Chapter 31
Missy had begun to gush at a very early age. Lamartine was her favorite bard from the period when she first could feel: and she had subsequently improved her mind by a sedulous study of novels of the great modern authors of the French language. There was not a romance of Balzac and George Sand which the indefatigable little creature had not devoured by the time she was sixteen: and, however little she sympathized with her relatives at home, she had friends, as she said, in the spirit-world, meaning the tender Indiana, the pa.s.sionate and poetic Lelia, the amiable Trenmor, that high-souled convict, that angel of the galleys--the fiery Stenio--and the other numberless heroes of the French romances. She had been in love with Prince Rodolph and Prince Djalma while she was yet at school, and had settled the divorce question, and the rights of woman, with Indiana, before she had left off pinafores. The impetuous little lady played at love with these imaginary worthies, as a little while before she had played at maternity with her doll. Pretty little poetical spirits! it is curious to watch them with those playthings. To-day the blue-eyed one is the favorite, and the black-eyed one is pushed behind the drawers. To-morrow blue-eyes may take its turn of neglect: and it may be an odious little wretch with a burned nose, or torn head of hair, and no eyes at all, that takes the first place in Miss's affection, and is dandled and caressed in her arms.
As novelists are supposed to know every thing, even the secrets of female hearts, which the owners themselves do not, perhaps, know, we may state that at eleven years of age, Mademoiselle Betsi, as Miss Amory was then called, had felt tender emotions toward a young Savoyard organ-grinder at Paris, whom she persisted in believing to be a prince carried off from his parents; that at twelve an old and hideous drawing-master--(but, ah, what age or personal defects are proof against woman's love?) had agitated her young heart; and that, at thirteen, being at Madame de Caramel's boarding-school, in the Champs Elysees which, as every body knows, is next door to Monsieur Rogron's (Chevalier of the Legion of Honor) pension for young gentlemen, a correspondence, by letter, took place between the _seduisante Miss Betsi_ and two young gentlemen of the College of Charlemagne, who were pensioners of the Chevalier Rogron.
In the above paragraph our young friend has been called by a Christian name, different to that tinder which we were lately presented to her.
The fact is, that Miss Amory, called Missy at home, had really, at the first, been christened Betsy--but a.s.sumed the name of Blanche of her own will and fantasy, and crowned herself with it; and the weapon which the baronet, her step-father, held in terror over her, was the threat to call her publicly by her name of Betsy, by which menace he sometimes managed to keep the young rebel in order.
We have spoken just now of children's dolls, and of the manner in which those little people take up and neglect their darling toys, and very likely this history will show that Miss Blanche a.s.sumed and put away her live dolls with a similar girlish inconstancy. She had had hosts of dear, dear, darling friends ere now, and had quite a little museum of locks of hair in her treasure-chest, which she had gathered in the course of her sentimental progress. Some dear friends had married: some had gone to other schools: one beloved sister she had lost from the pension, and found again, O, horror! her darling, her Leocadie, keeping the books in her father's shop, a grocer in the Rue du Bac: in fact, she had met with a number of disappointments, estrangements, disillusionments, as she called them in her pretty French jargon, and had seen and suffered a great deal, for so young a woman. But it is the lot of sensibility to suffer, and of confiding tenderness to be deceived, and she felt that she was only undergoing the penalties of genius, in these pangs and disappointments of her young career.
Meanwhile, she managed to make the honest lady, her mother, as uncomfortable as circ.u.mstances would permit; and caused her worthy step-father to wish she was dead. With the exception of Captain Strong, whose invincible good humor was proof against her sarcasms, the little lady ruled the whole house with her tongue. If Lady Clavering talked about sparrowgra.s.s instead of asparagus, or called an object a hobject, as this unfortunate lady would sometimes do, Missy calmly corrected her, and frightened the good soul, her mother, into errors only the more frequent as she grew more nervous under her daughter's eye.
