Complete Novels of Maria Edgeworth

by Maria Edgeworth

  “What news, Mr. Evans?” said the farmer.

  “What news?” repeated Mr. Evans, looking up from his paper, with a sarcastic smile. “Why, news that might not be altogether so agreeable to the whole of this good company; so ’tis best to keep it to ourselves.”

  “Every thing’s agreeable to me, I’m sure,” said the farmer—”every thing’s agreeable to me in the way of news.”

  “And to me, not excepting politics, which you gentlemen always think so polite,” said the farmer’s wife, “to keep to yourselves; but, you recollect, I was used to politics when I lived with my uncle at Cardiffe; not having, though a farmer’s wife, always lived in the country, as you see, ma’am — nor being quite illiterate. — Well, Mr. Evans, let us have it. What news of the fleets?”

  Mr. Evans made no reply, but pointed out a passage in the newspaper to the farmer, who leant over his shoulder, in vain endeavouring to spell and put it together: his smart wife, whose curiosity was at least equal to her husband’s, ran immediately to peep at the wonderful paragraph, and she read aloud the beginning of an advertisement: —

  “Suspected to have strayed, or eloped, from her friends or relations, a young lady, seemingly not more than sixteen years of age, dressed in white, with a straw hat: blue eyes, light hair.”

  Angelina coloured so deeply whilst this was reading, and the description so exactly suited with her appearance, that the farmer’s wife stopped short; the farmer fixed his eyes upon her; and Mr. Evans cleared his throat several times with much significance. — A general silence ensued; at last the three heads nodded to one another across the round table; the farmer whistled and walked out of the room; his wife fidgeted at a buffet, in which she began to arrange some cups and saucers; and, after a few minutes, she followed her husband. Angelina took up the newspaper, to read the remainder of the advertisement. She could not doubt that it was meant for her, when she saw that it was dated the very day of her arrival at the inn at Cardiffe, and signed by the landlady of the inn, Mrs. Hoel. Mr. Evans swallowed the remainder of his ale, and then addressed Angelina in these words: —

  “Young lady, it is plain to see you know when the cap fits: now, if you’ll take my advice, you’ll not make the match you have in your eye; for, though a lord’s son, he is a great gambler. I dined with one that has dined with him not long ago. My son, who has a living near Bristol, knows a great deal — more about you than you’d think; and ’tis my advice to you, which I wouldn’t be at the trouble of giving, if you were not as pretty as you are, to go back to your relations; for he’ll never marry you, and marriage to be sure is your object. I have no more to say, but only this — I shall think it my duty, as a magistrate, to let your friends know as soon as possible where you are, coming under my cognizance as you do; for a vagabond, in the eye of the law, is a person—”

  Angelina had not patience to listen to any more of this speech; she interrupted Mr. Evans with a look of indignation, assured him that he was perfectly unintelligible to her, and walked out of the room with great dignity. Her dignity made no impression upon the farmer or his wife, who now repented having offered her a night’s lodging in their house: in the morning they were as eager to get rid of her as she was impatient to depart. Mr. Evans insisted upon seeing her safe home, evidently for the purpose of discovering precisely where she lived. Angelina saw that she could no longer remain undisturbed in her retreat, and determined to set out immediately in quest of her unknown friend at Bristol. — Betty Williams, who had a strong desire to have a jaunt to Bristol, a town which she had never seen but once in her life, offered to attend Miss Warwick, assuring her that she perfectly well knew the house where Miss Hodges always lodged. Her offer was accepted; and what adventures our heroine met with in Bristol, and what difficulties she encountered before she discovered her Araminta, will be seen in the next chapter.

  CHAPTER III.

  Angelina went by water from Cardiffe to Bristol; the water was rather rough, and, as she was unused to the motion of a vessel, she was both frightened and sick. She spent some hours very disagreeably, and without even the sense of acting like a heroine, to support her spirits. It was late in the evening before she arrived at the end of her voyage: she was landed on the quay at Bristol. No hackney-coach was to be had, and she was obliged to walk to the Bush. To find herself in the midst of a bustling, vulgar crowd, by whom she was unknown, but not unnoticed, was new to Miss Warwick. Whilst she was with Lady Diana Chillingworth, she had always been used to see crowds make way for her; she was now surprised to feel herself jostled in the streets by passengers, who were all full of their own affairs, hurrying different ways, in pursuit of objects which probably seemed to them as important as the search for an unknown friend appeared to Angelina.

