Gabriella herself knew not; nor what change of plan had induced her friend to venture over alone: she knew only that what was counselled by the Bishop must be wise; that what was executed by Juliet must be right.
Juliet, who had heard this recital with melting tenderness, was now with difficulty restrained, even by the presence of Sir Jaspar, from casting herself rather at the feet than into the arms, of her generous, n.o.ble, and confiding, though untrusted friend.
CHAPTER LXX
Various customers, though for small purchases, had, from time to time, interrupted, but not broken this narration. The Baronet respectfully made way for whoever came, but resumed his place the instant that it was vacated; spending the interval in selecting new pieces of ribbon; till, ere the history was finished, not a remnant of that article remained unsold. It was his purpose, he gallantly said, to present a top-knot, for a twelve-month to come, to every fair syren who, either by face, voice, shape, feature, complexion, size, air, or manner, should afford him so much pleasure as to remind him, however transiently, of the adorable haberdasher, whose taper fingers had put it into his possession.
Gabriella interrupted these compliments, to observe, with some anxiety, two strange men, who were sauntering up and down the street, and who, from time to time, peeped in at the window.
"And how can they do any better?" said the Baronet; "unless you invite them into your apartments? "Tis precisely what I shall enact myself, if you turn me out of doors! Do you fancy you are to dart yourselves, you and your mischievous partner, into as many hearts as you can find spectators, and then bid your poor wounded gazers go lie down and bleed, in the kennel, like so many puppies; without allowing them even a lamenting yell, or friendly barking, to call themselves into notice before they give up the ghost? I pity the poor caitiffs with all my heart.
"A fellow-feeling makes one wond"rous kind!"[2]
[Footnote 2: Garrick.]
"Let me, however, hope, that the seductive tale which I have been quaffing, has not intoxicated all my senses only to my own destruction!
that my poor nerves have not been pierced and pinched; that my feelings have not been twitched and tweaked, and my senses scared and confounded, only to drag my own crazy folly into fuller view!"
He paused a few minutes, during which Gabriella began making out the account of her ribbons; and then, with a mild voice, but an arch brow, "Hear me," he resumed, "my dulcet frog! for such, you know, is your destined cla.s.sification in this country; hear, and under your auspices let me proceed. If this fair marvellous Wanderer,--in her birth no longer an Incognita, yet an Incognita still in her history; will venture to put herself under my protection,--honourably I mean; so don"t frown!
for nothing so spoils the forehead! Besides, who can look at you, and not mean honourably? With all your sweetness, there is a fire in your eye, that, if I harboured a naughty idea, only for a moment, would, I see plainly, consume me. Let us, however, talk the matter over with becoming seriousness. It may, perchance, be less difficult than you may imagine, to establish your fair journeywoman"s rights."
"O make the attempt, then," cried Gabriella; "exert yourself in so n.o.ble a trial!"
"A little activity," he continued, "and a great deal of menacing, adroitly put in play, will now and then do wonders. A little money, too, dexterously handled, rarely does much harm. When Lord Denmeath sees all these at work, take my word for it, he will think twice, before he will let them operate upon the public. We like mighty well to reap the fruits of our address in the world; but we have a sagacious tendency to keeping our ways and means to ourselves. Lord Denmeath, after all, as a worldly man, does but his office, in putting to sleep his conscience for the better keeping awake his interest. This is simply in the ordinary course of things: but, when the blood that is youthful is not generous; when life is begun with the crafty hardness that years, experience, and disappointment have given to those who are ending it; when we see even striplings, who ought to be made up of wild romance, and credulous enthusiasm, meanly, basely, heartlessly, for a few pitiful thousands, suffer an orphan to be cheated, despoiled of her rank in life, and made an alien to her country, as well as to her family;--then it is, that I curse Vanity as an imp of darkness, and Pride as a demon of h.e.l.l! When a boy like Lord Melbury, a young girl such as Lady Aurora--"
"They are innocent, Sir Jaspar! they are n.o.ble! they are faultless!"
called out Juliet, eagerly returning to the shop; "they dream not of my claims; they have not the most distant idea that I have the honour to belong to their house. Innocent? they are meritorious! Conceiving me simply a helpless, unpatronized, and indigent Wanderer, they have treated me with a kindness, a consideration, an heavenly benevolence, that, towards a stranger so forlorn, could have been dictated only by the most angelic of natures!"
