Romance and Reality (Landon)/Chapter 61
CHAPTER XV.
"And it's hame, hame, hame,
I fain wad be—
Hame, hame, hame,
In my ain countrie."
Allan Cunningham.
"Mais, maman—mais je viens ce matin de me marier."
La Petite Madeleine.
Untaken by a pirate—undisturbed by an interesting shipwreck just in sight of port—our voyagers arrived at Marseilles. Here Don Henriquez would gladly have made some stay; but, at Emily's earnest entreaty, they embarked in another vessel for England. "You know not," said she to Beatrice, "how I pine to be at home again; every voice grates on my ear with a foreign sound—my eyes look round in vain for some accustomed object—the very air I breathe has an oppression in it. I feel ill; but it is an illness that only asks for its cure familiar faces, and quiet and home."
Beatrice tried to smile and soothe; but her eyes filled with tears, and her voice became inaudible, as she watched Emily's feverish colour die away into marble paleness, and felt how heavily that slight and wasted frame leant on her for support. "So young, so beautiful, so gentle—gifted with rank, fortune, and one so made to love and to be loved—and yet dying—and dying, too, of that carefully kept grief which seemed a thing in which she could have no part. Alas! Life—on what a frail tenure dost thou hold thy dearest and loveliest! Her heart has given its most precious self, and the gift has been either slighted or betrayed. And I," thought Beatrice—"I, who am so happy in the love I deem my own—how could I bear neglect or falsehood from Edward? Happiness, thou art a fearful thing."
It may be questioned whether Beatrice found either the support or the enjoyment in her father's society she expected. Keen in her perceptions, accurate in her conclusions, she could not but see the hollowness of arguments whose strength was in their sound; and she could not but perceive the absurdity of the small vanities which wore a giant's armour till they fancied they had a giant's power. However, the Grecian painter's veil is as good for a parent's folly as for a parent's grief, and Beatrice listened to some thousand-and-one plans for the regeneration of mankind; and though she drew in her own mind the conclusion, that as a universal conviction had never yet been obtained, so it never would,—she nevertheless wisely kept the conclusion to herself; while Henriquez thought what a very sweet creature she was; but then women were so very weak. "I did expect my daughter to have been superior to her sex."
One evening Emily had been prevailed on to try the fresh air of the deck. Like most invalids whose disease is on the mind, she was indisposed to any thing of bodily exertion; but, though she might reject Beatrice's advice, she could not refuse her request—and she took the place which had been so carefully prepared for her. The air was soft and warm, and she soon suffered the cloak in which she was wrapped to fall about her; when suddenly a passenger, whose crimson pelisse had quite illuminated the deck she was pacing, approached with the exclamation—"Well, now, Lord help this wicked world!—the lies people do tell!—and no manner of gain whatsoever. Only for to think, Miss, of meeting you here! Why, they said you had been crossed in love, and had turned into a nun; and instead of that, here we all are, sailing away for Old England. But, bless your pretty face! you look mighty ill—I hope the crossing-in-love part of the story isn't true—I know it's very disagreeable to young people; but, deary me, you'll. soon get over it—it's nothing when you're used to it. When I was a girl I used to sing,
'I am in love with twenty;
I could adore as many more—
There's nothing like a plenty.'
Lord love you! I never took on about any of them."
"Now don't say so, Mrs. Higgs," said a corpulent gentleman, thrusting in a face which looked equally wide and weak—"you know you'd have broke your heart if we two hadn't been made one."
"Broke my heart!—no sich nonsense—there were as good pigs in the market as yours any day. Not that I'm noways grumbling at the bargain I've had of you—though you weren't my first love neither. So you see, Miss, to lose a first chance aint much."
Beatrice did not comprehend the dialogue, but she saw Emily look as if ready to sink into the earth, and she beckoned her father to help her companion to the cabin—at the same time collecting her best English to explain that Miss Arundel was too ill for conversation. "All affectation," said Mr. Robert, who still resented her silence in the chapel.
Two, however, of the passengers in the vessel were very agreeably employed—they were making love. By-the-by, what an ugly phrase "making love" is—as if love were a dress or a pudding. Signor Giulio's fortunate star was in the ascendant. Miss Amelia Bridget Higgs was not, it is true, the beauty of the family; she was therefore the more grateful for any little polite attentions. And—to tell in a few words what took them a great many—Mr. Higgs, who had come to Marseilles to meet his family, landed his feminine stock with warm congratulations that they had not taken up with any frog-eating fellow abroad.
The old Greek proverb says, "Call no man happy till he dies." A week after their arrival in Fitzroy Square, Miss Amelia Bridget thought it good for her health to walk every morning before breakfast. "A very fine thing," observed Mrs. Higgs; "I am sure it used to be Job's own job to get her out of her bed."
