The Semi-attached Couple/Chapter 21
CHAPTER XXI
Colonel Stuart arrived; but another change took place in the society at St. Mary's. Lord and Lady Eskdale were sent for by Lady Sophia Waldegrave, who had had a sudden attack of illness; and Sir W. Waldegrave requested her mother to come and assist in nursing her. There was a consultation and a demur, and a fuss about Eliza's destination. Lady Eskdale thought Mrs. Douglas would not like her daughter to be taken so far from home as the Waldegraves', so she was left to Helen's care till Mr. and Mrs. Douglas should come and fetch her. Eliza's letters to her sister give an accurate account of St. Mary's at this time.
"My dearest Sarah,
"I would give anything for a good hour's talk with you. You have not told me half enough about Mr. Wentworth, and that walk to the Mill, and your fit of dignity about the music book. It is so interesting, and quite as amusing as one of Miss Austen's novels; and this is all true, and your happiness is concerned in it; so you may guess how I pore over your letters. If he does not propose soon, I shall think he is behaving very ill, and shall hate him; but I know he will. We go on very happily here; at least, I hope dear Helen is happy; but I do not feel quite sure. Lord Teviot is very pleasant, I dare say, and very clever, but he is sometimes rather cross, and he seems to tease Helen. I always wish when he does that I were a lady of great consequence, and could speak out and tell him what I think. Talking of great ladies, that Lady Portmore is worse than ever. I am sure Helen cannot like her. She takes up so much of Lord Teviot's attention; and yet she is not satisfied with that. Last night when Colonel Beaufort came and sat down by me, she actually called to him to come to her; and though of course I did not care whether he went or not, it was very uncivil of her. He is very amusing. I was quite wrong when I said he put me in mind of Ape Brown, and he is always trying to persuade me that I shall be bored, and that life is nothing but a trouble; and you know, I never was bored in my life, and I think life very good fun. There is a Colonel Stuart here, who was once engaged to Miss Forrester, they say; but it cannot be true, or she would not seem so unconcerned as she does; and he does not take so much notice of her as he does of Helen. He is a great friend of Lord Beaufort's; and Lady Portmore says he is a great friend of hers, but so she says of everybody. She says the same of Colonel Beaufort, and yet one day after she had left the room he said, 'Bless that fair lady! she talks greater nonsense than ever. She has been talking rural economy for the benefit of the country neighbours. I would give £100 to hear her explain the poor-laws to Harriet Martineau; she is capable of it. She becomes a greater treat every day.' Now that does not seem as if he liked her; does it? If mamma comes to fetch me home, I wish you would send my other white bonnet. I suppose there is no chance of mamma's letting me stay here till Lady Eskdale comes back. I shall be very glad to be at home again; but it is so seldom we pay any visits, I should like to stay here a little longer. When I said that Colonel Beaufort was amusing, I did not mean that he made jokes, and laughed a great deal; but he says odd things in a dry, grave way, that make other people laugh, without seeming to take any trouble about it himself. I am afraid mamma will think him affected; not that it would signify, only I do not think he is.
"Yours affectionately,
"Eliza Douglas."
Colonel Stuart's history, which Miss Douglas could not explain, was simply that he had been as much attached to Mary Forrester as it was in his nature to be, and his peculiar talents for pleasing had not been exerted less successfully with her than they had in many other instances of which she knew nothing. He disguised his faults for a time, and when Mary discovered that he was extravagant, that he played, and that he was totally without religious principle, she found that the determination to give him up, which followed her discoveries, was accompanied by bitter feelings of regret. But Lord Beaufort was wrong in his assertion that she jilted Colonel Stuart on her accession to wealth. Their engagement was at an end some weeks before the unexpected death of a distant relation gave Miss Forrester her fortune. This circumstance added to the mortification which Colonel Stuart felt; and if he had not actually said that her sudden prosperity had induced her to change her mind, he had allowed it to be said by his friends. He was a popular man with men, and there were many of his partisans who made it their business on this occasion to talk of Miss Forrester as cold-hearted and capricious; and who, when they meant to go the extremist lengths of vituperation, accused her of being actually a saint. But this awful assertion was of course made in a low tone of horror, and mentioned only in strict confidence. Colonel Stuart for some time kept up an appearance of attachment and regret. Perhaps he thought it impossible that any woman whom he had condescended to love could give him up and forget him. But when the consistency of Miss Forrester's conduct convinced him that she was in earnest, he returned to his former courses, played higher, betted more, and flirted more determinedly with married women; and whether his love of Mary were really or not forgotten in the bottom of his heart, he met her in society with apparent indifference, and in general seemed to forget that they had ever been on more intimate terms. He did not know that she was at St. Mary's when he accepted Lord Teviot's invitation; but her presence, when he found her in the drawing-room, appeared to give him neither pain nor pleasure.