"Astonishing! incredible!" exclaimed Sir Jaspar. "What! do they not know your story? Have you made no appeal to their justice, their affections?"
"You will cease, Sir, to wonder, and cease also, I hope, to question me, when I tell you that here, even here, I have not made my situation known! here, even here,--to the friend of my heart, the confidant of my life, the loved and honoured descendant of the house by which I have been preserved, and from which alone I hope for protection! Judge then, how powerful must be my motives for secresy! And she,--she submits to my silence! Too high-minded for distrust, too n.o.bly mistress of herself for impatience; and conscious that even a wish, expressed, would to me have the force of a command, she waits my time! She knows the most dire and barbarous obstacles could alone lead me to reserve and concealment, where my softest consolation would be openness and sympathy!"
Gabriella could offer no answer but by wide extended arms, with which Juliet, gushing into tears, was fondly encircled; while the Baronet, touched, amazed, and enchanted, repeatedly wiped his eyes; when Gabriella, observing, again, at the window, one of the men of whom she had spoken, whispered Juliet to compose herself, or to retire.
There was not time: Riley, who had seen her, bounced into the shop.
"Ah, ha, I have caught you at last, have I, Demoiselle?" he cried, rubbing his hands with joy. "I could not devise where the deuce you had hidden yourself. I only knew you were in some shabby little bit of a shop in this street. And who do you think is my author for this intelligence?--Won"t you guess?--Why Surly! your old friend, Surly!"
Apprehensive of some attack similar to that which she had endured at Brighthelmstone, Juliet ventured not to speak, though she felt too anxious to withdraw: while Sir Jaspar, extremely curious, repeated, "Old Surly?" in a tone that invited explanation.
"The same, faith! He"s come over o" purpose to hunt you out, Demoiselle."
"Me?" cried Juliet, changing colour; "and why?--And who is he?"
"Who is he? Well! that"s droll, faith! Why you have not forgotten your old crony, the pilot?"
Juliet looked down, to conceal the alarm with which she was seized.
"Why, I"ll tell you how it all happened," continued Riley, mounting upon the counter, as he might have mounted upon his horse; "I"ll tell you how it all happened. About a month ago, in one of my rambles, I met Master Surly; and, for old acquaintance sake, I was prodigiously glad to see him: for I like, as a curiosity, to shew John Bull a Mounseer that i"n"t a milk-sop. So we talked over our voyage; but when I told him that I had met with the Demoiselle at Brighthelmstone; and that she had cast off her slough, and was grown a beauty; he asked me a hundred questions, and said that, most likely, she was a person of whom he was in search; and after whom there had been a great hue and cry."
Juliet now opened various small drawers, shutting them almost at the same moment; but always with her face turned from Riley.
"Well, we parted, and I saw no more of him, and thought no more of him neither, faith! till this very morning, when I popt upon him, all at once, in Piccadilly. And then, he told me that he was just come from Brighthelmstone, where he had been looking for you."
Juliet though in a tremour that shook her whole frame, faintly said, "And why?"
"Because, by my account of you, he was satisfied you must be the very person that he was commissioned to find."
Juliet now seemed scarcely able to sustain herself. Gabriella and Sir Jaspar saw, with deep concern, her emotion; but Riley, un.o.bservant, went on.
