Lady Anne Granard/Chapter 41
CHAPTER XLI.
A new and elegant dress had been provided by Lady Anne for the second day, but it was of less costly material, and, by the same rule, considerably slighter; so that Fanchette suggested the idea of substituting a slip to make it equally warm, as the weather had set in cold and boisterous.
"There is no occasion at all," said Lady Anne, "for any such thing; the rooms were so tremendously hot as to occasion many persons to faint, and the lighter one's clothing, the better. I shall not dress as close, in any respect, as I did yesterday."
With some degree of alarm Lady Anne remarked that the duchess's carriage was not sent for her; she, therefore, told Fanchette to order horses to her own chariot, remembering that her own purse was, at the moment, well lined, and that her receipts, the day before, had been enormous. "Surely," said she, "I may take two or three pair of horses, and the money cannot be missed." For a moment she felt the pangs of suspicion cross her mind, as to the integrity of Lady Penrhyn, who had repeatedly wished the fair had been got up for the benefit of her friends, the Poles, and who might be tempted to dip her hand into the public purse; but she was consoled by remembering that Lady Jemima Highcairns said she had locked it in Lady Anne's work-box, adding, "One can neever be too carful of money reeleegously appropriated; an our meenister says the deevil is a bizzy boddy in aw public pleeses."
Count Riccardini was folding his cloak about him when Lady Anne alighted, and, of course, he offered her his arm. She was rather late, but her mind, invigorated by actual relief, and anxious to the utmost to pass off her seizure of yesterday as a mere bagatelle, she walked down the whole length of the room, in order to speak to her friends.
"I am so glad to see you to-day!" said the duchess; "you can't think, for, do you know, the same wretch who frightened you came first to me."
"How strange!" said Lady Anne, with well-feigned surprise; "what did he say?"
"Why, the oddity of the matter is that he did actually ask if I were not Lady Anne Granard, and when assured I was not, he said something about one fine woman being like another; I don't know what, for the fellow fluttered me; I was sure he was an improper man to be here."
"Undoubtedly he was. I fear he has pillaged more stalls than one; he called me by a name not my own, but had evidently got hold of several—my friend Count Riccardini sent him off in a twinkling; he had arrived not an hour before, and brought me news of my children, especially my little grandson. What with the welcome news and the unwelcome man, perhaps more than all the heat and the terrible press about my stand, I was overpowered. Dear Lord Meersbrook, who helped Count Riccardini to take me out, said the air about my stand would kill a strong man; so it was no wonder a woman could not bear it."
"He is quite a love, that Meersbrook! what a lucky woman you are to secure such people about you, even when your daughters are absent! But, I say," she added, whispering, "who is this foreigner? did you really know him long since, as people say?"
"He is Count Riccardini, of Castella Riccardini, a most enchanting place, about twenty-five miles from Naples. He married Mr. Granard's only sister, to whom he was the best of husbands. She is dead; so is his only daughter, the Marchioness di Morello, and he is become exceedingly attached to my daughters, it so happening that Mrs. Glentworth greatly resembles the one he has lost."
"And being so much attached to the daughters will very naturally lead to an attachment to their mamma—c'est le comme il faut; if Glentworth knows him, 'tis enough: pray, bring him with you to-night; I have secured your young bearer. Now go; I must not detain you; I know you will bring the charity lots of money."
But the sea roared, and dashed over the banks; the wind blew cold. The Poles could not spare more entrance money, and the Turk thought a warm home better than the resort of the Houri. There was no thing new to see; therefore, the charitable of yesterday became the niggards of to-day. The Count slowly traversed the room, a solitary and unconscious lion, stopping for awhile to listen to Lady Penrhyn's recommendations, which drew from him three shillings, and then pursuing his promenade under the full persuasion that it was intended, by the seniors, as a school for the juniors, who were destined to fall from their high estate, and, mingling with the lower classes, become what Buonaparte had called them, "a nation of shopkeepers."
"And why not?" said he, at length; "if the Medici were merchant princes; if Genoa, the city of marble palaces, was raised by commerce; if Venice rose from the sea she commanded, to grant protection, or hurl defiance alike to east, or west; no reason can exist why Great Britain should hot become one grand mart for the produce of the world; her merchants being princes, and her princes merchants. It is a fine thing, the commerce; if I sell the wine, I cannot drink at Castello Riccardini, and give the money to good purpose, do I not do good thing? English traveller laugh—bah! never I mind of him now. I no put Margarita in her young beauty to sell that wine, and with smile and sweet word cajole him who buy. I have respect to her purity and my own ancien blood, I transac the business by my servant—why not?"
The Count's soliloquy was interrupted by a sudden and large accession of company, who, finding they could neither walk nor ride, for the high, cold winds, turned into the rooms supposed to be hot, as a place of refuge, thereby admitting a stream of air which taught Lady Anne to feel that her dress was unsuitable; but there was now no power of changing it. The business of the day commenced; though the sale was not great, the number of visitants was; and their pressure in the centre of the room prevented her from seeing any one whom she could entreat to procure her a shawl. After a time, as it was found that the sale was slow, that the hours remaining were few, one gentleman proposed turning auctioneer, and selling the goods by lot.
