George Meredith
The Adventures of Harry Richmond. Complete
‘Ay, mourning’s her outer rig, never doubt,’ said the squire. ‘Flick your whip at her, she ‘s a charitable soul, Judy Bulsted! She knits stockings for the poor. She’d down and kiss the stump of a sailor on a stick o’ timber. All the same, she oughtn’t to be alone. Pity she hasn’t a baby. You and I’ll talk it over by-and-by, Harry.’
Kiomi was spoken of, and Lady Maria Higginson, and then Heriot.
‘M-m-m-m rascal!’ hummed the squire. ‘There’s three, and that’s not enough for him. Six months back a man comes over from Surreywards, a farm he calls Dipwell, and asks after you, Harry; rigmaroles about a handsome lass gone off… some scoundrel! You and I’ll talk it over by-and-by, Harry.’
Janet raised and let fall her eyebrows. The fiction, that so much having been said, an immediate show of reserve on such topics preserved her in ignorance of them, was one she subscribed to merely to humour the squire. I was half in doubt whether I disliked or admired her want of decent hypocrisy. She allowed him to suppose that she did not hear, but spoke as a party to the conversation. My aunt Dorothy blamed Julia. The squire thundered at Heriot; Janet, liking both, contented herself with impartial comments.
‘I always think in these cases that the women must be the fools,’ she said. Her affectation was to assume a knowledge of the world and all things in it. We rode over to Julia’s cottage, on the outskirts of the estate now devolved upon her husband. Irish eyes are certainly bewitching lights. I thought, for my part, I could not do as the captain was doing, serving his country in foreign parts, while such as these were shining without a captain at home. Janet approved his conduct, and was right. ‘What can a wife think the man worth who sits down to guard his house-door?’ she answered my slight innuendo. She compared the man to a kennel-dog. ‘This,’ said I, ‘comes of made-up matches,’ whereat she was silent.
Julia took her own view of her position. She asked me whether it was not dismal for one who was called a grass widow, and was in reality a salt-water one, to keep fresh, with a lapdog, a cook, and a maid-servant, and a postman that passed the gate twenty times for twice that he opened it, and nothing to look for but this disappointing creature day after day! At first she was shy, stole out a coy line of fingers to be shaken, and lisped; and out of that mood came right-about-face, with an exclamation of regret that she supposed she must not kiss me now. I projected, she drew back. ‘Shall Janet go?’ said I. ‘Then if nobody’s present I ‘ll be talked of,’ said she, moaning queerly. The tendency of her hair to creep loose of its bands gave her handsome face an aspect deliriously wild. I complimented her on her keeping so fresh, in spite of her salt-water widowhood. She turned the tables on me for looking so powerful, though I was dying for a foreign princess.
‘Oh! but that’ll blow over,’ she said; ‘anything blows over as long as you don’t go up to the altar’; and she eyed her ringed finger, woebegone, and flashed the pleasantest of smiles with the name of her William. Heriot, whom she always called Walter Heriot, was, she informed me, staying at Durstan Hall, the new great house, built on a plot of ground that the Lancashire millionaire had caught up, while the squire and the other landowners of the neighbourhood were sleeping. ‘And if you get Walter Heriot to come to you, Harry Richmond, it’ll be better for him, I’m sure,’ she added, and naively:
‘I ‘d like to meet him up at the Grange.’ Temple, she said, had left the Navy and was reading in London for the Bar—good news to me.
‘You have not told us anything about your princess, Harry,’ Janet observed on the ride home.
‘Do you take her for a real person, Janet?’
‘One thinks of her as a snow-mountain you’ve been admiring.’
‘Very well; so let her be.’
‘Is she kind and good?’
‘Yes.’
‘Does she ride well?’
‘She rides remarkably well.’
‘She ‘s fair, I suppose?’
‘Janet, if I saw you married to Temple, it would be the second great wish of my heart.’
‘Harry, you’re a bit too cruel, as Julia would say.’
‘Have you noticed she gets more and more Irish?’
‘Perhaps she finds it is liked. Some women can adapt themselves… they ‘re the happiest. All I meant to ask you is, whether your princess is like the rest of us?’
‘Not at all,’ said I, unconscious of hurting.
‘Never mind. Don’t be hard on Julia. She has the making of a good woman—a girl can see that; only she can’t bear loneliness, and doesn’t understand yet what it is to be loved by a true gentleman. Persons of that class can’t learn it all at once.’
