Complete Novels of Maria Edgeworth

by Maria Edgeworth

  As the butler put a fine dish of cherries upon the table, he said,

  “My lady, these cherries are a present from the old gardener to Miss Delacour.”

  “Set them before Miss Delacour then,” said Lady Anne. “Helena, my dear, distribute your own cherries.”

  At the name of Delacour, Clarence Hervey, though his head was still half full of the mammoth, looked round in astonishment; and when he saw the cherries placed before the young lady, whose resemblance to Lady Delacour he had before observed, he could not help exclaiming,

  “That young lady then is not a daughter of your ladyship’s?”

  “No; but I love her as well as if she were,” replied Lady Anne.—”What were you saying about the mammoth?”

  “That the mammoth is supposed to be —— —— — —” but interrupting himself, Clarence said in an inquiring tone—”A niece of Lady Delacour’s?”

  “Her ladyship’s daughter, sir,” said the severe old lady, in a voice more terrific than her looks.

  “Shall I give you some strawberries, Mr. Hervey,” said lady Anne, “or will you let Helena help you to some cherries?”

  “Her ladyship’s daughter!” exclaimed Clarence Hervey in a tone of surprise.

  “Some cherries, sir?” said Helena; but her voice faltered so much, that she could hardly utter the words.

  Clarence perceived that he had been the cause of her agitation, though he knew not precisely by what means; and he now applied himself in silence to the picking of his strawberries with great diligence.

  The ladies soon afterwards withdrew, and as Mr. Percival did not touch upon the subject again, Clarence forbore to ask any further questions, though he was considerably surprised by this sudden discovery. When he went into the drawing-room to tea, he found his friend, the stern old lady, speaking in a high declamatory tone. The words which he heard as he came into the room were —

  “If there were no Clarence Herveys, there would be no Lady Delacours.” — Clarence bowed as if he had received a high compliment — the old lady walked away to an antechamber, fanning herself with great energy.

  “Mrs. Margaret Delacour,” said Lady Anne, in a low voice to Hervey, “is an aunt of Lord Delacour’s. A woman whose heart is warmer than her temper.”

  “And that is never cool,” said a young lady, who sat next to Lady Anne. “I call Mrs. Margaret Delacour the volcano; I’m sure I am never in her company without dreading an eruption. Every now and then out comes with a tremendous noise, fire, smoke, and rubbish.”

  “And precious minerals,” said Lady Anne, “amongst the rubbish.”

  “But the best of it is,” continued the young lady, “that she is seldom in a passion without making a hundred mistakes, for which she is usually obliged afterwards to ask a thousand pardons.”

  “By that account,” said Lady Anne, “which I believe to be just, her contrition is always ten times as great as her offence.”

  “Now you talk of contrition, Lady Anne,” said Mr. Hervey, “I should think of my own offences: I am very sorry that my indiscreet questions gave Miss Delacour any pain — my head was so full of the mammoth, that I blundered on without seeing what I was about till it was too late.”

  “Pray, sir,” said Mrs. Margaret Delacour, who now returned, and took her seat upon a sofa, with the solemnity of a person who was going to sit in judgment upon a criminal, “pray, sir, may I ask how long you have been acquainted with my Lady Delacour?”

  Clarence Hervey took up a book, and with great gravity kissed it, as if he had been upon his oath in a court of justice, and answered,

  “To the best of my recollection, madam, it is now four years since I had first the pleasure and honour of seeing Lady Delacour.”

  “And in that time, intimately as you have had the pleasure of being acquainted with her ladyship, you have never discovered that she had a daughter?”

  “Never,” said Mr. Hervey.

  “There, Lady Anne! — There!” cried Mrs. Delacour, “will you tell me after this, that Lady Delacour is not a monster?”

  “Every body says that she’s a prodigy,” said Lady Anne; “and prodigies and monsters are sometimes thought synonymous terms.”

  “Such a mother was never heard of,” continued Mrs. Delacour, “since the days of Savage and Lady Macclesfield. I am convinced that she hates her daughter. Why she never speaks of her — she never sees her — she never thinks of her!”

  “Some mothers speak more than they think of their children, and others think more than they speak of them,” said Lady Anne.

  “I always thought,” said Mr. Hervey, “that Lady Delacour was a woman of great sensibility.”

  “Sensibility!” exclaimed the indignant old lady, “she has no sensibility, sir — none — none. She who lives in a constant round of dissipation, who performs no one duty, who exists only for herself; how does she show her sensibility? — Has she sensibility for her husband — for her daughter — for any one useful purpose upon earth? — Oh, how I hate the cambric handkerchief sensibility that is brought out only to weep at a tragedy! — Yes; Lady Delacour has sensibility enough, I grant ye, when sensibility is the fashion. I remember well her performing the part of a nurse with vast applause; and I remember, too, the sensibility she showed, when the child that she nursed fell a sacrifice to her dissipation. The second of her children, that she killed—”

  “Killed! — Oh! surely, my dear Mrs. Delacour, that is too strong a word,” said Lady Anne: “you would not make a Medea of Lady Delacour!”