It is not to be supposed, considering the vast interest which the arrival of the family at Clavering Park inspired in the inhabitants of the little town, that Madame Fribsby alone, of all the folks in Clavering, should have remained unmoved and incurious. At the first appearance of the Park family in church, madame noted every article of toilet which the ladies wore, from their bonnets to their brodequins, and took a survey of the attire of the ladies' maids in the pew allotted to them. We fear that Doctor Portman's sermon, though it was one of his oldest and most valued compositions, had little effect upon Madame Fribsby on that day. In a very few days afterward, she had managed for herself an interview with Lady Clavering's confidential attendant in the housekeeper's room at the Park; and her cards in French and English, stating that she received the newest fas.h.i.+ons from Paris, from her correspondent Madame Victorine, and that she was in the custom of making court and ball dresses for the n.o.bility and gentry of the s.h.i.+re, were in the possession of Lady Clavering and Miss Amory, and favorably received, as she was happy to hear, by those ladies.
Mrs. Bonner, Lady Clavering's lady, became soon a great frequenter of Madame Fribsby's drawing-room, and partook of many entertainments at the milliner's expense. A meal of green tea, scandal, hot Sally-Lunn cakes, and a little novel reading, were always at the service of Mrs. Bonner, whenever she was free to pa.s.s an evening in the town. And she found much more time for these pleasures than her junior officer, Miss Amory's maid, who seldom could be spared for a holiday, and was worked as hard as any factory girl by that inexorable little muse, her mistress.
The muse loved to be dressed becomingly, and, having a lively fancy and a poetic desire for change, was for altering her attire every day. Her maid, having a taste in dress-making--to which art she had been an apprentice at Paris, before she entered into Miss Blanche's service there--was kept from morning till night altering and remodeling Miss Amory's habiliments; and rose very early and went to bed very late, in obedience to the untiring caprices of her little task-mistress. The girl was of respectable English parents. There are many of our people, colonists of Paris, who have seen better days, who are not quite ruined, who do not quite live upon charity, and yet can not get on without it; and as her father was a cripple incapable of work, and her return home would only increase the burthen and add to the misery of the family, poor Pincott was fain to stay where she could maintain herself, and spare a little relief to her parents.
Our muse, with the candor which distinguished her, never failed to remind her attendant of the real state of matters. "I should send you away, Pincott, for you are a great deal too weak, and your eyes are failing you, and you are always crying and sniveling and wanting the doctor; but I wish that your parents at home should be supported, and I go on enduring you for their sake, mind," the dear Blanche would say to her timid little attendant. Or, "Pincott, your wretched appearance and slavish manner, and red eyes, positively give me the migraine; and I think I shall make you wear rouge, so that you may look a little cheerful;" or, "Pincott, I can't bear, even for the sake of your starving parents, that you should tear my hair out of my head in that manner; and I will thank you to write to them and say that I dispense with your services." After which sort of speeches, and after keeping her for an hour trembling over her hair, which the young lady loved to have combed, as she perused one of her favorite French novels, she would go to bed at one o'clock, and say, "Pincott, you may kiss me. Good night.
I should like you to have the pink dress ready for the morning." And so with a blessing upon her attendant, she would turn round and go to sleep.
The muse might lie in bed as long as she chose of a morning, and availed herself of that privilege; but Pincott had to rise very early indeed to get her mistress's task done; and had to appear next day with the same red eyes and the same wan face, which displeased Miss Amory by their want of gayety, and caused the mistress to be so angry, because the servant persisted in being and looking unwell and unhappy. Not that Blanche ever thought she was a hard mistress. Indeed, she made quite a friend of Pincott, at times, and wrote some very pretty verses about the lonely little tiring-maid, whose heart was far away. Our beloved Blanche was a superior being, and expected to be waited upon as such. And I do not know whether there are any other ladies in this world, who treat their servants or dependents so, but it may be that there are such, and that the tyranny which they exercise over their subordinates, and the pangs which they can manage to inflict with a soft voice, and a well-bred simper, are as cruel as those which a slave-driver administers with an oath and a whip.
But Blanche was a muse--a delicate little creature, quite tremulous with excitability, whose eyes filled with tears at the smallest emotion; and who knows, but that it was the very fineness of her feelings which caused them to be _froissed_ so easily? You crush a b.u.t.terfly by merely touching it. Vulgar people have no idea of the sensibility of a muse.