I was pained to see her in tears. Her figure was straight, and she spoke without a quaver of her voice.
‘Heriot’s an excellent fellow,’ I remarked.
‘He is. I can’t think ill of my friends,’ said she.
‘Dear girl, is it these two who make you unhappy?’
‘No; but dear old grandada!…’
The course of her mind was obvious. I would rather have had her less abrupt and more personal in revealing it. I stammered something.
‘Heriot does not know you as I do,’ she said, strangling a whimper. ‘I was sure it was serious, though one’s accustomed to associate princesses with young men’s dreams. I fear, Harry, it will half break our dear old grandada’s heart. He is rough, and you have often been against him, for one unfortunate reason. If you knew him as I do you would pity him sincerely. He hardly grumbled at all at your terribly long absence. Poor old man! he hopes on.’
‘He’s incurably unjust to my father.’
‘Your father has been with you all the time, Harry? I guessed it.’
‘Well?’
‘It generally bodes no good to the Grange. Do pardon me for saying that. I know nothing of him; I know only that the squire is generous, and THAT I stand for with all my might. Forgive me for what I said.’
‘Forgive you—with all my heart. I like you all the better. You ‘re a brave partisan. I don’t expect women to be philosophers.’
‘Well, Harry, I would take your side as firmly as anybody’s.’
‘Do, then; tell the squire how I am situated.’
‘Ah!’ she half sighed, ‘I knew this was coming.’
‘How could it other than come? You can do what you like with the squire. I’m dependent on him, and I am betrothed to the Princess Ottilia. God knows how much she has to trample down on her part. She casts off—to speak plainly, she puts herself out of the line of succession, and for whom? for me. In her father’s lifetime she will hardly yield me her hand; but I must immediately be in a position to offer mine. She may: who can tell? she is above all women in power and firmness. You talk of generosity; could there be a higher example of it?’
‘I daresay; I know nothing of princesses,’ Janet murmured. ‘I don’t quite comprehend what she has done. The point is, what am I to do?’
‘Prepare him for it. Soothe him in advance. Why, dear Janet, you can reconcile him to anything in a minute.’
‘Lie to him downright?’
‘Now what on earth is the meaning of that, and why can’t you speak mildly?’
‘I suppose I speak as I feel. I’m a plain speaker, a plain person. You don’t give me an easy task, friend Harry.’
‘If you believe in his generosity, Janet, should you be afraid to put it to proof?’
‘Grandada’s generosity, Harry? I do believe in it as I believe in my own life. It happens to be the very thing I must keep myself from rousing in him, to be of any service to you. Look at the old house!’ She changed her tone. ‘Looking on old Riversley with the eyes of my head even, I think I’m looking at something far away in the memory. Perhaps the deep red brick causes it. There never was a house with so many beautiful creepers. Bright as they are, you notice the roses on the wall. There’s a face for me forever from every window; and good-bye, Riversley! Harry, I’ll obey your wishes.’
So saying, she headed me, trotting down the heath-track.
CHAPTER XXXVII. JANET RENOUNCES ME
An illness of old Sewis, the butler,—amazingly resembling a sick monkey in his bed,—kept me from paying a visit to Temple and seeing my father for several weeks, during which time Janet loyally accustomed the squire to hear of the German princess, and she did it with a decent and agreeable cheerfulness that I quite approved of. I should have been enraged at a martyr-like appearance on her part, for I demanded a sprightly devotion to my interests, considering love so holy a thing, that where it existed, all surrounding persons were bound to do it homage and service. We were thrown together a great deal in attending on poor old Sewis, who would lie on his pillows recounting for hours my father’s midnight summons of the inhabitants of Riversley, and his little Harry’s infant expedition into the world. Temple and Heriot came to stay at the Grange, and assisted in some rough scene-painting—torrid colours representing the island of Jamaica. We hung it at the foot of old Sewis’s bed. He awoke and contemplated it, and went downstairs the same day, cured, he declared: the fact being that the unfortunate picture testified too strongly to the reversal of all he was used to in life, in having those he served to wait on him. The squire celebrated his recovery by giving a servants’ ball. Sewis danced with the handsomest lass, swung her to supper, and delivered an extraordinary speech, entirely concerning me, and rather to my discomposure, particularly so when it was my fate to hear that the old man had made me the heir of his savings. Such was his announcement, in a very excited voice, but incidentally upon a solemn adjuration to the squire to beware of his temper—govern his temper and not be a turncoat.
