke of it. I leave anybody who is interested in the matter to guess whether Mrs. Lambert could by any possibility have supposed that her daughter and her sweetheart could ever have come together again. Do women help each other in love perplexities? Do women scheme, intrigue, make little plans, tell little fibs, provide little amorous opportunities, hang up the rope-ladder, coax, wheedle, mystify the guardian or Abigail, and turn their attention away while Strephon and Chloe are billing and cooing in the twilight, or whisking off in the postchaise to Gretna Green? My dear young folks, some people there are of this nature; and some kind souls who have loved tenderly and truly in their own time, continue ever after to be kindly and tenderly disposed towards their young successors, when they begin to play the same pretty game.
Miss Prim doesn’t. If she hears of two young persons attached to each other, it is to snarl at them for fools, or to imagine of them all conceivable evil. Because she has a hump-back herself, she is for biting everybody else’s. I believe if she saw a pair of turtles cooing in a wood, she would turn her eyes down, or fling a stone to frighten them; but I am speaking, you see, young ladies, of your grandmother, Aunt Lambert, who was one great syllabub of human kindness; and, besides, about the affair at present under discussion, how am I ever to tell whether she knew anything regarding it or not?
So, all she says to Theo on her return home is, “My child, the country air has done you all the good in the world, and I hope you will take another drive tomorrow, and another, and another, and so on.”
“Don’t you think, papa, the ride has done the child most wonderful good, and must not she be made to go out in the air?” Aunt Lambert asks of the General, when he comes in for supper.
“Yes, sure, if a coach-and-six will do his little Theo good, she shall have it,” Lambert says, “or he will drag the landau up Hampstead Hill himself, if there are no horses;” and so the good man would have spent, freely, his guineas, or his breath, or his blood, to give his child pleasure. He was charmed at his girl’s altered countenance; she picked a bit of chicken with appetite: she drank a little negus, which he made for her: indeed it did seem to be better than the kind doctor’s best medicine, which hitherto, God wot, had been of little benefit. Mamma was gracious and happy. Hetty was radiant and rident. It was quite like an evening at home at Oakhurst. Never for months past, never since that fatal, cruel day, that no one spoke of, had they spent an evening so delightful.
But, if the other women chose to coax and cajole the good, simple father, Theo herself was too honest to continue for long even that sweet and fond delusion. When, for the third or fourth time, he comes back to the delightful theme of his daughter’s improved health, and asks, “What has done it? Is it the country air? is it the Jesuit’s bark? is it the new medicine?”
“Can’t you think, dear, what it is?” she says, laying a hand upon her father’s, with a tremor in her voice, perhaps, but eyes that are quite open and bright.
“And what is it, my child?” asks the General.
“It is because I have seen him again, papa!” she says.
The other two women turned pale, and Theo’s heart too begins to palpitate, and her cheek to whiten, as she continues to look in her father’s scared face.
“It was not wrong to see him,” she continues, more quickly; “it would have been wrong not to tell you.”
“Great God!” groans the father, drawing his hand back, and with such a dreadful grief in his countenance, that Hetty runs to her almost swooning sister, clasps her to her heart, and cries out, rapidly, “Theo knew nothing of it, sir! It was my doing — it was all my doing!”
Theo lies on her sister’s neck, and kisses it twenty, fifty times.
“Women, women! are you playing with my honour?” cries the father, bursting out with a fierce exclamation.
Aunt Lambert sobs, wildly, “Martin! Martin! Don’t say a word to her!” again calls out Hetty, and falls back herself staggering towards the wall, for Theo has fainted on her shoulder.
I was taking my breakfast next morning, with what appetite I might, when my door opens, and my faithful black announces, “General Lambert.” At once I saw, by the General’s face, that the yesterday’s transaction was known to him. “Your accomplices did not confess,” the General said, as soon as my servant had left us, “but sided with you against their father — a proof how desirable clandestine meetings are. It was from Theo herself I heard that she had seen you.”
“Accomplices, sir!” I said (perhaps not unwilling to turn the conversation from the real point at issue). “You know how fondly and dutifully your young people regard their father. If they side against you in this instance, it must be because justice is against you. A man like you is not going to set up sic volo sic jubeo as the sole law in his family!”
“Psha, George!” cries the General. “For though we are parted, God forbid I should desire that we should cease to love each other. I had your promise that you would not seek to see her.”
“Nor did I go to her, sir,” I said, turning red, no doubt; for though this was truth, I own it was untrue.
“You mean she was brought to you?” says Theo’s father, in great agitation. “Is it behind Hester’s petticoat that you will shelter yourself? What a fine defence for a gentleman!”
“Well, I won’t screen myself behind the poor child,” I replied. “To speak as I did was to make an attempt at evasion, and I am ill-accustomed to dissemble. I did not infringe the letter of my agreement, but I acted against the spirit of it. From this moment I annul it altogether.”
“You break your word given to me!” cries Mr. Lambert.
“I recall a hasty promise made on a sudden at a moment of extreme excitement and perturbation. No man can be for ever bound by words uttered at such a time; and, what is more, no man of honour or humanity, Mr. Lambert, would try to bind him.”
“Dishonour to me! sir,” exclaims the General.
“Yes, if the phrase is to be shuttlecocked between us!” I answered, hotly. “There can be no question about love, or mutual regard, or difference of age, when that word is used: and were you my own father — and I love you better than a father, Uncle Lambert — I would not bear it! What have I done? I have seen the woman whom I consider my wife before God and man, and if she calls me I will see her again. If she comes to me, here is my home for her, and the half of the little I have. ’Tis you, who have no right, having made me the gift, to resume it. Because my mother taunts you unjustly, are you to visit Mrs. Esmond’s wrong upon this tender, innocent creature? You profess to love your daughter, and you can’t bear a little wounded pride for her sake. Better she should perish away in misery, than an old woman in Virginia should say that Mr. Lambert had schemed to marry one of his daughters. Say that to satisfy what you call honour and I call selfishness, we part, we break our hearts well nigh, we rally, we try to forget each other, we marry elsewhere? Can any man be to my dear as I have been? God forbid! Can any woman be to me what she is? You shall marry her to the Prince of Wales tomorrow, and it is a cowardice and treason. How can we, how can you, undo the promises we have made to each other before Heaven? You may part us: and she will die as surely as if she were Jephthah’s daughter. Have you made any vow to Heaven to compass her murder? Kill her if you conceive your promise so binds you: but this I swear, that I am glad you have come, so that I may here formally recall a hasty pledge which I gave, and that, call me when she will, I will come to her!”
No doubt this speech was made with the flurry and agitation belonging to Mr. Warrington’s youth, and with the firm convi............