The Semi-attached Couple/Chapter 1
THE SEMI-ATTACHED COUPLE
CHAPTER I
"Well, I have paid that visit to the Eskdales, Mr. Douglas," said Mrs. Douglas in a tone of triumphant sourness.
"You don't say so, my dear! I hope you left my card?"
"Not I, Mr. Douglas. How could I? They let me in, which was too unkind. I saw the whole family, father and mother, brother and sisters—the future bride and bridegroom. Such a tribe! and servants without end. How I detest walking up that great flight of steps at Eskdale Castle, with that regiment of footmen drawn up on each side of it; one looking more impertinent than the other!"
"There must be a frightful accumulation of impertinence before you reach the landing-place, my dear; for it is a long staircase."
"Don't talk nonsense, Mr. Douglas," said his wife, sharply. "I shan't go again in a hurry. That whole house is hateful to me: Lady Eskdale with her dawdling, languid manner, and her large shawl, and conceited cap; and that Lord Beaufort, with his black eyebrows and shining teeth. Lady Eskdale looked as old as the hills, with all that lace hanging about her face. She has grown excessively old, Mr. Douglas. I never saw anybody so altered."
"Did you think so, Anne? I thought her looking very handsome yesterday, when I met her in her pony carriage."
"Ah; that pony carriage; that is so like her nonsense. Pony carriages are the fashion, and she has taken to drive. I should not be the least surprised any day to hear that she had broken her neck. Why cannot she go out in her britzska, and be driven by her coachman? and as for looking handsome, it is not very likely that she should at her age. Lady Eskdale is as old as I am, Mr. Douglas."
"You don't say so," was again on the point of escaping Mr. Douglas's lips, and after a pause he bethought himself of the lovers as a safer topic than Lady Eskdale's beauty; he had tried that too often in his life. "Did you see Helen, my dear?"
"Oh! to be sure. She was sent for. 'Dear Love,' as Lady Eskdale drawled out, 'she is so happy; and you must see Teviot, he is such a darling; if he were my own son, I could not love him more.' So in they came, the dear love and the darling. You know how I hate those London sort of men, with their mustachios and chains and offensive waistcoats, and Lord Teviot is one of the worst specimens I ever saw of the kind———"
"And Helen?" again said Mr. Douglas.
"Oh, Helen!" said Mrs. Douglas, and then paused. She was in imminent peril of being forced to praise, but escaped with great adroitness. "Well, if Helen were not one of that family, I should not dislike her. She is civil enough, and promised to show the girls her trousseau; but she is altered too. I think her looking dreadfully old, Mr. Douglas."
"Old at eighteen, Anne! what wrinkled wretches we must be! Has Helen grown gray?"
"No; but you know what I mean: she looks so set-up, so fashioned. In short, it does not signify, but she is altered."
Mr. Douglas had his suspicions that Helen must have been looking beautiful, since even his wife could not detect, or at least specify, the faults that were to be found in her appearance. He had seldom seen her so much at fault for a criticism. Mrs. Douglas had never had the slightest pretensions to good looks; in fact, though it is wrong to say anything so ill-natured, she was excessively plain, always had been so, and had a soreness on the subject of beauty, that looked perhaps as like envy as any other quality.
As she had no hope of raising herself to the rank of a beauty, her only chance was bringing others down to her own level. "How old she is looking!"—"How she is altered!" were the expressions that invariably concluded Mrs. Douglas's comments on her acquaintances; and the prolonged absence of a friend was almost a pleasure to her, as it gave her the opportunity of saying after a first meeting, "How changed Mrs. So-and so is! I should hardly have known her; but then, to be sure, I have not seen her for a year—or two years," etc.
People may go on talking for ever of the jealousies of pretty women; but for real genuine, hard-working envy there is nothing like an ugly woman with a taste for admiration. Her mortified vanity curdles into malevolence; and she calumniates where she cannot rival.
