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The Wanderer; or, Female Difficulties (Volume 1 of 5)

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Title: The Wanderer; or, Female Difficulties (Volume 1 of 5)

Author: Fanny Burney


        
Release date: September 15, 2011 [eBook #37437]

Language: English

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Credits: Produced by Delphine Lettau, Mary Meehan and the Online
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WANDERER; OR, FEMALE DIFFICULTIES (VOLUME 1 OF 5) ***




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                                  THE WANDERER

                                       Or

                               Female Difficulties


                                  FANNY BURNEY




CONTENTS


    Dedication           xvii

    Volume I                1

    Volume II             179

    Volume III            361

    Volume IV             537

    Volume V              681




    TO DOCTOR BURNEY,
    FRS _and correspondent to the institute
    of France_[1]

    [Footnote 1: To which honour Dr Burney was elected, by the wholly
    unsolicited votes of the members _des beaux arts_. His daughter
    brought over his diploma from Paris.]

The earliest pride of my heart was to inscribe to my much-loved Father
the first public effort of my pen; though the timid offering,
unobtrusive and anonymous, was long unpresented; and, even at last,
reached its destination through a zeal as secret as it was kind, by
means which he would never reveal; and with which, till within these
last few months, I have myself been unacquainted.

With what grateful delight do I cast, now, at the same revered feet
where I prostrated that first essay, this, my latest attempt!

Your name I did not dare then pronounce; and myself I believed to be
'wrapt up in a mantle of impenetrable obscurity[2].' Little did I
foresee the indulgence that would bring me forward! and that my dear
father himself, whom, even while, urged by filial feelings, and yet
nameless, I invoked,[3] I thought would be foremost to aid, nay, charge
me to shun the public eye; that He, whom I dreaded to see blush at my
production, should be the first to tell me not to blush at it myself!
The happy moment when he spoke to me those unexpected words, is ever
present, and still gay to my memory.

[Footnote 2: Preface to Evelina.]

[Footnote 3: Inscription of Evelina, 'O Author of my being!' &c.]

The early part of this immediate tribute has already twice traversed the
ocean in manuscript: I had planned and begun it before the end of the
last century but the bitter, and ever to be deplored affliction with
which this new era opened to our family, in depriving us of the darling
of our hearts,[4] at the very moment--when--after a grievous absence, we
believed her restored to us, cast it from my thoughts, and even from my
powers, for many years. I took with me, nevertheless, my prepared
materials in the year 1802, to France; where, ultimately, though only at
odd intervals, I sketched the whole work; which, in the year 1812,
accompanied me back to my native land. And, to the honour and liberality
of both nations, let me mention, that, at the Custom-house on
either--alas!--hostile shore, upon my given word that the papers
contained neither letters, nor political writings; but simply a work of
invention and observation; the voluminous manuscript was suffered to
pass, without demur, comment, or the smallest examination.

[Footnote 4: Susanna Elizabeth Phillips.]

A conduct so generous on one side, so trusting on the other, in time of
war, even though its object be unimportant, cannot but be read with
satisfaction by every friend of humanity, of either rival nation, into
whose hands its narrative may chance to fall.

Such, therefore,--if any such there be,--who expect to find here
materials for political controversy; or fresh food for national
animosity; must turn elsewhere their disappointed eyes: for here, they
will simply meet, what the Author has thrice sought to present to them
already, a composition upon general life, manners, and characters;
without any species of personality, either in the form of foreign
influence, or of national partiality. I have felt, indeed, no
disposition,--I ought rather, perhaps, to say talent,--for venturing
upon the stormy sea of politics; whose waves, for ever either receding
or encroaching, with difficulty can be stemmed, and never can be
trusted.

Even when I began;--how unconsciously you, dear Sir, well know,--what I
may now, perhaps, venture to style my literary career, nothing can more
clearly prove that I turned, instinctively, from the tempestuous course,
than the equal favour with which I was immediately distinguished by
those two celebrated, immortal authors, Dr Johnson and the Right
Honourable Edmund Burke; whose sentiments upon public affairs divided,
almost separated them, at that epoch; yet who, then, and to their last
hours, I had the pride, the delight, and the astonishment to find the
warmest, as well as the most eminent supporters of my honoured essays.
Latterly, indeed, their political opinions assimilated; but when each,
separately, though at the same time, condescended to stand for the
champion of my first small work; ere ever I had had the happiness of
being presented to either; and ere they knew that I bore, my Father!
your honoured name; that small work was nearly the only subject upon
which they met without contestation[5]:--if I except the equally
ingenious and ingenuous friend whom they vied with each other to
praise, to appreciate, and to love; and whose name can never vibrate on
our ears but to bring emotion to our hearts;--Sir Joshua Reynolds.

[Footnote 5: So strongly this coincidence of sentiment was felt by Mr
Burke himself, that, some years afterwards, at an assembly at Lady
Galloway's, where each, for a considerable time, had seemed to stimulate
the other to a flow of partial praise on Evelina and--just then
published--Cecilia; Mr Burke, upon Dr Johnson's endeavouring to detain
me when. I rose to depart, by calling out, 'Don't go yet, little
character-monger!' followed me, gaily, but impressively exclaiming,
'Miss Burney, die to-night!']