  “It would have been better if I had,” cried Mrs. Delacour, “I can understand that there may be such a thing in nature as a jealous wife, but an unfeeling mother I cannot comprehend — that passes my powers of imagination.”

  “And mine, so much,” said Lady Anne, “that I cannot believe such a being to exist in the world — notwithstanding all the descriptions I have heard of it: as you say, my dear Mrs. Delacour, it passes my powers of imagination. Let us leave it in Mr. Hervey’s apocryphal chapter of animals, and he will excuse us if I never admit it into true history, at least without some better evidence than I have yet heard.”

  “Why, my dear, dear Lady Anne,” cried Mrs. Delacour—”I’ve made this coffee so sweet, there’s no drinking it — what evidence would you have?”

  “None,” said Lady Anne, smiling, “I would have none.” “That is to say, you will take none,” said Mrs. Delacour: “but can any thing be stronger evidence than her ladyship’s conduct to my poor Helen — to your Helen, I should say — for you have educated, you have protected her, you have been a mother to her. I am an infirm, weak, ignorant, passionate old woman — I could not have been what you have been to that child — God bless you! — God will bless you!”

  She rose as she spoke, to set down her coffee-cup on the table. Clarence Hervey took it from her with a look which said much, and which she was perfectly capable of understanding.

  “Young man,” said she, “it is very unfashionable to treat age and infirmity with politeness. I wish that your friend, Lady Delacour, may at my time of life meet with as much respect, as she has met with admiration and gallantry in her youth. Poor woman, her head has absolutely been turned with admiration — and if fame say true, Mr. Hervey has had his share in turning that head by his flattery.”

  “I am sure her ladyship has turned mine by her charms,” said Clarence; “and I certainly am not to be blamed for admiring what all the world admires.”

  “I wish,” said the old lady, “for her own sake, for the sake of her family, and for the sake of her reputation, that my Lady Delacour had fewer admirers, and more friends.”

  “Women who have met with so many admirers, seldom meet with many friends,” said Lady Anne.

  “No,” said Mrs. Delacour, “for they seldom are wise enough to know their value.”

  “We learn the value of all things, but especially of friends, by experience,” said Lady Anne; “and it is no wonder, therefore, that those who have little experience
of the pleasures of friendship should not be wise enough to know their value.”

  “This is very good-natured sophistry; but Lady Delacour is too vain ever to have a friend,” said Mrs. Delacour. “My dear Lady Anne, you don’t know her as well as I do — she has more vanity than ever woman had.”

  “That is certainly saying a great deal,” said Lady Anne; “but then we must consider, that Lady Delacour, as an heiress, a beauty, and a wit, has a right to a triple share at least.”

  “Both her fortune and her beauty are gone; and if she had any wit left, it is time it should teach her how to conduct herself, I think,” said Mrs. Delacour: “but I give her up — I give her up.”

  “Oh, no,” said Lady Anne, “you must not give her up yet, I have been informed, and upon the best authority, that Lady Delacour was not always the unfeeling, dissipated fine lady that she now appears to be. This is only one of the transformations of fashion — the period of her enchantment will soon be at an end, and she will return to her natural character. I should not be at all surprised, if Lady Delacour were to appear at once la femme comme il y en a pen.”

  “Or la bonne mère?” said Mrs. Delacour, sarcastically, “after thus leaving her daughter — —”

  “Pour bonne bouche,” interrupted Lady Anne, “when she is tired of the insipid taste of other pleasures, she will have a higher relish for those of domestic life, which will be new and fresh to her.”

  “And so you really think, my dear Lady Anne, that my Lady Delacour will end by being a domestic woman. Well,” said Mrs. Margaret, after taking two pinches of snuff, “some people believe in the millennium; but I confess I am not one of them — are you, Mr. Hervey?”

  “If it were foretold to me by a good angel,” said Clarence, smiling, as his eye glanced at Lady Anne; “if it were foretold to me by a good angel, how could I doubt it?”

  Here the conversation was interrupted by the entrance of one of Lady Anne’s little boys, who came running eagerly up to his mother, to ask whether he might have “the sulphurs to show to Helena Delacour. I want to show her Vertumnus and Pomona, mamma,” said he. “Were not the cherries that the old gardener sent very good?”

  “What is this about the cherries and the old gardener, Charles?” said the young lady who sat beside Lady Anne: “come here and tell me the whole story.”