One morning, however, Fitzroy Square must have been more than usually delightful: there was an east wind
"Amid whose vapours evil spirits dwelt;"
the poor little daisies and crocuses,
"Where tawdry yellow strove with dirty red,"
seemed to implore their mother earth to receive them into her bosom again; the smuts, those "fairy favours " from the gnome queen of coal fires, fell fast and thick; and the laburnums looked so many practical Rousseaus denouncing the progress of civilisation.
"Why, I declare it spits," said Mrs. Higgs, gazing on those watery drops on the windows which indicate what the Scotch call mist, and the English rain. "Timothy, do go and tell your sister that the tea's quite cold, and we've eat all the prawns."
"I'm sure, Ma'," replied the boy, "you might send Jack—I've got my theme to do about being obliging, and I sha'n't have no time."
"Indeed," said Jack, who was what is called a fine manly boy, "I sha'n't go; my stomach always tells me when it's breakfast-time—and Miss Biddy has got as good a clock as I have."
"What wicked boys you are!" exclaimed the irritated Mrs. Higgs; "all this comes of your edication."
"I am sure," rejoined Jack, "I don't want to be educated—I hate going to school."
"Ain't you ashamed of yourselves, you little ungrateful rascals? Don't you cost us a mint of money, that you may have the blessing edication?"
"I don't care," returned Jack.
"Don't care! you undootiful wretch, do you know that Don't Care came to the gallows?"
"Well Ma', if it's my fate to be hanged, I shall never be drowned."
"I'll be the death of you, Master Saucebox!" said Mrs. Higgs, rushing wrathfully forward; but the box on the ear was arrested by the sudden entrance of Miss Bridget Amelia and Signor Giulio Castelli. The young gentleman made his escape; but Mrs. Higgs's store of indignation was not so instantly to be assuaged, even by the oil of courtesy; though, by dint of eating two lozenges, getting her a glass of brandy during a gale, and seeing to the safety of a bandbox, Signor Giulio was rather a favourite. As to Mr. Higgs, he hated all those foreigneering people.
"A pretty time this is to come in to breakfast. The muffins are quite cold, I can tell you, Miss Higgs."
"Not Miss Higgs, but the Countess di Castelli," said Giulio, stepping gracefully forward.
The Countess took out her handkerchief.
"Our felicity asks but the paternal blessing to make it complete. Kneel, my Amelia."
"Lord, father, don't be angry, and begin to swear; but I've been and got married this morning."
"Not to that damned jackanapes of a Frenchman," cried the father.
"Married, and got never no wedding clothes!" said the mother.
"I'll lock you up on bread and water for a year," said Mr. Higgs.
"To think of you going and getting married before your eldest sister. But you never had no manners," said Mrs. Higgs.
"Miss Biddy's in for it now," whispered Jack.
Signor Giulio began an eloquent speech about his noble blood, his country's wrongs, and his fair Countess; and his lady began to cry. Tears did more than words. Neither Mr. nor Mrs. Higgs could ever abide the sight of crying: their anger melted like barley-sugar exposed to the moist air—the young couple were forgiven—and the whole family spent the wedding-day at Greenwich.
At dinner, a dish of stewed eels made Mr. Higgs a little pensive, and he remarked, "that the fair sex slipped through your fingers just like eels." This innuendo was, however, all that disturbed the enjoyment of the day, whose hilarity, as the newspapers say of a public dinner, was prolonged to a late hour.
But all this in advance; and Miss Bridget and the Italian professeur des variétés are leaning over the side of the vessel. At length a dark line appeared on the horizon—it widened—assumed a broken outline, like an evening ridge of clouds—gradually the bold coast became defined—an element seemed restored to creation—and the green glad earth was visible to the gaze of the voyager.
Beatrice stood at the little cabin-window, her heart in her eyes, watching, but not for the beauty of the scene. No, though the steps of morning were even as angels' on the sea which grew bright beneath;—no, though the night had left the blush with which she rose from her pillow behind her on the clouds;—no, though the white cliffs stood out before her—stainless portals of earth's most glorious land;—she gazed upon it because it was the country of Edward Lorraine. "Edward, my own beloved Edward!" said she in English; and then hid her face in her hands, as if to shut out every object but that now present to her thoughts.
A slight noise in the cabin aroused her. She blushed to think how forgetful she had been of time. The coast was now distinctly visible; the town glittered in the sunshine—the Castle reared its head proudly on the height—a hundred ships floated in the Downs—a hundred flags were rising in the breeze.
"Oh, Emily, come!" exclaimed the Spanish girl, "and see your own beautiful country."
Emily, whose arousing from sleep had attracted Beatrice's attention, rose from the sofa, and leaning on her companion's shoulder, shared the cabin-window. Once, only once, she looked almost as if with envy in the Spaniard's face—it was but for a moment, and she too turned to gaze eagerly on the shore. Her cheek coloured, her eye brightened, as she marked how rapidly they were approaching the land. Almost unconsciously, she stretched her arms forward, like a child to its mother. "Home at last—how I have pined for my home!"