Mrs. Douglas had been an heiress, which perhaps accounted for Mr. Douglas having married her; but though no one could suppose that he married for love, he had been to her what is called a good husband. He let her have a reasonable share of her own way, and spend a reasonable portion of her own money; he abstained from all vivid admiration of beauty within her hearing; he had a great reliance on her judgment, and a high opinion of her talents; and though he was too good-hearted to hear without pain her sarcasms on almost all her acquaintance, he seldom irritated her by contradiction, but kept his own opinion with a quiet regret that his wife was so hard to please.
The Eskdales and Douglases had been near neighbours for many years, and had always been on sociable and sometimes intimate terms. Mrs. Douglas could almost have become attached to her neighbour, had it not been for the prolonged youthfulness of Lady Eskdale's appearance, and the uninterrupted and increasing prosperity of her family. The provocation grew too great for endurance. The ladies had become mothers at the same time, and the comparison of their babies, monthly nurses, and embroidered caps had been the commencement of their intimacy; then came the engagement of nursery governesses, and discussions on the comparative merits of Swiss bonnes, highly accomplished French governesses, poor clergyman's daughters, or respectable young, ignorant women. Then the respective right shoulders of Sophia Beaufort and Sarah Douglas took a fit of growing, without due regard to the stationary dispositions of the left.
There are two years in every woman's life in which the undue size of her right shoulder is the bane of her own life, and of everybody about her. Mrs. Douglas called constantly at Eskdale Castle to satisfy herself that Sophia was growing absolutely deformed; and Lady Eskdale owned she should fret dreadfully about her poor darling if she did not think Mrs. Douglas so much more to be pitied on her dear Sarah's account.
The girls grew up perfectly straight, of course.
This period of reclining boards and dumb-bells was the most flourishing age of the Eskdale and Douglas friendship. After that it gradually declined. There was a slight revival when the two ladies entered into a confederacy against an exorbitant drawing-master; but he was shortly reduced to terms; and when he had consented to walk fifteen miles, and give a lesson of two hours for fifteen shillings, instead of a guinea, all farther community of interests on the subject of accomplishments ceased. The Eskdales soon after received an accession of fortune, and passed a great part of each year in another county, and also in London. The Ladies Beaufort grew up, came out, were admired, and became what Mrs. Douglas called "disgustingly fine."
The Douglas family remained in the country, mixed more with their second grade of neighbours, in default of their great friends; and the Misses Douglas were, Lady Eskdale said, "the dearest, most amiable girls in the world"; she only wished they "dressed better, and that Lord Eskdale did not think them vulgar; but unfortunately their voices annoyed him, so that she could not ask them to dinner so often as she could like for dear Mrs. Douglas's sake."
Still a certain degree of intercourse was kept up. An occasional letter passed, and at last a dreadful blow fell on the unsuspecting Mrs. Douglas—an announcement from Lady Eskdale of the marriage of her eldest daughter. It began in the terms usually employed on such occasions,—
"I cannot bear that my dear Mrs. Douglas should hear from anyone but myself, that my darling Sophia's fate is decided; and that in giving my precious child to Sir William Waldegrave, I feel no doubts," etc., etc. The remainder is easily imagined: high principles, good looks, long attachment—six weeks—worldly prosperity, mother's fears, these were the catchwords of the sentences. Mrs. Douglas wrote her congratulations, and kept her astonishment and comments for home consumption. Twelve months passed, and another letter arrived, but Mrs. Douglas was prepared for the worst this time, at least, she said she was; and that it would not surprise her at all if Amelia were going to be married. Again Lady Eskdale could not bear that Mrs. Douglas should hear from anybody but herself, that dearest Amelia was to marry Mr. Trevor; another delightful young man with still higher principles, more good looks, a still longer attachment— two months, at least—and the mother's fears, and the trousseau, and all the rest of it, followed in due order. The letter wound up with a gay assertion that little Eskdale Waldegrave was such a splendid child, that she forgave him for making her a grandmother at eight-and-thirty.