  Betty Williams’s friend’s friend, the careful lad, who was to deliver the letter to Miss Hodges, was a waiter at the Bush. Upon inquiry, it was found that he had totally forgotten his promise: Angelina’s letter was, after much search, found in a bottle-drainer, so much stained with port wine, that it was illegible. The man answered with the most provoking nonchalance, when Angelina reproached him for his carelessness—”That, indeed, no such person as Miss Hodges was to be found: that nobody he could meet with had ever heard the name.” They who are extremely enthusiastic suffer continually from the total indifference of others to their feelings; and young people can scarcely conceive the extent of this indifference until they have seen something of the world. Seeing the world does not always mean seeing a certain set of company in London.

  Angelina, the morning after her arrival at the Bush, took a hackney-coach, and left the care of directing the coachman to Betty Williams, who professed to have a perfect knowledge of Bristol. Betty desired the man to drive to the drawbridge; and, at the sound of the word drawbridge, various associations of ideas with the drawbridges of ancient times were called up in Miss Warwick’s imagination. How different was the reality from her castles in the air! She was roused from her reverie by the voices of Betty Williams and the coachman.

  “Where will I drive ye to, I ask you?” said the coachman, who was an Irishman: “Will I stand all day upon the drawbridge stopping the passage?”

  “Trive on a step, and I will get out and see apout me,” said Betty: “I know the look of the house, as well as I know any thing.”

  Betty got out of the coach, and walked up and down the street, looking at the houses like one bewildered.

  “Bad luck to you! for a Welsh woman as you are,” exclaimed the coachman, jumping down from the box, “will I lave the young lady standing in the streets all day alone for you to be making a fool this way of us both? — Sorrow take me now! If I do—”

  “Pless us, pe not in a pet or a pucker, or how shall I recollect any body or any thing. — Cood! Cood! — Stand you there while I just say over my alphabet: a, p, c, t, e, f, g, h, i, k, l, m, n, o, b. — It was some name which begins with p, and ends with a t, I pelieve.”

  “Here’s a pretty direction, upon my troth; some name which begins with a p, and ends with a t,” cried the coachman; and after he had uttered half a score of Hibernian execrations upon the Welsh woman’s folly, he with much good nature went along with her to read the names on the street doors.—”Here’s a name now that’s the very thing for you — here’s Pushit now.-Was the name Pushit? — Ricollict yourself, my good girl, was that your name?”

  “Pushit! — Oh, yes, I am sure, and pelieve it was Pushit — Mrs. Pushit’s house, Pristol, where our Miss Hodges lodges alway.”

  “Mrs. Pushit — but this is quite another man; I tell you this is Sir John — Faith now we are in luck,” continued the coachman—”here’s another p just at hand; here’s Mrs. Puffit; sure she begins with a p, and ends with a t, and is a milliner into the bargain? so sure enough I’ll engage the young lady lodges here. — Puffit — Hey? — Ricollict now, and don’t be looking as if you’d just been pulled out of your sleep, and had never been in a Christian town before now.”

  “Pless us,
Cot pless us!” said the Welsh girl, who was quite overpowered by the Irishman’s flow of words — and she was on the point of having recourse, in her own defence, to her native tongue, in which she could have matched either male or female in fluency; but, to Angelina’s great relief, the dialogue between the coachman and Betty Williams ceased. The coachman drew up to Mrs. Puffit’s; but, as there was a handsome carriage at the door, Miss Warwick was obliged to wait in her hackney-coach some time longer. The handsome carriage belonged to Lady Frances Somerset. — By one of those extraordinary coincidences which sometimes occur in real life, but which are scarcely believed to be natural when they are related in books, Miss Warwick happened to come to this shop at the very moment when the persons she most wished to avoid were there. Whilst the dialogue between Betty Williams and the hackney-coachman was passing, Lady Diana Chillingworth and Miss Burrage were seated in Mrs. Puffit’s shop: Lady Diana was extremely busy bargaining with the milliner; for, though rich, and a woman of quality, her ladyship piqued herself upon making the cheapest bargains in the world.

  “Your la’ship did not look at this eight and twenty shilling lace,” said Mrs. Puffit; “’tis positively the cheapest thing your la’ship ever saw. Jessie! the laces in the little blue band-box. Quick! for my Ladi Di. — Quick!”

  “But it is out of my power to stay to look at any thing more now,” said Lady Diana; “and yet,” whispered she to Miss Burrage, “when one does go out a shopping, one certainly likes to bring home a bargain.”

  “Certainly; but Bristol’s not the place for bargains,” said Miss Burrage; “you will find nothing tolerable, I assure you, my dear Lady Di., at Bristol.”

  “Why, my dear,” said her ladyship, “were you ever at Bristol before? How comes it that I never heard that you were at Bristol before? Where were you, child?”

