"You are shocked, Belinda," said she, "but as yet you have seen nothing.
Look here!" And baring one half of her bosom, she revealed a hideous spectacle.
"Am I humbled? Am I wretched enough?" she asked. "No matter. I will die as I have lived, the envy and admiration of the world. Promise--swear to me that you will never reveal what you have seen to-night!" And Belinda promised not only that, but to remain with her as long as ever she wished.
Belinda"s quiet avoidance of Clarence Hervey made him begin to believe that she might not be "a compound of art and affectation," and he was mortified to find that, though she joined with ease and dignity in the general conversation with the others, her manner to him was grave and reserved. To divert her, he declared he was convinced he was as well able to manage a hoop as any woman in England, except Lady Delacour; accordingly he was dressed by Marriott, and made his _entree_ with very composed a.s.surance and grace, being introduced as the Countess de Pomenars to the purblind dowager, Lady Boucher, who had come to call. He managed his part well, speaking French and broken English, until Lady Delacour dexterously let down Belinda"s beautiful tresses, and, calling the French lady to admire _la belle chevelure,_ artfully let fall her comb.
Totally forgetting his hoop and his character, he stooped to pick it up, and lost his wager by knocking over a music-stand. He would have liked a lock of her hair, but she refused with a modest, graceful dignity; she was glad she had done so later when a tress of hair dropped from his pocket-book, and his confusion showed her he was extremely interested about the person to whom it belonged.
During her absence from the room Clarence entreated Lady Delacour to make his peace with her. She consented on condition that he found her a pair of horses from Tattersall"s, on which Belinda, she said, had secretly set her heart. He was vexed to find Belinda had so little delicacy, and relapsed into his former opinion of Mrs. Stanhope"s niece, addressing her with the air of a man of gallantry, who thought his peace had been cheaply made.
The horses ran away with Lady Delacour, injuring her ankle, and on her being brought home by Clarence, Lord Delacour wished to enter the locked cabinet for _arque-busade._ On being denied entrance, he seized the key, believing a lover of hers was concealed there, until Belinda sprang forward and took it from him, leaving them to believe what they would.
This circ.u.mstance was afterwards explained by Dr. X----, a mutual friend, and Hervey was so much charmed with Belinda that he would have gone to her at once--only that he had undertaken the reformation of Lady Delacour.
_III.--An Unexpected Suitor_
In the meantime, after spending a morning in tasting wines, and thinking that, although he had never learned to swim, some recollection he had of an essay on swimming would ensure his safety, he betted his friends a hundred guineas that he would swim to a certain point, and flinging himself into the Serpentine, would have drowned before their eyes but for the help of Mr. Percival. The breach caused by this affair induced Sir Philip Baddely, a gentleman who always supplied "each vacuity of sense" with an oath, to endeavour to cut him out by proposing to Belinda.
"Damme, you"re ten times handsomer than the finest woman I ever saw, for, damme, I didn"t know what it was to be in love then," he said, heaving an audible sigh. "I"ll trouble you for Mrs. Stanhope"s direction, Miss Portman; I believe, to do the thing in style, I ought to write to her before I speak to you."
Belinda looked at him in astonishment, and then, finding he was in earnest, a.s.sured him it was not in her power to encourage his addresses, although she was fully sensible of the honour he had done her.
"Confusion seize me!" cried he, starting up, "if it isn"t the most extraordinary thing I ever heard! Is it to Sir Philip Baddely"s fortune--15,000 a year--you object, or to his family, or to his person?
Oh, curse it!" said he, changing his tone, "you"re only quizzing me to see how I should look--you do it too well, you little coquette!"
Belinda again a.s.sured him she was entirely in earnest, and that she was incapable of the sort of coquetry which he ascribed to her. To punish her for this rejection he spread the report of Hervey"s entanglement with a beautiful girl named Virginia, whose picture he had sent to an exhibition. He also roused Lady Delacour"s jealousy into the belief that Belinda meant to marry her husband, the viscount, after her death.
In her efforts to bring husband and wife together, Belinda had forgotten that jealousy could exist without love, and a letter from Mrs. Stanhope, exaggerating the scandalous reports in the hope of forcing her niece to marry Sir Philip Baddely, shocked her so much that when Lady Delacour quarrelled with her, she accepted an invitation from Lady Anne Percival, and went there at once.
There she became acquainted with Mr. Percival"s ward, Augustus Vincent, a Creole, about two-and-twenty, tall and remarkably handsome, with striking manners and an engaging person, who fixed his favourable attention on her. The Percivals would have wished her to marry him, but she still thought too much of Clarence Hervey to consent, although she believed he had some engagement with the lovely Virginia.
_IV.--Explanation and Reconciliation_
Quite unexpectedly a summons came from Lady Delacour, and Belinda returned to her at once, to find her so seriously ill that she persuaded her at last to consent to an operation, and inform her husband of the dangerous disease from which she was suffering. He believed from her preamble that she was about to confess her love for another man; he tried to stop her with an emotion and energy he had never shown until now.
"I am not sufficiently master of myself. I once loved you too well to hear such a stroke. Say no more--trust me with no such secret! you have said enough--too much. I forgive you, that is all I can do; but we must part, Lady Delacour!" said he, breaking from her with agony expressed in his countenance.