"At Brighton, he had discovered that you had journied up to town, in the stage. And he came up after you, in the very same carriage, only yesterday. And, by means of a boy at the inn, who had called your hackney-coach, he had just found out coachy; who informed him, that he had set down a pretty young damsel, that had arrived from Brighton about a week ago, at a small shop in Frith-street, Soho. Upon that, I offered to help him in his search; and we jogged on to these quarters together: for I always liked you, Demoiselle, and always had a prodigious mind to know who you were. But the deuce a bit would you ever tell me. So we have been sauntering and maundering up and down the street, one on one side, and t"other on t"other, in search of you; peeping and peering into every shop, and lounging and squinting at every window. We have had the devil of a job of it to find you, Demoiselle; we have, faith!--But my best sport will be to make Monsieur Surly look you full in the face, as I did myself, without knowing you! though he pretends that that"s all one. The French always say that to every thing that they don"t like; _c"est egal!_ cries Monsieur, whenever he"s put out of his way. However, old Surly stands to it, that he shall discover you in a twinkling; for he"s got your description."
"My description?" Juliet repeated; in a tone of terrour.
"Ay; and there he is, faith! on t"other side the way! An old owl!" cried Riley; striding to the door, and calling aloud, "Surly! old Surly! Come over, Mounseer Surly!"
Juliet was now precipitately gliding into the little room; but Sir Jaspar, intercepting her flight, warmly entreated, whatever might be her fears or her difficulties, to be accepted as her protector: and, while she was struggling, with speechless impatience, to pa.s.s him, the pilot, pulled into the shop by Riley, stood full before her; stared hardily in her face; looked at a paper which he held in his hand, and, grinning horribly a scoffing smile, walked away, without speaking.
Juliet, who seemed nearly fainting, was drawn tenderly into the adjoining room by Gabriella; who was herself in almost equal consternation.
"A pretty feat you have performed here, Sir! An admirable exploit!" said Sir Jaspar, angrily, to Riley; who, laughing heartily at the savage satisfaction of the pilot, had re-mounted the counter. "And what sort of man must you be to find it so dulcet and recreative, to give chace to a timid, defenceless lamb?"
"What sort of man?" returned Riley; "faith, I don"t know! I don"t, faith! But who does? If you can tell me the man who knows himself, you"ll do more than has been done yet since the days of old Adam. I never trouble myself with vain researches, and combinations, and developments, and metaphysical a.n.a.lysings. What do they do for us, beside cracking our skulls? They only leave us where they found us; forced to eat and drink, and sleep and wake, and live and die, just the same, since all the discoveries of Newton, as we did before we knew a square from an angle."
"O ho, you are a philosopher, Sir, then, are you?" said Sir Jaspar; "a Cynic? guided by contempt of mankind?"
"Not a whit! I only follow my humour. If that happens to please my friends, so much the better; if not, I am but little "of the melting mood;" I go on all the same. I never stop to weigh opinion in the scale of my proceedings."
"And do you never weigh humanity, neither, Sir? the feelings of others?
the good or ill of society?"
"No! I never think of all that. I let the world take its own course, as I take mine. I have long had a craving desire to know who this girl is; and she would never tell me. Her obstinacy doubles my curiosity; and when my curiosity gets at the helm, it does just what it will with me.
It does, faith!"
Gabriella, now returning, demanded of Riley what business detained him in the shop, with an air of dignity that surprised him into making something like an apology; to which he added, that he only stayed to have a little further parley with the demoiselle.
That young lady was indisposed, and could be spoken to no more.
"Indisposed?" he repeated; "I am sorry for that! I am, faith! Poor demoiselle! she has been liberal enough of diversion to me, one way or another. However, I shall soon discover who she is; for I know where to catch Master Surly; and he says he is promised a thumping reward, if he finds that she is the right person. He is but an agent, poor Surly: but he expects his princ.i.p.al, with the cash, over every hour; if he i"n"t landed already."
Gabriella, who had returned to the little parlour, perceived, now, that the face of Juliet looked convulsed with horrour. She procured her a gla.s.s of hartshorn and water; and entreated the Baronet, who seemed transfixed with concern, to force Riley away; and to be gone, also, himself.
Sir Jaspar could not refuse compliance; but neither could he deny himself advancing, for an instant, to say, in a low voice, to Juliet, "Bow not down your lovely head, sweet lilly! I have friends who will find means to succour and protect you, be who will your a.s.saulter!"
Offering Riley, then, a place in his chariot, and dropping, as he pa.s.sed, his purse into the till-box, he drove off, with his new acquaintance.