  “At the Wells, at the Wells, ma’am,” replied Miss Burrage, and she turned pale and red in the space of a few seconds; but Lady Diana, who was very near-sighted, was holding her head so close to the blue band-box full of lace, that she could not see the changes in her companion’s countenance. The fact was, that Miss Burrage was born and bred in Bristol, where she had several relations, who were not in high life, and by whom she consequently dreaded to be claimed. When she first met Lady Diana Chillingworth at Buxton, she had passed herself upon her for one of the Burrages of Dorsetshire, and she knew that, if her ladyship was to discover the truth, she would cast her off with horror. For this reason, she had done every thing in her power to prevent Lady Di. from coming to Clifton; and for this reason she now endeavoured to persuade her that nothing tolerable could be met with at Bristol.

  “I am afraid, Lady Di., you will be late at Lady Mary’s,” said she.

  “Look at this lace, child, and give me your opinion — eight and twenty shillings, Mrs. Puffit, did you say?”

  “Eight and twenty, my lady — and I lose by every yard I sell at that price. Ma’am, you see,” said Mrs. Puffit, appealing to Miss Burrage, “’tis real Valenciennes, you see.”

  “I see ’tis horrid dear,” said Miss Burrage: then in a whisper to Lady Di. she added, “at Miss Trentham’s at the Wells, your ladyship will meet with such bargains!”

  Mrs. Puffit put her lace upon the alabaster neck of the large doll which stood in the middle of her shop. “Only look, my lady — only see, ma’am, how beautiful becoming ’tis to the neck, and sets off a dress too, you know, ma’am. And (turning to Miss Burrage) eight and twenty, you know, ma’am, is really nothing for any lace you’d wear; but more particularly for real Valenciennes, which can scarce be had real, for love or money, since the French Revolution. Real Valenciennes! — and will wear and wash, and wash and wear — not that your ladyship minds that — for ever and ever, — and is such a bargain, and so becoming to the neck, especially to ladies of your la’ship’s complexion.”

  “Well, I protest, I believe, Burrage, I don’t know what to say, my dear — hey?”

  “I’m told,” whispered Miss Burrage, “that Miss Trentham’s to have a lace raffle at the Wells next week.”

  “A raffle?” cried Lady Di., turning her back immediately upon the doll and the lace.

  “Well,” cried Mrs. Puffit, “instead of eight say seven and twenty shillings, Miss Burrage, for old acquaintance sake.”

  “Old acquaintance!” exclaimed Miss Burrage: “la! Mrs. Puffit, I don’t remember ever being twice in your shop all the time I was at the Wells before.”

  “No, ma’am,” replied Mrs. Puffit, with a malicious smile—”but when you was living on Saint Augustin’s Back.”

  “Saint Augustin’s Back, my dear!” exclaimed Lady Diana Chillingworth, with a look of horror and amazement.

  Miss Burrage, laying down a bank-note on the counter, made a quick and expressive sign to the milliner to hold her tongue.

  “Dear Mrs. Puffit,” cried she, “you certainly mistake me for some other strange person. Lady Di., now I look at it with my glass, this lace is very fine, I must agree with you, and not dear, by any means, for real Valenciennes: cut me off three yards of this lace — I protest there’s no withstanding it, Lady Di.”

  “Three yards at eight and twenty — here, Jesse,” said Mrs. Puffit. “I beg your pardon, ma’am, for my mistake; I supposed it was some other lady of the same name; there are so many Burrages. Only three yards did you say, ma’am?”

  “Nay, I don’t care if you give me four. I’m of the Burrages of Dorsetshire.”

  “A very good family, those Burrages of Dorsetshire, as any in England,” said Lady Di.—”and put up twelve yards of this for me, Mrs. Puffit.”

  “Twelve at eight and twenty — yes, my lady — very much obliged to your ladyship — much obliged to you, Miss Burrage. Here, Jesse, this to my Lady Di. Chillingworth’s carriage.” Jesse called at the shop-door, in a shrill voice, to a black servant of Lady Frances Somerset—”Mr. Hector, Mr. Hector! Sir, pray put this parcel into the carriage for Lady Diana Chillingworth.”

  Angelina, who was waiting in her hackney-coach, started; she could scarcely believe that she heard the name rightly: — but, an instant afterwards, the voice of Lady Diana struck her ear, and she sunk back in great agitation. However, neither Miss Burrage nor Lady Di. saw her; they got into their carriage, and drove away.

  Angelina was so much alarmed, that she could scarcely believe that the danger was past when she saw the carriage at the furthest end of the street.