"The man has a heart, a soul, I protest! You knew him better that I did, Miss Portman. Nay, you are not gone yet, my lord! You really love me, I find."
"No, no, no!" cried he vehemently. "Weak as you take me to be, Lady Delacour, I am incapable of loving a woman who has disgraced me, disgraced herself, her--" His utterance failed.
"Oh, Lady Delacour," cried Belinda, "how can you trifle in this manner?"
"I meant not," said her ladyship, "to trifle; I am satisfied. My lord, I can give you the most irrefragable proof that whatever may have been the apparent levity of my conduct, you have had no serious cause for jealousy. But the proof will shock, disgust you. Have you courage to know more? Then follow me."
He followed her. Belinda heard the boudoir door unlocked. In a few minutes they returned. Grief and horror and pity were painted on Lord Delacour"s countenance as he pa.s.sed hastily out of the room.
"My dearest friend, I have taken your advice; would to heaven I had taken it sooner!" said Lady Delacour. "I have revealed to Lord Delacour my real situation. Poor man, he was shocked beyond expression. The moment his foolish jealousy was extinguished, his love for me revived in full."
Lady Delacour awaited the operation with the utmost fort.i.tude; but, to everyone"s joy, it was found there was no necessity for it; she had been deceived by a villainous quack, who knew too well how to make a wound hideous and painful, and had continued her delusion for his own advantage.
Meanwhile, Belinda having permitted Mr. Vincent to address her, he was being given a fair trial whether he could win her love. They had heard reports of Clarence Hervey"s speedy marriage with an heiress, Miss Hartley, and found them confirmed by a letter Lady Delacour received from him. Some years ago he had formed the romantic idea of educating a wife for himself, and having found a beautiful, artless girl in the New Forest, he had taken her under his care on the death of her grandmother.
She felt herself bound in honour and grat.i.tude to him when her fortune changed, and she was acknowledged by her father, Mr. Hartley, who had long been searching for her, and who had traced her at last by the picture Clarence Hervey had caused to be exhibited.
With the utmost magnanimity, Hervey, although he saw a successful rival for Belinda"s hand in Augustus Vincent, rescued him from ruin at the gaming-table, and induced him to promise never to gamble again.
"I was determined Belinda"s husband should be my friend. I have succeeded beyond my hopes," he said.
But Vincent"s love of play had decided Belinda at last. She refused him finally in a letter which she confessed she found difficult to write, but which she sent because she had promised she would not hold him in suspense once she had made her decision.
After this Virginia Hartley confessed to her attachment for one Captain Sunderland, and Clarence was free to avow his pa.s.sion for Belinda.
"And what is Miss Portman to believe," cried one of Belinda"s friends, "when she has seen you on the very eve of marriage with another lady?"
"The strongest merit I can plead with such a woman as Miss Portman," he replied, "is that I was ready to sacrifice my own happiness to a sense of duty."
Castle Rackrent
"Castle Rackrent" was published anonymously in 1800. It was not only the first of Miss Edgeworth"s novels,--it is in many respects her best work. Later came "The Absentee," "Belinda,"
"Helen," the "Tales of Fashionable Life," and the "Moral Tales." Sir Walter Scott wrote that reading these stories of Irish peasant life made him feel "that something might be tempted for my own country of the same kind as that which Miss Edgeworth so fortunately achieved for Ireland," something that would procure for his own countrymen "sympathy for their virtues and indulgence for their foibles." As a study of Irish fidelity in the person of Old Thady, the steward who tells the story of "Castle Rackrent," the book is a masterpiece.
_I.--Sir Patrick and Sir Murtagh_
Having, out of friendship for the family, undertaken to publish the memoirs of the Rackrent family, I think it my duty to say a few words concerning myself first. My real name is Thady Quirk, though in the family I"ve always been known as "Honest Thady"; afterwards, I remember to hear them calling me "Old Thady," and now I"ve come to "Poor Thady."
To look at me you would hardly think poor Thady was the father of Attorney Quirk; he is a high gentleman, and having better than fifteen hundred a year, landed estate, looks down upon honest Thady. But I wash my hands of his doings, and as I lived so will I die, true and loyal to the family.
I ought to bless that day when Sir Tallyhoo Rackrent lost a fine hunter and his life, all in one day"s hunt, for the estate came straight into _the_ family, upon one condition, that Sir Patrick O"Shaughlin (whose driver my grandfather was) should, by Act of Parliament, take the surname and arms of Rackrent.
Now it was the world could see what was in Sir Patrick. He gave the finest entertainments ever was heard of in the country; not a man could stand after supper but Sir Patrick himself. He had his house, from one year"s end to another, as full of company as it would hold; and this went on, I can"t tell you how long.
But one year, on his birthday, just as the company rose to drink his health, he fell down in a sort of fit, and in the morning it was all over with poor Sir Patrick.
Never did any gentleman die more beloved by rich and poor. All the gentlemen in the three counties came to his funeral; and happy the man who could get but a sight of the hea.r.s.e!
Just as they were pa.s.sing through his own town the body was seized for debt! Little gain had the creditors!