CHAPTER XXIII

Now what am I next to amuse my readers with? No, that's vanity. I meant to ask what I should try to amuse them with? Worcester is gone to his papa's, at Badminton; and I, being sworn to constancy, have no other _beaux_ to write about.

Let us inquire what my sister Fanny is doing? She looked very serious when I called upon her, as she sat nursing Parker's pretty little daughter and kissing it.

"Colonel Parker is going to Spain," said Fanny to me, the moment I entered her room, and I saw a tear trembling in her bright eye.

"So must half the fine young men in England," was my reply.

"Parker is the only man on earth who has ever treated me with true respect and kindness," continued Fanny, "and my attachment to him is very strong; more so perhaps than you think for."

I told her that I could not doubt her love for the father of her infant.

"I am not romantic," Fanny went on to say, while sitting in a musing sort of attitude and seeming quite inattentive to my last wise speech. "It is not in my nature to be in the least romantic or sentimental, yet when Parker forsakes me I shall die of it!"

"Fiddlestick," I answered, "you are always talking about dying, merely because your nerves are weak, and, in the meantime, I never saw you look better in my life. When does Colonel Parker set off?"

"To-morrow night," she replied.

"He will write, of course?"

"He has promised to do so by every post."

I had seldom seen Fanny so serious. I begged her to come to me as soon as Parker had left her, and promised to do everything in my power to enliven her.

She told me that Julia wished her of all things to board with her again as soon as Parker went to Spain, and, continued Fanny, "I feel so melancholy that I think I shall avail myself of her invitation, provided she will permit me to furnish a spare, empty room she has in her house, and keep it entirely to myself. Do you know," continued Fanny, "I, who used to abhor solitude even for a single morning, am now become very fond of it? I love to think and to read; and, the more serious the work the better it suits the present tone of my mind. I have lately been copying the passages which have most struck me, and, when you look them over, you will be astonished at my change of sentiments and taste."

I asked her if her late studies had been religious.

"No," said Fanny; "but the books I like now are such as I consider most calculated to teach us fortitude to endure the ills, miseries, and disappointments of this life. I shall yet, I know, suffer much in mind, as well as in body; and the end of it all will be death! Do not I require fortitude?"

"We shall all die," was my answer; "but the time and the manner of our deaths is unknown to us. No doubt, too, we all have our portion of sorrow and trouble to look forward to; but those sorrows are seldom without some alleviation, or mixture of happiness, neither are the comforts we are permitted to enjoy on earth by any means confined to those of youthful age alone. If, in a more advanced period we feel not wild rapture, yet are we infinitely more calm, and our pleasures are more real and certain, since they depend on the present. In advanced life we enjoy, while girls and boys pursue shadows and live on hope."

"There is no doubt that every age has its portion of enjoyments as well as cares," rejoined Fanny, "but, for myself, I am not I confess sanguine. I feel a weight about the region of my heart."

I interrupted her, and insisted on taking her directly to Julia's, where I left her, promising to see her early on the following day.

Worcester sent me about six sheets of foolscap, scribbled all over in every corner, once a day, and on Sunday he rode nine miles to overtake the coach with a volume! He had, he said, been accused by the duke his father of wishing to make me his wife, and he had found it impossible to deny that such was, in fact, his first hope. His father used very harsh words, and Worcester's courage and firmness had consequently increased. Suddenly, the duke had changed this high tone, and taking his son by the hand addressed him with much apparent feeling. This, as I afterwards learned from His Grace's brother, was a mere cold-blooded plan, settled between these two hopeful gentlemen, who had agreed that their best chance was to touch up the young marquis with a little bit of sentiment. Nay, in their zeal, they agreed to carry the farce to such lengths as even to speak of me, their night-mare, the person on earth which they most abhorred, and whose influence they most dreaded, with an appearance of feeling and respect, praying inwardly that either an earthquake might swallow me up, or that I might be seized with sudden death.