Mrs. Douglas read the communication in a tone expressive of extreme ill usage. Neither from herself nor from anyone else could Lady Eskdale hear that either of the Misses Douglas were about to be married. They had not even a disappointment to boast of, not a report about them to contradict, and Mrs. Douglas's chance of being a grandmother at all seemed hardly worth having. She began to rail against early marriages—hoped Mr. Trevor would help Amelia to play with her doll, and guessed that Sir William Waldegrave had repented long ago that he had not taken time to find out Sophia's temper before he married her.
There was only Helen left—Helen, so beautiful, so gentle, so light-hearted—the pride of her parents, the petted friend of her sisters, the idol of her brother, and loving as warmly as she was beloved. Yes, I knew Helen from her childhood, and had thought that such a gentle, gay creature could never be touched by the cares and griefs that fall on the common herd. "It was very much to the credit of my benevolence, though not of my judgment," as Sneer says. Why was she to escape? I do not wish to be cynical; but if a stone is thrown into our garden, is it not sure to knock off the head of our most valuable tulip? If a cup of coffee is to be spilled, does it not make a point of falling on our richest brocade gown? If we do lose our reticule, does not the misfortune occur on the only day on which we had left our purse in it? All these are well-known facts, and, by parity of reason, was it to be expected that anyone, so formed as Helen was to enjoy as well as to impart happiness, should escape the trials that ought to have fallen on the peevish and the disappointed—on me, for instance, or such as me?
Helen came out the year after her sister Amelia's marriage. "Lady Eskdale is so lucky—in fact, so clever—in marrying off her daughters, that it would not the least surprise me if she actually caught Lord Teviot for Lady Helen," was the spiteful prophecy of many who were trembling at the idea of its fulfilment. Their hopes and their fears were both confirmed. Lord Teviot, the great parti of the year, with five country houses—being four more than he could live in; with 120,000l. a year—being 30,000l. less than he could spend; with diamonds that had been collected by the ten last generations of Teviots, and a yacht that had been built by himself, with the rank of a marquess, and the good looks of the poorest of younger brothers—what could he want but a wife? Many people (himself among the rest) thought he was better without one; but he changed his mind the first time he saw Helen, and then it signified little whether other people changed theirs. He danced with her, evening after evening. He gave balls at Teviot House, breakfasts at Rose Bank, whitebait dinners on board the Sylph, and finally paid a morning visit at Lord Eskdale's at an unprecedentedly early hour. Mrs. Fitzroy Jones, who lived next door, and passed her life in an active supervision of all Eskdale proceedings, declared that his cabriolet waited two hours in the square, so she was sure he had proposed. Lady Bruce Gordon, who lived at the corner, asserted that she saw Lady Helen go out in the open carriage with her mother later in the afternoon, and that she looked as if she had cried her eyes quite out of her head (this was figurative); so she had no doubt that Lord Teviot had jilted her. But Mr. Elliot was looked upon as the highest authority, as he happened to be passing Lord Eskdale's door at half-past seven, and saw Lord Teviot go in, though he had ascertained that there was no other company expected. What did that mean?
The next day the marriage was declared. For the three following weeks Lord Eskdale's porter had a hard place of it. He said himself that it required two pair of hands to take in the notes and letters of congratulation, to say nothing of the interesting-looking parcels, wrapped in silver paper, that were sent by attached friends, and the boxes and baskets which arrived from distinguished milliners and jewellers.
At the end of the fourth week, Mrs. Fitzroy Jones and all the little Joneses, Lady B. Gordon and all the little Gordons, Mrs. Elliot and all the little Elliots, were drawn up at their respective windows, watching the packing of the huge waggons which were stationed at the Eskdale door, and reasoning themselves into a painful conviction of the melancholy fact that they were to be defrauded of a view of the wedding. Perhaps not, though. It may take place to-morrow. But, No! The next day brought the travelling carriages to the door. Mrs. Jones saw the family depart, then "turned with sickening soul within her gate," and said, "I must say I think it very ill-natured not to have the wedding in town." Mrs. Douglas thought so too—or rather she thought it very ill-natured to have the wedding in her neighbourhood, not only forcing on her the sight of so much prosperity, but, by an unfortunate train of events, actually obliging her to form part of the show. Eliza Douglas was asked to be one of Lady Helen's bridesmaids.