So little Pincott being occupied all day and night in st.i.tching, hemming, ripping, combing, ironing, crimping, for her mistress; in reading to her when in bed--for the girl was mistress of the two languages, and had a sweet voice and manner--could take no share in Madame Fribsby's soirees, nor indeed was she much missed, or considered of sufficient consequence to appear at their entertainments.
But there was another person connected with the Clavering establishment, who became a constant guest of our friend, the milliner. This was the chief of the kitchen, Monsieur Mirobolant, with whom Madame Fribsby soon formed an intimacy.
Not having been accustomed to the appearance or society
He walked then down the street, grinning and ogling every woman he met, with glances, which he meant should kill them outright, and peered over the railings, and in at the windows, where females were, in the tranquil summer evening. But Betsy, Mrs. Pybus's maid, shrank back with a Lor bless us, as Alcide ogled her over the laurel bush; the Miss Bakers, and their mamma, stared with wonder; and presently a crowd began to follow the interesting foreigner, of ragged urchins and children, who left their dirt-pies in the street to pursue him.
For some time he thought that admiration was the cause which led these persons in his wake, and walked on, pleased himself that he could so easily confer on others so much harmless pleasure. But the little children and dirt-pie manufacturers were presently succeeded by followers of a larger growth, and a number of lads and girls from the factory being let loose at this hour, joined the mob, and began laughing, jeering, hooting, and calling opprobrious names at the Frenchman. Some cried out, "Frenchy! Frenchy!" some exclaimed "Frogs!"
one asked for a lock of his hair, which was long and in richly-flowing ringlets; and at length the poor artist began to perceive that he was an object of derision rather than of respect to the rude, grinning mob.
It was at this juncture that Madame Fribsby spied the unlucky gentleman with the train at his heels, and heard the scornful shouts with which they a.s.sailed him. She ran out of her room, and across the street to the persecuted foreigner; she held out her hand, and, addressing him in his own language, invited him into her abode; and when she had housed him fairly within her door, she stood bravely at the threshold before the gibing factory girls and boys, and said they were a pack of cowards to insult a poor man who could not speak their language, and was alone and without protection. The little crowd, with some ironical cheers and hooting, nevertheless felt the force of Madame Fribsby's vigorous allocution, and retreated before her; for the old lady was rather respected in the place, and her oddity and her kindness had made her many friends there.
Poor Mirobolant was grateful indeed to hear the language of his country ever so ill spoken. Frenchmen pardon our faults in their language much more readily than we excuse their bad English; and will face our blunders throughout a long conversation, without the least propensity to grin. The rescued artist vowed that Madame Fribsby was his guardian angel, and that he had not as yet met with such suavity and politeness among _les Anglaises_. He was as courteous and complimentary to her as if it was the fairest and n.o.blest of ladies whom he was addressing: for Alcide Mirobolant paid homage, after his fas.h.i.+on, to all womankind, and never dreamed of a distinction of ranks in the realms of beauty, as his phrase was.
A cream, flavored with pine-apple--a mayonnaise of lobster, which he flattered himself was not unworthy of his hand, or of her to whom he had the honor to offer it as an homage, and a box of preserved fruits of Provence, were brought by one of the chef's aids-de-camp, in a basket, the next day to the milliner's and were accompanied with a gallant note to the amiable Madame Fribsbi. "Her kindness," Alcide said, "had made a green place in the desert of his existence--her suavity would ever contrast in memory with the _grossierete_ of the rustic population, who were not worthy to possess such a jewel." An intimacy of the most confidential nature thus sprang up between the milliner and the chef of the kitchen; but I do not know whether it was with pleasure or mortification that madame received the declarations of friends.h.i.+p which the young Alcide proffered to her, for he persisted in calling her "_La respectable Fribsbi_," "_La vertueuse Fribsbi_,"--and in stating that he should consider her as his mother, while he hoped she would regard him as her son. Ah! it was not very long ago, Fribsby thought, that words had been addressed to her in that dear French language, indicating a different sort of attachment. And she sighed as she looked up at the picture of her Carabineer. For it is surprising how young some people's hearts remain when their heads have need of a front or a little hair-dye--and, at this moment, Madame Fribsby, as she told young Alcide, felt as romantic as a girl of eighteen.