We were present at the head of the supper-table to hear our healths drunk. Sewis spoke like a half-caste oblivious of his training, and of the subjects he was at liberty to touch on as well. Evidently there was a weight of foreboding on his mind. He knew his master well. The squire excused him under the ejaculation, ‘Drunk, by the Lord!’ Sewis went so far as to mention my father ‘He no disgrace, sar, he no disgrace, I say! but he pull one way, old house pull other way, and ‘tween ‘em my little Harry torn apieces, squire. He set out in the night “You not enter it any more!” Very well. I go my lawyer next day. You see my Will, squire. Years ago, and little Harry so high. Old Sewis not the man to change. He no turncoat, squire. God bless you, my master; you recollect, and ladies tell you if you forget, old Sewis no turncoat. You hate turncoat. You taught old Sewis, and God bless you, and Mr. Harry, and British Constitution, all Amen!’
With that he bounded to bed. He was dead next morning.
The squire was humorous over my legacy. It amounted to about seventeen hundred pounds invested in Government Stock, and he asked me what I meant to do with it; proposed a Charity to be established on behalf of decayed half-castes, insisting that servants’ money could never be appropriated to the uses of gentlemen. All the while he was muttering, ‘Turncoat! eh? turncoat?’—proof that the word had struck where it was aimed. For me, after thinking on it, I had a superstitious respect for the legacy, so I determined, in spite of the squire’s laughter over ‘Sixty pounds per annum!’ to let it rest in my name: I saw for the first time the possibility that I might not have my grandfather’s wealth to depend upon. He warned me of growing miserly. With my father in London, living freely on my property, I had not much fear of that. However, I said discreetly, ‘I don’t mind spending when I see my way.’
‘Oh! see your way,’ said he. ‘Better a niggard than a chuckfist. Only, there ‘s my girl: she ‘s good at accounts. One ‘ll do for them, Harry?—ha’n’t been long enough at home yet?’
Few were the occasions when our conversation did not diverge to this sort of interrogation. Temple and Heriot, with whom I took counsel, advised me to wait until the idea of the princess had worn its way into his understanding, and leave the work to Janet. ‘Though,’ said Heriot to me aside, ‘upon my soul, it’s slaughter.’ He believed that Janet felt keenly. But then, she admired him, and so they repaid one another.
I won my grandfather’s confidence in practical matters on a trip we took into Wales. But it was not enough for me to be a man of business, he affirmed; he wanted me to have some ambition; why not stand for our county at the next general election? He offered me his Welsh borough if I thought fit to decline a contest. This was to speak as mightily as a German prince. Virtually, in wealth and power, he was a prince; but of how queer a kind! He was immensely gratified by my refraining to look out for my father on our return journey through London, and remarked, that I had not seen him for some time, he supposed. To which I said, no, I had not, He advised me to let the fellow run his length. Suggesting that he held it likely I contributed to ‘the fellow’s’ support: he said generously, ‘Keep clear of him, Hal: I add you a thousand a year to your allowance,’ and damned me for being so thoughtful over it. I found myself shuddering at a breath of anger from him. Could he not with a word dash my hopes for ever? The warning I had taken from old Sewis transformed me to something like a hypocrite, and I dare say I gave the squire to understand, that I had not seen my father for a very long period and knew nothing of his recent doings.
‘Been infernally quiet these last two or three years,’ the squire muttered of the object of his aversion. ‘I heard of a City widow last, sick as a Dover packet-boat ‘bout the fellow! Well, the women are ninnies, but you’re a man, Harry; you’re not to be taken in any longer, eh?’
I replied that I knew my father better now, and was asked how the deuce I knew him better; it was the world I knew better after my stay on the Continent.
I contained myself enough to say, ‘Very well, the world, sir.’
‘Flirted with one of their princesses?’ He winked.
‘On that subject I will talk to you some other time,’ said I.
‘Got to pay an indemnity? or what?’ He professed alarm, and pushed for explanations, with the air of a man of business ready to help me if need were. ‘Make a clean breast of it, Harry. You ‘re not the son of Tom Fool the Bastard for nothing, I’ll swear. All the same you’re Beltham; you’re my grandson and heir, and I’ll stand by you. Out with ‘t! She’s a princess, is she?’
The necessity for correcting his impressions taught me to think the moment favourable. I said, ‘I am engaged to her, sir.’
He returned promptly: ‘Then you’ll break it off.’
I shook my head.
‘Why, you can’t jilt my girl at home!’ said he.