"My dear, dear boy," said Beaufort, "you must forgive me if the extreme anxiety you have for such a long time occasioned myself and your poor mother, has, for a season, made me lose my temper. I see that your feeling for Harriette is real, and beyond your power to overcome at present. Indeed, if she is good to you, I desire that every care and attention should be paid her, and you should return to her, and be teased no more on the subject: only pass your word and honour to me, as a son, and as a gentleman, that you will never marry her, and you shall hear no more from either of us on the subject."

Worcester, in his letter to me, where he described this scene, professed to have been deeply affected by it, and to have passed the following night and day in tears, yet he firmly refused to comply with his father's request. _Et tout fut consternation dans le plus beau et le plus agréable château, qu'on puisse imaginer!_

All those letters from Lord Worcester having been since returned to the Duke of Beaufort, that honourable nobleman with his son may be pleased to deny that such letters were written. However, after referring my readers to the celebrated Henry Brougham, M.P., of Lincoln's Inn, and another highly respectable counsellor of the same place, named Treslove, who have both read the whole of Lord Worcester's correspondence (why they did so shall be told hereafter), I will leave them to form their own conclusion as to the truth or falsehood of what I have written, or shall write, on the subject of those worthy wiseacres, the Beauforts!

Worcester concluded this letter by declaring he could not and would not remain any longer absent from me, and that I was all the consolation which was left him on earth, since his father was about to turn his back on him for ever.

I answered this letter immediately, to this effect.

"If, my dear Worcester, you do not immediately write, to give me your honour that you have set your father's mind at rest by having complied with his late reasonable request, you lose me now at once and for ever. For I shall go where you will not find me. What happiness, think you, could we enjoy, at the expense of making your parents miserable? They have good reason for what they request, and to save the time it would take you to contradict this last assertion of mine, I declare to you that I never will be your wife.

"_Au reste,_ my dear Worcester, what is there in a ceremony and what do I care for a title? I swear, so help me God, I have ever been faithful to you since the first hour in which I placed myself under your protection, and in all and everything that was in my power, I have acted, and ever will act in a way to deserve your esteem as well as that of your family, in order that the abuse of Her Grace of Beaufort may sit light on my heart and mind. What gratification think you, could I enjoy at the idea of having merely inspired you with a strong passion for me, while I felt that, by my selfish conduct and the advantage I was ready to take of such an accidental circumstance, I had forfeited all right and title to your respect or future friendship?

"I have said enough I am sure, to convince any man worthy the name, and therefore you will have made friends with your father, and be on your road to join me very shortly after the receipt of this letter. So till then God bless you; but remember I can be firm and keep my word."

In three days after I had despatched the above letter, Worcester returned to me, having made the Duke of Beaufort the promise he had required. We now enjoyed something like quietness during the remainder of our stay in London.

Although Worcester appeared to have suffered much during his visit to his father's, for he was much paler and thinner, I really thought him consumptive. It was ever his lordship's pride and delight to drive me about the streets or the park, and to accompany me wherever I went. He but seldom went into society, and when he did, he always refused to dance much as he used to like it. In short, his passion for me, which from the very first seemed so ardent that I knew not it was in human nature that it could be susceptible of increase, became stronger with the difficulty of indulging it.

"My brother is a fool," said Lord William Somerset one day to us. "I would have cured you both in less than a month, and made Worcester hate you most cordially."

"How pray?" I inquired.

"Why," continued Lord William, "merely by shutting you up in one of my country houses together, making it my request that you never left each other an instant, to the end of your lives."

Worcester called God to witness that he was as sure as of his existence, that he could never love anything in the shape of a woman but myself: and, "were Harriette ever to leave me," he continued, "I should become a mere, cold-blooded, unfeeling profligate; for all the good about me is practised by her advice and example, or for her sake, that I may be somewhat more deserving of her."