When the conversation took this turn--and at their first intimacy Madame Fribsby was rather inclined so to lead it--Alcide always politely diverged to another subject: it was as his mother that he persisted in considering the good milliner. He would recognize her in no other capacity, and with that relations.h.i.+p the gentle lady was forced to content herself, when she found how deeply the artist's heart was engaged elsewhere.
He was not long before he described to her the subject and origin of his pa.s.sion.
"I declared myself to her," said Alcide, laying his hand on his heart, "in a manner which was as novel as I am charmed to think it was agreeable. Where can not love penetrate, respectable Madame Fribsbi?
Cupid is the father of invention!--I inquired of the domestics what were the _plats_ of which mademoiselle partook with most pleasure; and built up my little battery accordingly. On a day when her parents had gone to dine in the world (and I am grieved to say that a grossier dinner at a restaurateur, in the Boulevard, or in the Palais Royal, seemed to form the delights of these unrefined persons), the charming Miss entertained some comrades of the pension; and I advised myself to send up a little repast suitable to so delicate young palates. Her lovely name is Blanche. The vail of the maiden is white; the wreath of roses which she wears is white. I determined that my dinner should be as spotless as the snow. At her accustomed hour, and instead of the rude _gigot a l'eau_, which was ordinarily served at her too simple table, I sent her up a little _potage a la Reine--a la Reine Blanche_ I called it--as white as her own tint--and confectioned with the most fragrant cream and almonds. I then offered up at her shrine a _filet de merlan a l'Agnes_, and a delicate _plat_, which I have designated as _Eperlan a la Sainte-Therese_, and of which my charming Miss partook with pleasure.
I followed this by two little _entrees_ of sweet-bread and chicken; and the only brown thing which I permitted myself in the entertainment was a little roast of lamb, which I laid in a meadow of spinaches, surrounded with croustillons, representing sheep, and ornamented with daisies and other savage flowers. After this came my second service: a pudding _a la Reine Elizabeth_ (who, Madame Fribsbi knows, was a maiden princess); a dish of opal-colored plover's eggs, which I called _Nid de tourtereaux a la Roucoule_; placing in the midst of them two of those tender volatiles, billing each other, and confectioned with b.u.t.ter; a basket containing little _gateaux_ of apricots, which, I know, all young ladies adore; and a jelly of marasquin, bland, insinuating, intoxicating as the glance of beauty. This I designated _Ambroisie de Calypso a la Souveraine de mon Coeur_. And when the ice was brought in--an ice of _plombiere_ and cherries--how do you think I had shaped them, Madame Fribsbi? In the form of two hearts united with an arrow, on which I had laid, before it entered, a bridal vail in cut-paper, surmounted by a wreath of virginal orange-flowers. I stood at the door to watch the effect of this entry. It was but one cry of admiration. The three young ladies filled their gla.s.ses with the sparkling Ay, and carried me in a toast. I heard it--I heard miss speak of me--I heard her say, 'Tell Monsieur Mirobolant that we thank him--we admire him--we love him!'
My feet almost failed me as I spoke.
"Since that, can I have any reason to doubt that the young artist has made some progress in the heart of the English Miss? I am modest, but my gla.s.s informs me that I am not ill-looking. Other victories have convinced me of the fact."
"Dangerous man!" cried the milliner.
"The blond misses of Albion see nothing in the dull inhabitants of their brumous isle, which can compare with the ardor and vivacity of the children of the south. We bring our suns.h.i.+ne with us; we are Frenchmen, and accustomed to conquer. Were it not for this affair of the heart, and my determination to marry an Anglaise, do you think I would stop in this island (which is not altogether ungrateful, since I have found here a tender mother in the respectable Madame Fribsbi), in this island, in this family? My genius would use itself in the company of these rustics--the poesy of my art can not be understood by these carnivorous insularies. No--the men are odious, but the women--the women! I own, dear Fribsbi, are seducing! I have vowed to marry one; and as I can not go into your markets and purchase, according to the custom of the country, I am resolved to adopt another custom, and fly with one to Gretna Green. The blonde Miss will go. She is fascinated. Her eyes have told me so. The white dove wants but the signal to fly."
