Volume Ii Part 4 (1/2)
especially as I play tolerably well, and, in fact, never play so high if I can help it....”
”But, Major,” said the lady, stopping short in their progress, ”I really am afraid that I must decline playing at your table ... the amount of what I could lose might not perhaps be a great object to me, any more than to you ... but it is a matter of principle with me, and when that is the case I never swerve ... so take me back again, will you, to my sister Peters and my party.”
This was said with a sort of clinging helplessness, and delicate timidity, that was very touching.
”Good heavens!” exclaimed the Major with great animation, ”how very little you know me!... I would take you, charming Mrs. Barnaby, to the world's end, if you would consent to go with me; ... but think not that I would sit down at one table, though I might sweep from it stakes amounting to thousands, when I could play with you for straws at another!”
Remember, reader, that she to whom this was said had been Miss Martha Compton of Silverton but six short years before, and then judge with what feelings she listened to it. They were such, that for a moment no power of speech was left to her ... but she abandoned her purpose of retreat; and when at length they stood before the table at which two sporting-looking gentlemen were waiting to receive them, she gently seated herself, murmuring at the same time in the Major's ear, ”Not higher than half-crowns, if you please.”
He pressed her hand as he resigned the arm with which she had favoured him, and as he did so replied, ”Depend upon me.”
Before the arrangements for playing were finally settled, the friendly Major Allen took the two gentlemen a pace or two apart, and communicated in a few words what brought them back to the table, perfectly contented with the half-crown, and gallantly anxious to have the honour of cutting highest, that they might have the happiness of winning the lady as a partner, if they won nothing else.
But this happiness fell to the Major, as well as most others during the three or four rubbers that followed; for he and his fair partner played with great luck, which helped to produce between them that amicable state of spirits which tends to make every word appear a pleasantry, and every look a charm.
In the midst of this very agreeable game, in the course of which both the eyes and the voice of the widow proclaimed how very greatly she enjoyed it, Colonel Hubert wandered into the room, and having given a glance at one or two other tables as he pa.s.sed them, stationed himself on a sofa, from whence he commanded a full view of that at which Mrs.
Barnaby was engaged. His recent examination of her niece gave him a feeling of interest in this aunt, that nearly superseded the amus.e.m.e.nt he might otherwise have derived from her appearance and manner. That both were likely to be affected by the intense interest and pleasure she took in her occupation, as well as in the partner who shared it with her, may be easily conceived, when it is stated that not even the entrance of the magnificent Colonel was perceived by her.
Her vivacity, her _enjouement_, became more striking every moment; her words were full of piquant and agreeable meaning, which her eyes scrupled not to second; while the Major a.s.sumed more and more the air and manner of a man enchanted and enamoured beyond the power of concealment. But it was not the spirit of quizzing that sat upon Colonel Hubert's brow as he contemplated this scene; on the contrary, his fine countenance spoke first disgust, and then a degree of melancholy that might have seemed ill befitting the occasion, and in a few minutes he walked away and re-entered the ball-room.
Whether intentionally or not may be doubted; but he soon again found himself opposite to the place which Agnes occupied in the quadrille, and being there, watched her with a degree of attention that seemed equally made up of curiosity and admiration. ”It is strange,” thought he, ”that the most repulsive and the most attractive women I ever remember to have seen, should be so closely linked together.”
In a few minutes the quadrille ended, when Mr. Stephenson, who had danced it with the eldest Miss Peters, said to his friend as he pa.s.sed him, ”We are now going to tea, and if you will come with us, I will introduce you.”
Colonel Hubert followed almost mechanically, yet not without a feeling somewhat allied to self-reproach at permitting himself to join the party of a Mrs. Barnaby.
This obnoxious individual was, however, nearly or rather wholly forgotten within a very few minutes after the introduction took place.
Mrs. Peters's manners were, as we know, particularly lady-like and pleasing, her daughters all pretty-looking, and one of them, at least, singularly animated and agreeable, her son and the other gentlemen of her party perfectly _comme il faut_, and Agnes ... what was Agnes in the estimation of the fastidious, high-minded, and high-born Colonel Hubert?
He would have been totally unable to answer this question satisfactorily himself, nor would it be just that a precise answer to it should be expected from the historian. This interval of conversation and repose lasted rather longer than usual; for the whole party (each for some reason or other of their own) enjoyed it, or at any rate betrayed no wish to bring it to a conclusion. Had Colonel Hubert, indeed, been told that he enjoyed it, he would strenuously and sincerely have denied the statement. He looked at Agnes with wonder and compa.s.sion strongly blended,--he listened to the gay and artless tone of her conversation with Mary Peters and young Stephenson, without being able to deny that, whether she had fallen from the stars, or been raised and wholly educated by that terrible incarnation of all he most detested, her vulgar aunt, every word she uttered bore the stamp of well-bred a.s.sociation, right feeling, and bright intelligence ... he allowed all this, and he allowed too that never, through all the varieties of his campaigning life, had he seen in any rank, or in any clime, a loveliness so perfect; yet he almost trembled as he watched the pa.s.sionate devotion with which his friend gazed at and listened to her.