The thing took; Lady Penrhyn lent him her table, and was willing to officiate as his assistant in handing the things to him, and giving him their names, at the same time procuring him a clerk to keep accounts and receive money. The spirit of gambling seized on all, and those who had hitherto prudently withheld a half-crown now willingly bade up to a sovereign, or more, with what they deemed a proper spirit. The auctioneer was voluble, even eloquent, and an admirable mimic of George Robins, the various nature of the goods giving great latitude for the play of words. His assistant clerk played well into his hands, and his assistant lady attetudenized with immense effect, playing comic muse, or tragic, as the case admitted. Shouts of laughter were elicited, smart biddings drawn out, from the whispers of a timid miss, to the stentorian voice of a fox-hunting squire, and not a few fracas from parties either contending for a supposed prize, or disclaiming their chance for it, and "I assure you it's none of mine." "I was, by no means, the last bidder," was not less frequently asserted than, "I can assure you it is mine; put it up again, for have it I will, let who will bid against me."
If Lady Anne gathered, in the melèe, a few trifles, which could be put into her reticule, that was all; for the "braw lassie," Lady Jemima, guarded the charity-purse "reight weel," and the result was decidedly the greatest gift to the charity which the fifteen stands had produced, several being very small; the money Lady Penryhn produced was as little as her services were great; she therefore, (guaranteed by a look from her grace) in a kind of mock-hoydenish manner, seized all the purses, emptied them into the auctioneer's hat, and declared that, as every one present had done their best, all were equal benefactors to the charity; at the same time she handed its produce to the chairman of the committee.
Lady Anne considered herself, by this ruse, robbed both of fame and property, and voted the whole affair an execrable bore:—"It had neither helped herself nor her daughters, and it had increased her milliner's bill enormously: to be sure, it had been the means of rendering her on friendly terms with the duchess and several other persons of consequence, but the thing itself had done no good whatever, save to the dispensary, which was only frequented by paupers and such wretches."
After dining and dressing, Lady Anne met the Brighton world at the duke's: the party was gay, for the money received at the fancy fair had turned out beyond their expectation, the auction having had such a stimulating effect that it had trebled the value of the articles sold. Lord Meersbrook was joked much on his purchases in this way, which he parried by saying he had a particular taste for pencil drawings, and should never think he had paid too much for those he had secured. Lady Gertrude and other young ladies became anxious on this subject, on which Lady Penryhn, from pure malice, having always a dislike to those she termed "the misses," joined the whisperers for the purpose of assuring them that every article knocked down to his lordship came from Lady Anne Granard's stand. "She had seen them all there the day before, and remarked them when she placed each article in the hands of the gentleman who sold them. Lady Anne's daughter, her own sister-in-law, had a very pretty notion of drawing, she knew."
She knew more; for she was well aware that the articles in question were done by Helen and no other of the five sisters, since the talent was only possessed by her and Mary in any remarkable degree: she had her own suspicions, from various trifling circumstances, but she chose to stifle them, being neither inclined to flatter Lady Anne nor foretel good fortune to her daughters, and very much inclined to thaw the frost of that cold politeness which marked the manners of Lord Meersbrook whenever she accosted him, which was more frequently than he desired.
Notwithstanding the way in which she had, in what she termed "the delicacy of her feelings," contrived to pour the receipts of the fancy fair into one reservoir, the duke and several other persons complimented Lady Anne very much on the superior beauty and value of her articles, and said "she had been the most efficient friend of the charity;" and whether a whisper that had gone forth respecting her contretemps with the strange man was spread, or it had fortunately been so well managed by the Count as to have escaped observation, and her indisposition of the preceding day was the true cause of their pity and friendly attention, it was, at all events, certain that she did receive more attention, and that of the most kind and flattering nature than often falls to the lot of dowagers, and that her Italian friend paid her the homage of the most accomplished Cicisbeo: yet she enjoyed no triumph, was sensible of no pleasure, even when most satisfied with the belief that the arrest was unknown, and that Lady Penryhn's ruse was defeated—that her pecuniary anxieties were delayed and her position with Riccardini envied—still no sense of self-gratulation followed. The proud swell of the heart, ever courting distinction, ever conscious of the value of rank, and that still more active principle assumed as the right of personal attraction, by which nature asserts her rights as superior to all artificial distinctions, lay dormant. She was at this moment neither proud nor vain; praise failed to elate her; even words and looks, which she desired to consider those of love, (let the world laugh if it liked) failed to yield her consolation. It was very strange, even to herself, that she could be so inert, so discontented, so incapable of exertion or enjoyment; but there was no shaking off the sensation—it shrouded her faculties, it obscured her sight; she really apprehended that it made her look a complete object.
Alarmed with this idea, she told the Count "that she wished to go home immediately; she knew the duchess would lend her a chair, as she had often done."
"You have got your death of cold, I fear, dear Lady Anne. Alas! alas! I offer you my cloak when you enter the place, which I say will cover you all over, and you refuse positive—what sad pity! we are not young, neither you neither me—time is come for care to us both. I have lost two—yes, two beloved ones, more young as either."
The anger which rose in Lady Anne's heart, and suffused even her brow, gave her a momentary animation and power unknown for the whole evening; and, though she disdained reply, she left the room with a firm step and the air we are apt to attribute to royalty, being placed in her chair by the Count, whose earnest desire that she would take all possible care of herself, half atoned for his late error, and almost made her think that sincerity and good-will were forgiveable qualities.