Lord William laughed at his romance, and, I remember, took advantage of his absence to try to make love to me himself! But at this I only laughed in my turn, and, in spite of that common English mistake, which he fell into, in supposing that all unmarried females must be either maids or bad women, he was, take him altogether, I rather think about the best of the whole set; and I am almost sorry I called him Lord Berwick's Tiger. But what is an extravagant fellow to do, with high rank and little or no money? And who was to drive old, stupid Tweed, _c'est à dire mon très aimable beau-frère_, up and down, without borrowing a trifle, or not a trifle, of his ready cash? Some short time after my sister Sophia's marriage she received from Lord Deerhurst, half a year of the annuity he had made her. My eldest brother was requested to call upon his lordship, for the purpose of restoring the amount into his own hand, which commission my brother executed without, I believe, exchanging a single syllable with that most disgusting nobleman, who ever has been a disgrace to the peerage.

Fanny, in due time, received very kind letters from Colonel Parker, although they were certainly less warm than some of those he had formerly addressed to her. Napier's love for Julia seemed to grow with what it fed on, and this fair lady had been twelve times with child, and was actually turned forty, or as the French say, _elle avait quarante ans, bien sommés._

Little Kitty, the lady of Colonel Armstrong, went on very modestly and quietly with her dear Tommy, although he now steadfastly adhered to his former resolution, not to risk any increase in his family.

Amy continued very steady, and constant in her love for--variety!

We were all regular at the Opera House both on Saturdays and Tuesdays, and, when the performance had concluded, we always remained late in the rooms, amusing ourselves with the absurdities of George Brummell, Tom Raikes and various others, some better, none worse! Not that Tom Raikes ever did anything bad enough, or what is worse, anything good enough to deserve the honour of a place in these my invaluable _Memoirs;_ but, since I have named him, be it further known that Tom Raikes is a merchant who went to Paris and picked up French; and he is something of a mimic too; and he can take off Brummell very tolerably, as well as the manners of the _vieille cour-France beaux;_ but I never discovered that he could do anything else. His tricks, like those of the man at Calais who entertains travellers while they dine, by imitating singing birds, cuckoos and castanets, are very well on the first representation; but it is indeed heavy work to be thrown into the society of Mr. Thomas Raikes more than twice in one's life. Brummell often dined with him, and therefore I take it for granted that Tom Raikes lent Brummell money. If he did, it was even for the _éclat_ of the thing, and to have it to say that Brummell had dined with him, and that Brummell, his friend Brummell, was an excellent fellow. Tom Raikes happens to be one of the meanest men in England, at least so I have heard from several of his _soi-disant_ male friends.

However, he was fortunate in having had a father who lived before him; as that father was no less fortunate in having met with such a friend as Richard Muilman Trench Chiswell, M.P., to whom the family owes its not undeserved rise. To this Tommy we may apply the epigram written on another Tommy:

What can little Tommy do? Drive a phaeton and two. Can little Tommy do no more? Yes--drive a phaeton and four.

Sophia looked very splendid in her Opera-box since her marriage, particularly when she wore all the late Lady Berwick's diamonds and her own to boot. Lord Deerhurst, I observed, for several successive nights made it a point to sit in a box by himself next to Sophia, and fix his eyes on her the whole of the evening. Not that he regretted or cared for her, but merely because, in his infinite vulgarity and littleness of soul, he gloried in insulting Lord Berwick's feelings, and conceived it high fun to ogle at Sophia's box, and then wink at his companions in the pit: but Lord Berwick was wise for once in his life, for he ever treated Deerhurst's low impertinence with the profound contempt it merited, nor condescended once to make a remark on it, even to his wife, although neither of them could have been blind to what was so very pointed.

* * * * *

To revert to the Beaufort story, _mais c'est perdrix, perdrix, toujours perdrix!_

The Beaufort story may be _fort beau;_ and yet my readers may happen to require a little variety: at all events, if they do not, I do, for there is nothing on earth I think more abominable than to be hammering always at the same thing.