‘Do you find a princess objectionable, sir?’
‘Objectionable? She’s a foreigner. I don’t know her. I never saw her. Here’s my Janet I’ve brought up for you, under my own eyes, out of the way of every damned soft-sawderer, safe and plump as a melon under a glass, and you fight shy of her, and go and engage yourself to a foreigner I don’t know and never saw! By George, Harry, I’ll call in a parson to settle you soon as ever we sight Riversley. I’ll couple you, by George, I will! ‘fore either of you know whether you’re on your legs or your backs.’
We were in the streets of London, so he was obliged to moderate his vehemence.
‘Have you consulted Janet?’ said I.
‘Consulted her? ever since she was a chick with half a feather on.’
‘A chick with half a feather on,’ I remarked, ‘is not always of the same mind as a piece of poultry of full plumage.’
‘Hang your sneering and your talk of a fine girl, like my Janet, as a piece of poultry, you young rooster! You toss your head up like a cock too conceited to crow. I ‘ll swear the girl ‘s in love with you. She does you the honour to be fond of you. She ‘s one in a million. A handsome girl, straight-backed, honest, just a dash, and not too much, of our blood in her.’
‘Consult her again, sir,’ I broke in. ‘You will discover she is not of your way of thinking.’
‘Do you mean to say she’s given you a left-hander, Harry?’
‘I have only to say that I have not given her the option.’
He groaned going up the steps of his hotel, faced me once or twice, and almost gained my sympathy by observing, ‘When we’re boys, the old ones worry us; when we’re old ones, the boys begin to tug!’ He rarely spoke so humanely,—rarely, at least, to me.
For a wonder, he let the matter drop: possibly because he found me temperate. I tried the system on him with good effect during our stay in London; that is, I took upon myself to be always cool, always courteous, deliberate in my replies, and not uncordial, though I was for representing the reserved young man. I obtained some praise for my style and bearing among his acquaintances. To one lady passing an encomium on me, he said, ‘Oh, some foreign princess has been training him,’ which seemed to me of good augury.
My friends Temple and Heriot were among the Riversley guests at Christmas. We rode over to John Thresher’s, of whom we heard that the pretty Mabel Sweetwinter had disappeared, and understood that suspicion had fallen upon one of us gentlemen. Bob, her brother, had gone the way of the bravest English fellows of his class-to America. We called on the miller, a soured old man. Bob’s evasion affected him more than Mabel’s, Martha Thresher said, in derision of our sex. I was pained to hear from her that Bob supposed me the misleader of his sister; and that he had, as she believed, left England, to avoid the misery of ever meeting me again, because he liked me so much. She had been seen walking down the lanes with some one resembling me in figure. Heriot took the miller’s view, counting the loss of one stout young Englishman to his country of far greater importance than the escapades of dozens of girls, for which simple creatures he had no compassion: he held the expression of it a sham. He had grown coxcombical. Without talking of his conquests, he talked largely of the ladies who were possibly in the situation of victims to his grace of person, though he did not do so with any unctuous boasting. On the contrary, there was a rather taking undertone of regret that his enfeebled over-fat country would give her military son no worthier occupation. He laughed at the mention of Julia Bulsted’s name. ‘She proves, Richie, marriage is the best of all receipts for women, just as it’s the worst for men. Poor Billy Bulsted, for instance, a first-rate seaman, and his heart’s only half in his profession since he and Julia swore their oath; and no wonder,—he made something his own that won’t go under lock and key. No military or naval man ought ever to marry.’
‘Stop,’ said Temple, ‘is the poor old country—How about continuing the race of heroes?’
Heriot commended him to rectories, vicarages, and curates’ lodgings for breeding grounds, and coming round to Julia related one of the racy dialogues of her married life. ‘The saltwater widow’s delicious. Billy rushes home from his ship in a hurry. What’s this Greg writes me?—That he ‘s got a friend of his to drink with him, d’ ye mean, William?—A friend of yours, ma’am.—And will you say a friend of mine is not a friend of yours, William?—Julia, you’re driving me mad!—And is that far from crazy, where you said I drove you at first sight of me, William? Back to his ship goes Billy with a song of love and constancy.’
I said nothing of my chagrin at the behaviour of the pair who had furnished my first idea of the romantic beauty of love.
‘Why does she talk twice as Irish as she used to, Heriot?’