  “I will, but I should tell it you a great deal better another time,” said the boy, “because now Helena’s waiting for Vertumnus and Pomona.”

  “Go then to Helena,” said Lady Anne, “and I will tell the story for you.”

  Then turning to the young lady she began—”Once upon a time there lived an old gardener at Kensington; and this old gardener had an aloe, which was older than himself; for it was very near a hundred years of age, and it was just going to blossom, and the old gardener calculated how much he might make by showing his aloe, when it should be in full blow, to the generous public — and he calculated that he might make a 100l.; and with this 100l. he determined to do more than was ever done with a 100l. before: but, unluckily, as he was thus reckoning his blossoms before they were blown, he chanced to meet with a fair damsel, who ruined all his calculations.”

  “Ay, Mrs. Stanhope’s maid, was not it?” interrupted Mrs. Margaret Delacour. “A pretty damsel she was, and almost as good a politician as her mistress. Think of that jilt’s tricking this poor old fellow out of his aloe, and — oh, the meanness of Lady Delacour, to accept of that aloe for one of her extravagant entertainments!”

  “But I always understood that she paid fifty guineas for it,” said Lady Anne.

  “Whether she did or not,” said Mrs. Delacour, “her ladyship and Mrs. Stanhope between them were the ruin of this poor old man. He was taken in to marry that jade of a waiting-maid; she turned out just as you might expect from a pupil of Mrs. Stanhope’s — the match-making Mrs. Stanhope — you know, sir.” (Clarence Hervey changed colour.) “She turned out,” continued Mrs. Delacour, “every thing that was bad — ruined her husband — ran away from him — and left him a beggar.”

  “Poor man!” said Clarence Hervey.

  “But now,” said Lady Anne, “let’s come to the best part of the story — mark how good comes out of evil. If this poor man had not lost his aloe and his wife, I probably should never have been acquainted with Mrs. Delacour, or with my little Helena. About the time that the old gardener was left a beggar, as I happened to be walking one fine evening in Sloane-street, I met a procession of school-girls — an old man begged from them in a most moving voice; and as they passed, several of the young ladies threw halfpence to him. One little girl, who observed that the old man could not stoop without great difficulty, stayed behind the rest of her companions, and collected the halfpence which they had thrown to him, and put them into his hat. He began to tell his story over again to her, and she stayed so long listening to it, that her companions had turned the corner of the street, and were out of sight. She looked about in great distress; and I never shall forget the pathetic voice with which she said, ‘Oh! what will become of me? every body will be angry with me.’ I assured her that nobody should be angry with her, and she gave me her little hand with the utmost innocent confidence. I took her home to her schoolmistress, and I was so pleased with the beginning of this acquaintance, that I was determined to cultivate it. One good acquaintance I have heard always leads to another. Helena introduced me to her aunt Delacour as her best friend. Mrs. Margaret Delacour has had the goodness to let her little niece spend the holidays and all her leisure time with me, so that our acquaintance has grown into friendship. Helena has become quite one of my family.”

  “And I am sure she has become quite a different creature since she has been so much with you,” cried Mrs. Delacour; “her spirits were quite broken by her mother’s neglect of her: young as she is, she has a great deal of real sensibility; but as to her mother’s sensibility—”

  At the recollection of Lady Delacour’s neglect of her child, Mrs. Delacour was going again to launch forth into indignant invective, but Lady Anne stopped her, by whispering —

  “Take care what you say of the mother, for here is the daughter coming, and she has, indeed, a great deal of real sensibility.”

  Helena and her young companions now came into the room, bringing with them the sulphurs at which they had been looking.

  “Mamma,” said little Charles Percival, “we have brought the sulphurs to you, because there are some of them that I don’t know.”

  “Wonderful!” said Lady Anne; “and what is not quite so wonderful, there are some of them that I don’t know.”

  The children spread the sulphurs upon a little table, and all the company gathered round it.

  “Here are all the nine muses for you,” said the least of the boys, who had taken his seat by Clarence Hervey at dinner; “here are all the muses for you, Mr. Hervey: which do you like best? — Oh, that’s the tragic muse that you have chosen! — You don’t like the tragic better than the comic muse, do you?”

  Clarence Hervey made no answer, for he was at that instant recollecting how Belinda looked in the character of the tragic muse.

  “Has your ladyship ever happened to meet with the young lady who has spent this winter with Lady Delacour?” said Clarence to Lady Anne.

  “I sat near her one night at the opera,” said Lady Anne: “she has a charming countenance.”

  “Who? — Belinda Portman, do you mean?” said Mrs. Delacour. “I am sure if I were a young man, I would not trust to the charming countenance of a young lady who is a pupil of Mrs. Stanhope’s, and a friend of — Helena, my dear, shut the door — the most dissipated woman in London.”