"Have you any correspondence with her?" asked Fribsby, in amazement, and not knowing whether the young lady or the lover might be laboring under a romantic delusion.
"I correspond with her by means of my art. She partakes of dishes which I make expressly for her. I insinuate to her thus a thousand hints, which, as she is perfectly spiritual, she receives. But I want other intelligences near her."
"There is Pincott, her maid," said Madame Fribsby, who, by apt.i.tude or education, seemed to have some knowledge of affairs of the heart, but the great artist's brow darkened at this suggestion.
"Madame," he said, "there are points upon which a gallant man ought to silence himself; though, if he break the secret, he may do so with the least impropriety to his best friend--his adopted mother. Know then, that there is a cause why Miss Pincott should be hostile to me--a cause not uncommon with your s.e.x--jealousy."
"Perfidious monster!" said the confidante.
"Ah, no," said the artist, with a deep ba.s.s voice, and a tragic accent worthy of the Porte St. Martin and his favorite melo-drames. "Not perfidious, but fatal. Yes, I am a fatal man, Madame Fribsbi. To inspire hopeless pa.s.sion is my destiny. I can not help it that women love me. Is it my fault that that young woman deperishes and languishes to the view of the eye, consumed by a flame which I can not return? Listen! There are others in this family who are similarly unhappy. The governess of the young Milor has encountered me in my walks, and looked at me in a way which can bear but one interpretation. And Milady herself, who is of mature age, but who has oriental blood, has once or twice addressed compliments to the lonely artist which can admit of no mistake. I avoid the household, I seek solitude, I undergo my destiny. I can marry but one, and am resolved it shall be to a lady of your nation. And, if her fortune is sufficient, I think Miss would be the person who would be most suitable. I wish to ascertain what her means are before I lead her to Gretna Grin."
Whether Alcide was as irresistible a conqueror as his namesake, or whether he was simply crazy, is a point which must be left to the reader's judgment. But the latter, if he has had the benefit of much French acquaintance, has perhaps met with men among them who fancied themselves almost as invincible; and who, if you credit them, have made equal havoc in the hearts of _les Anglaises_.
CHAPTER XXV.
CONTAINS BOTH LOVE AND JEALOUSY.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
Our readers have already heard Sir Francis Clavering's candid opinion of the lady who had given him her fortune and restored him to his native country and home, and it must be owned that the baronet was not far wrong in his estimate of his wife, and that Lady Clavering was not the wisest or the best educated of women. She had had a couple of years'
education in Europe, in a suburb of London, which she persisted in calling Ackney to her dying day, whence she had been summoned to join her father at Calcutta at the age of fifteen. And it was on her voyage thither, on board the Ramchunder East Indiaman, Captain Bragg, in which s.h.i.+p she had two years previously made her journey to Europe, that she formed the acquaintance of her first husband, Mr. Amory, who was third mate of the vessel in question.
We are not going to enter into the early part of Lady Clavering's history, but Captain Bragg, under whose charge Miss Snell went out to her father, who was one of the captain's consignees, and part owner of the Ramchunder and many other vessels, found reason to put the rebellious rascal of a mate in irons, until they reached the Cape, where the captain left his officer behind; and finally delivered his ward to her father at Calcutta, after a stormy and perilous voyage in which the Ramchunder and the cargo and pa.s.sengers incurred no small danger and damage.
Some months afterward Amory made his appearance at Calcutta, having worked his way out before the mast from the Cape--married the rich attorney's daughter in spite of that old speculator--set up as indigo planter and failed--set up as agent and failed again--set up as editor of the "Sunderbund Pilot" and failed again--quarreling ceaselessly with his father-in-law and his wife during the progress of all these mercantile transactions and disasters, and ending his career finally with a crash which compelled him to leave Calcutta and go to New South Wales. It was in the course of these luckless proceedings, that Mr.
Amory probably made the acquaintance of Sir Jasper Rogers, the respected Judge of the Supreme Court of Calcutta, who has been mentioned before: and, as the truth must out, it was by making an improper use of his father-in-law's name, who could write perfectly well, and had no need of an amanuensis, that fortune finally forsook Mr. Amory and caused him to abandon all further struggles with her.