‘Just to coax the world to let her be as nonsensical as she likes. She’s awfully dull; she has only her nonsense to amuse her. I repeat: soldiers and sailors oughtn’t to marry. I’m her best friend. I am, on my honour: for I ‘m going to make Billy give up the service, since he can’t give her up. There she is!’ he cried out, and waved his hat to a lady on horseback some way down the slope of a road leading to the view of our heathland:
‘There’s the only girl living fit to marry a man and swear she ‘ll stick to him through life and death.’
He started at a gallop. Temple would have gone too at any possible speed, for he knew as well as I did that Janet was the girl alone capable of winning a respectful word from Heriot; but I detained him to talk of Ottilia and my dismal prospect of persuading the squire to consent to my proposal for her, and to dower her in a manner worthy a princess. He doled out his yes and no to me vacantly. Janet and Heriot came at a walking pace to meet us, he questioning her, she replying, but a little differently from her usual habit of turning her full face to the speaker. He was evidently startled, and, to judge from his posture, repeated his question, as one would say, ‘You did this?’ She nodded, and then uttered some rapid words, glanced at him, laughed shyly, and sank her features into repose as we drew near. She had a deep blush on her face. I thought it might be, that Janet and her loud champion had come to particular terms, a supposition that touched me with regrets for Temple’s sake. But Heriot was not looking pleased. It happened that whatever Janet uttered struck a chord of opposition in me. She liked the Winter and the Winter sunsets, had hopes of a frost for skating, liked our climate, thought our way of keeping Christmas venerable, rejoiced in dispensing the squire’s bounties—called them bounties, joined Heriot in abusing foreign countries to the exaltation of her own: all this with ‘Well, Harry, I’m sorry you don’t think as we do. And we do, don’t we?’ she addressed him.
‘I reserve a point,’ he said, and not playfully.
She appeared distressed, and courted a change of expression in his features, and I have to confess that never having seen her gaze upon any one save myself in that fashion, which was with her very winning, especially where some of her contralto tones of remonstrance or entreaty aided it, I felt as a man does at a neighbour’s shadow cast over his rights of property.
Heriot dropped to the rear: I was glad to leave her with Temple, and glad to see them canter ahead together on the sand of tie heaths.
‘She has done it,’ Heriot burst out abruptly. ‘She has done it!’ he said again. ‘Upon my soul, I never wished in my life before that I was a marrying man: I might have a chance of ending worth something. She has won the squire round with a thundering fib, and you’re to have the German if you can get her. Don’t be in a hurry. The squire ‘ll speak to you to-night: but think over it. Will you? Think what a girl this is. I believe on my honour no man ever had such an offer of a true woman. Come, don’t think it’s Heriot speaking—I’ve always liked her, of course. But I have always respected her, and that’s not of course. Depend upon it, a woman who can be a friend of men is the right sort of woman to make a match with. Do you suppose she couldn’t have a dozen fellows round her at the lift of her finger? the pick of the land! I’d trust her with an army. I tell you, Janet Ilchester ‘s the only girl alive who’ll double the man she marries. I don’t know another who wouldn’t make the name of wife laugh the poor devil out of house and company. She’s firm as a rock; and sweet as a flower on it! Will that touch you? Bah! Richie, let’s talk like men. I feel for her because she’s fond of you, and I know what it is when a girl like that sets her heart on a fellow. There,’ he concluded, ‘I ‘d ask you to go down on your knees and pray before you decide against her!’
Heriot succeeded in raising a certain dull indistinct image in my mind of a well-meaning girl, to whom I was bound to feel thankful, and felt so. I thanked Heriot, too, for his friendly intentions. He had never seen the Princess Ottilia. And at night I thanked my grandfather. He bore himself, on the whole, like the good and kindly old gentleman Janet loved to consider him. He would not stand in my light, he said, recurring to that sheet-anchor of a tolerant sentence whenever his forehead began to gather clouds. He regretted that Janet was no better than her sex in her preference for rakes, and wished me to the deuce for bringing Heriot into the house, and not knowing when I was lucky. ‘German grandchildren, eh!’ he muttered. No Beltham had ever married a foreigner. What was the time fixed between us for the marriage? He wanted to see his line safe before he died. ‘How do I know this foreign woman’ll bear?’ he asked, expecting an answer. His hand was on the back of a chair, grasping and rocking it; his eyes bent stormily on the carpet; they were set blinking rapidly after a glance at me. Altogether his self-command was creditable to Janet’s tuition.