Colonel Hubert knew the character of Stephenson well; it was generous, ardent, and affectionate in the highest degree; but pa.s.sionate withal, self-willed, and only amenable to control when it came in the shape of influence exercised by friends.h.i.+p, unmixed with authority of any kind.
He was just three-and-twenty, and had been in possession of a n.o.ble property from the day he attained the age of twenty-one. Singularly free from vice of any kind, his friends, in seeing him take the management of his estates into his own hands, had but one fear for him. It was not racing, gambling, debauchery, or extravagance, they dreaded: had he already pa.s.sed fifty years of sober life exempt from all these, they would scarcely have felt more secure of his being safe from them; but it was in the important affair of marriage that they dreaded his precipitancy. More than once already his distinguished and highly connected family had been terrified by the idea that some irremediable misfortune in this respect was about to fall upon them; and earnestly did they wish that he should speedily form such a connexion as they could approve, and had a right to expect. Unfortunately this wish had been too evident; and the idea of being disposed of in marriage by his brother and sisters had become a bugbear from which the young man shrank with equal indignation and contempt. The marriage of his elder brother with Miss Hubert had naturally led to great intimacy between the families; and of all the acquaintance he had ever made, Colonel Hubert was the one for whom Frederick Stephenson felt the warmest admiration and esteem; and certainly he was more proud of the affectionate partiality that distinguished individual had shewn him than of any other advantage he possessed. Sir Edward Stephenson observed this, and had told his betrothed Emma that he drew the best possible augury from it for his brother's safety. ”He is so proud of Montague's friends.h.i.+p,”
said he, ”that it must be a most outrageous love-fit which would make him hazard it by forming a connexion unworthy in any way. So jealously does he deprecate the interference of his own family on this subject, that I have long determined never more to let him see how near it is to my heart ... and I will not even mention the subject to your brother, lest, _par impossible_, he might ever discover that I had done so; but I wish you, love, would say a word to him before we leave Clifton.... Tell him that Frederick has still a great propensity to fall in love at first sight, and that we shall all bless him everlastingly, if he will prescribe change of air whenever he may happen to see the fit seize him.”
The fair Emma promised and kept her word; and such was the theme on which their discourse turned the night before the wedding, when, Sir Edward being engaged with the lawyer, who had just arrived from London with the settlements, the brother and sister took that stroll upon the pavement of Sion Row, which had first exhibited the stately figure of Colonel Hubert to Mrs. Barnaby's admiration. Little did Agnes think, when her head was made to obtrude itself through the window upon that occasion, that her ears caught some words of a conversation destined to prove so important to her future happiness.
That the ”falling in love at first sight” had already taken place, Colonel Hubert could not doubt, as he watched his enthusiastic friend's look and manner, while conversing with Agnes, and gravely and sorrowfully did he ponder on the words of his sister in their last tete-a-tete.
”Save him, dearest Montague, if you can,” said she, ”from any folly of this sort; for I really think Sir Edward would never be happy again if Frederick formed any disgraceful marriage.”
”And a disgraceful marriage it would and must be,” thought he; ”neither her surpa.s.sing beauty ... nor her modest elegance either, can make it otherwise.”
As if sent by fate to confirm him in this conviction, the widow at this moment approached the party, leaning on the arm of the Major. Having finished her fifth rubber, and pocketed her sixteen half-crowns, Major Allen's two friends pleaded an engagement elsewhere, and Mrs. Barnaby accepted his offered escort to the tea-table.
A look of happiness is very becoming to many faces, it will often indeed lend a charm to features that in sorrow can boast of none; but there are others on which this genial and expansive emotion produces a different effect, and Mrs. Barnaby was one of them. Her eyes did not only sparkle, they perfectly glared with triumph and delight. She shook her curls and her feathers with the vivacity of a Bacchante when tossing her cymbals in the air; and her joyous laugh and her conscious whisper, as each in turn attracted attention from all around, were exactly calculated to produce just such an effect as the luckless Agnes would have lived in silence and solitude for ever to avoid witnessing.
The _habile_ Major descried the party the instant he entered the room, and led the lady directly to it. But the table was fully occupied, and for a moment no one stirred but Agnes, who, pale and positively trembling with distress, stood up, though without saying a word.