Not being in the habit of reading the Calcutta law-reports very a.s.siduously, the European public did not know of these facts as well as people did in Bengal, and Mrs. Amory and her father, finding her residence in India not a comfortable one, it was agreed that the lady should return to Europe, whither she came with her little daughter Betsy or Blanche, then four years old. They were accompanied by Betsy's nurse, who has been presented to the reader in the last chapter as the confidential maid of Lady Clavering, Mrs. Bonner: and Captain Bragg took a house for them in the near neighborhood of his residence in Pocklington-street.
It was a very hard, bitter summer, and the rain, it rained every day for some time after Mrs. Amory's arrival. Bragg was very pompous and disagreeable, perhaps ashamed, perhaps anxious, to get rid of the Indian lady. She believed that all the world in London was talking about her husband's disaster, and that the king and queen and the court of directors were aware of her unlucky history. She had a good allowance from her father; she had no call to live in England; and she determined to go abroad. Away she went, then, glad to escape the gloomy surveillance of the odious bully, Captain Bragg. People had no objection to receive her at the continental towns where she stopped, and at the various boarding-houses, where she royally paid her way. She called Hackney Ackney, to be sure (though otherwise she spoke English with a little foreign tw.a.n.g, very curious and not unpleasant); she dressed amazingly; she was conspicuous for her love of eating and drinking, and prepared curries and pillaws at every boarding-house which she frequented; but her singularities of language and behavior only gave a zest to her society, and Mrs. Amory was deservedly popular. She was the most good-natured, jovial, and generous of women. She was up to any party of pleasure by whomsoever proposed. She brought three times more champagne and fowls and ham to the picnics than any one else. She took endless boxes for the play, and tickets for the masked b.a.l.l.s, and gave them away to every body. She paid the boarding-house people months beforehand; she helped poor shabby mustached bucks and dowagers, whose remittances had not arrived, with constant supplies from her purse; and in this way she tramped through Europe, and appeared at Brussels, at Paris, at Milan, at Naples, at Rome, as her fancy led her. News of Amory's death reached her at the latter place, where Captain Clavering was then staying, unable to pay his hotel bill, as, indeed, was his friend, the Chevalier Strong, and the good-natured widow married the descendant of the ancient house of Clavering--professing, indeed, no particular grief for the scapegrace of a husband whom she had lost.
We have brought her thus up to the present time when she was mistress of Clavering Park, in the midst of which Mr. Pinckney, the celebrated painter, portrayed her, with her little boy by her side.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
Missy followed her mamma in most of her peregrinations, and so learned a deal of life. She had a governess for some time; and after her mother's second marriage, the benefit of Madame de Caramel's select pension in the Champs Elysees. When the Claverings came to England, she of course came with them. It was only within a few years, after the death of her grandfather, and the birth of her little brother, that she began to understand that her position in life was altered, and that Miss Amory, n.o.body's daughter, was a very small personage in a house compared with Master Francis Clavering, heir to an ancient baronetcy, and a n.o.ble estate. But for little Frank, she would have been an heiress, in spite of her father: and though she knew, and cared not much about money, of which she never had any stint, and though she was a romantic little muse, as we have seen, yet she could not reasonably be grateful to the persons who had so contributed to change her condition; nor, indeed, did she understand what the latter really was, until she had made some further progress, and acquired more accurate knowledge in the world.
But this was clear, that her step-father was dull and weak; that mamma dropped her H's, and was not refined in manners or appearance; and that little Frank was a spoiled quarrelsome urchin, always having his way, always treading upon her feet, always upsetting his dinner on her dresses, and keeping her out of her inheritance. None of these, as she felt, could comprehend her: and her solitary heart naturally pined for other attachments, and she sought around her where to bestow the precious boon of her unoccupied affection.
This dear girl, then, from want of sympathy, or other cause, made herself so disagreeable at home, and frightened her mother, and bored her step-father so much, that they were quite as anxious as she could be that she should settle for herself in life; and hence Sir Francis Clavering's desire expressed to his friend, in the last chapter, that Mrs. Strong should die, and that he would take Blanche to himself as a second Mrs. Strong.