Janet met me next day, saying with some insolence (so it struck me from her liveliness): ‘Well, it’s all right, Harry? Now you’ll be happy, I hope. I did not shine in my reply. Her amiable part appeared to be to let me see how brilliant and gracious the commonplace could be made to look. She kept Heriot at the Grange, against the squire’s remonstrance and her mother’s. ‘It ‘s to keep him out of harm’s way: the women he knows are not of the best kind for him,’ she said, with astounding fatuity. He submitted, and seemed to like it. She must be teaching Temple to skate figures in the frost, with a great display of good-humoured patience, and her voice at musical pitches. But her principal affectation was to talk on matters of business with Mr. Burgin and Mr. Trewint, the squire’s lawyer and bailiff, on mines and interest, on money and economical questions; not shrinking from politics either, until the squire cries out to the males assisting in the performance, ‘Gad, she ‘s a head as good as our half-dozen put together,’ and they servilely joined their fragmentary capitals in agreement. She went so far as to retain Peterborough to teach her Latin. He was idling in the expectation of a living in the squire’s gift.
The annoyance for me was that I could not detach myself from a contemplation of these various scenes, by reverting to my life in Germany. The preposterous closing of my interview with Ottilia blocked the way, and I was unable to write to her—unable to address her even in imagination, without pangs of shame at the review of the petty conspiracy I had sanctioned to entrap her to plight her hand to me, and without perpetually multiplying excuses for my conduct. So to escape them I was reduced to study Janet, forming one of her satellites. She could say to me impudently, with all the air of a friendly comrade, ‘Had your letter from Germany yet, Harry?’ She flew—she was always on the chase. I saw her permit Heriot to kiss her hand, and then the squire appeared, and Heriot and she burst into laughter, and the squire, with a puzzled face, would have the game explained to him, but understood not a bit of it, only growled at me; upon which Janet became serious and chid him. I was told by my aunt Dorothy to admire this behaviour of hers. One day she certainly did me a service: a paragraph in one of the newspapers spoke of my father, not flatteringly: ‘Richmond is in the field again,’ it commenced. The squire was waiting for her to hand the paper to him. None of us could comprehend why she played him off and denied him his right to the first perusal of the news; she was voluble, almost witty, full of sprightly Roxalana petulance.
‘This paper,’ she said, ‘deserves to be burnt,’ and she was allowed to burn it—money article, mining column as well—on the pretext of an infamous anti-Tory leader, of which she herself composed the first sentence to shock the squire completely. I had sight of that paper some time afterwards. Richmond was in the field again, it stated, with mock flourishes. But that was not the worst. My grandfather’s name was down there, and mine, and Princess Ottilia’s. My father’s connection with the court of Eppenwelzen-Sarkeld was alluded to as the latest, and next to his winning the heiress of Riversley, the most successful of his ventures, inasmuch as his son, if rumour was to be trusted, had obtained the promise of the hand of the princess. The paragraph was an excerpt from a gossiping weekly journal, perhaps less malevolent than I thought it. There was some fun to be got out of a man who, the journal in question was informed, had joined the arms of England and a petty German principality stamped on his plate and furniture.
My gratitude to Janet was fervent enough when I saw what she had saved me from. I pressed her hand and held it. I talked stupidly, but I made my cruel position intelligible to her, and she had the delicacy, on this occasion, to keep her sentiments regarding my father unuttered. We sat hardly less than an hour side by side—I know not how long hand in hand. The end was an extraordinary trembling in the limb abandoned to me. It seized her frame. I would have detained her, but it was plain she suffered both in her heart and her pride. Her voice was under fair command-more than mine was. She counselled me to go to London, at once. ‘I would be off to London if I were you, Harry,’—for the purpose of checking my father’s extravagances,—would have been the further wording, which she spared me; and I thanked her, wishing, at the same time, that she would get the habit of using choicer phrases whenever there might, by chance, be a stress of emotion between us. Her trembling, and her ‘I’d be off,’ came into unpleasant collision in the recollection.
I acknowledge to myself that she was a true and hearty friend. She listened with interest to my discourse on the necessity of my being in Parliament before I could venture to propose formally for the hand of the princess, and undertook to bear the burden of all consequent negotiations with my grandfather. If she would but have allowed me to speak of Temple, instead of saying, ‘Don’t, Harry, I like him so much!’ at the very mention of his name, I should have sincerely felt my indebtedness to her, and some admiration of her fine spirit and figure besides. I could not even agree with my aunt Dorothy that Janet was handsome. When I had to grant her a pardon I appreciated her better.