Lady Portmore talked to him in the evening for two hours and a half, in a low, confidential tone, making him thoroughly uncomfortable by assurances, that she was his constant friend with Mary Forrester.
"Now, my dear Stuart, I am not paying you a compliment when I assure you I feel quite justified in persuading Mary that she ought to relent at last. She will be a model wife; and I know you have too much good taste not to give up play, and any other little pursuits, when you marry."
"My dear Lady Portmore, for propriety's sake don't talk of my other little pursuits in that meaning tone; and for my sake, do not propose in my name to Miss Forrester. She might accept me."
"Well, and you know you are dying to marry her. Now you must have no disguise with me, Stuart; we know each other too well for that. You are a little mortified—yes, you know you are—at Mary's perverseness. Come, own it at once, and then trust to me for taking up your cause warmly."
"Good heavens, Lady Portmore, what a strange way you have of proving your friendship! I will trouble you not to assume that I wish to pay court to your rich friend, or, if I did, that I am not able to make my own cause good. But I see how it is. You wish to get Miss Forrester out of the way. She has evidently been tampering with some of your victims. Has Ernest wavered in his allegiance?"
Colonel Stuart had often found that there was no way of checking Lady Portmore's remarks but by a bold impertinence addressed to herself. She had not wit enough to answer it, nor discretion enough to seem not to understand it. So it threw her into long verbose explanations, during which she lost sight of her original topic. And now she had, in her character of the most virtuous woman in the world, to repel with becoming scorn the imputation that Ernest should admire her at all, and, in her character of the most attractive woman in the world, to explain how it was that he should admire her so much. It took her nearly twenty minutes to conduct this argument with herself to a satisfactory conclusion, during which time Colonel Stuart took a survey of the rest of the society, and at last broke in with the abrupt question, "And how about our host and hostess? Are they very tiresomely in love still? or have they begun to be good company again?"
"Teviot is a great friend of mine," said Lady Portmore, with a look of great discretion. "So there is no use in trying to extract from me any opinion about him, poor fellow!"
"What! Is it come to poor-fellowing him already? That's awkward. Come, out with it; you know you are longing to tell me all about it—is he bored? or jealous? or what is it? If he is not desperately in love with that little jewel of a wife, I am surprised at his taste, that's all; but those wealthy dogs never are satisfied, and I don't wonder at it. Wealth is not allowed its rights in this strait-laced country. It is monstrous hard that a man who is rich enough to pension off his old wife when she grows tiresome, and marry a new one, should be obliged to go plodding on in the old routine, with the same woman sitting everlastingly opposite to him at his own table. But Teviot can't be bored already. Is he? I am half in love with his wife myself."
"I will not have any remarks of that shocking kind made, and above all to me; and, what is more, Stuart, I must insist upon it that you talk no nonsense to my little friend Helen. She does not know you so well as I do, and it might put ridiculous ideas into her head—and then Teviot's temper But that I say nothing about, only let me tell you Mary Forrester will not take very well any marked attentions of yours to Helen."
"Won't she? Suppose we try," said Colonel Stuart, and, rising, he joined Lady Teviot, and devoted himself to her for the rest of the evening.