If, therefore, then,--when every tie, whether public or mental, was
single; and every wish had one direction; I held political topics to be
without my sphere, or beyond my skill; who shall wonder that
now,--united, alike by choice and by duty, to a member of a foreign
nation, yet adhering, with primaeval enthusiasm, to the country of my
birth, I should leave all discussions of national rights, and modes, or
acts of government, to those whose wishes have no opposing calls; whose
duties are undivided; and whose opinions are unbiased by individual
bosom feelings; which, where strongly impelled by dependant happiness,
insidiously, unconsciously direct our views, colour our ideas, and
entangle our partiality in our interests.

Nevertheless, to avoid disserting upon these topics as matter of
speculation, implies not an observance of silence to the events which
they produce, as matter of act: on the contrary, to attempt to
delineate, in whatever form, any picture of actual human life, without
reference to the French Revolution, would be as little possible, as to
give an idea of the English government, without reference to our own:
for not more unavoidably is the last blended with the history of our
nation, than the first, with every intellectual survey of the present
times.

Anxious, however,--inexpressibly!--to steer clear, alike, of all
animadversions that, to my adoptive country, may seem ungrateful, or, to
the country of my birth unnatural; I have chosen, with respect to what,
in these volumes, has any reference to the French Revolution, a period
which, completely past, can excite no rival sentiments, nor awaken any
party spirit; yet of which the stupendous iniquity and cruelty, though
already historical, have left traces, that, handed down, even but
traditionally, will be sought with curiosity, though reverted to with
horrour, from generation to generation.

Every friend of humanity, of what soil or what persuasion soever he may
be, must rejoice that those days, though still so recent, are over; and
truth and justice call upon me to declare, that, during the ten
eventful years, from 1802 to 1812, that I resided in the capital of
France, I was neither startled by any species of investigation, nor
distressed through any difficulties of conduct. Perhaps
unnoticed,--certainly unannoyed,--I passed my time either by my own
small--but precious fire-side; or in select society; perfectly a
stranger to all personal disturbance; save what sprang from the painful
separation that absented me from you my dearest Father, from my loved
family, and native friends and country. To hear this fact thus publicly
attested, you, dear Sir, will rejoice; and few, I trust, amongst its
readers, will disdain to feel some little sympathy in your satisfaction.

With regard to the very serious subject treated upon, from time to time,
in this work, some,--perhaps many,--may ask, Is a Novel the vehicle for
such considerations? such discussions?

Permit me to answer; whatever, in illustrating the characters, manners,
or opinions of the day, exhibits what is noxious or reprehensible,
should scrupulously be accompanied by what is salubrious, or chastening.
Not that poison ought to be infused merely to display the virtues of an
antidote; but that, where errour and mischief bask in the broad light of
day, truth ought not to be suffered to shrink timidly into the shade.

Divest, for a moment, the title of Novel from its stationary standard of
insignificance, and say! What is the species of writing that offers
fairer opportunities for conveying useful precepts? It is, or it ought
to be, a picture of supposed, but natural and probable human existence.
It holds, therefore, in its hands our best affections; it exercises our
imaginations; it points out the path of honour; and gives to juvenile
credulity knowledge of the world, without ruin, or repentance; and the
lessons of experience, without its tears.

And is not a Novel, permit me, also, to ask, in common with every other
literary work, entitled to receive its stamp as useful, mischievous, or
nugatory, from its execution? not necessarily, and in its changeless
state, to be branded as a mere vehicle for frivolous, or seductive
amusement? If many may turn aside from all but mere entertainment
presented under this form, many, also, may, unconsciously, be allured by
it into reading the severest truths, who would not even open any work of
a graver denomination.

What is it that gives the universally acknowledged superiority to the
epic poem? Its historic truth? No; the three poems, which, during so
many centuries, and till Milton arose, stood unrivalled in celebrity,
are, with respect to fact, of constantly disputed, or, rather,
disproved authenticity. Nor is it even the sweet witchery of sound; the
ode, the lyric, the elegiac, and other species of poetry, have risen to
equal metrical beauty:--

'Tis the grandeur, yet singleness of the plan; the never broken, yet
never obvious adherence to its execution; the delineation and support of
character; the invention of incident; the contrast of situation; the
grace of diction, and the beauty of imagery; joined to a judicious
choice of combinations, and a living interest in every partial detail,
that give to that sovereign species of the works of fiction, its
glorious pre-eminence.

Will my dear Father smile at this seeming approximation of the
compositions which stand foremost, with those which are sunk lowest in
literary estimation? No; he will feel that it is not the futile
presumption of a comparison that would be preposterous; but a fond
desire to separate,--with a high hand!--falsehood, that would deceive to
evil, from fiction, that would attract another way;--and to rescue from
ill opinion the sort of production, call it by what name we may, that
his daughter ventures to lay at his feet, through the alluring, but
awful tribunal of the public.

He will recollect, also, how often their so mutually honoured Dr Johnson
has said to her, 'Always aim at the eagle!--even though you expect but
to reach a sparrow!'

The power of prejudice annexed to nomenclature is universal: the same
being who, unnamed, passes unnoticed, if preceded by the title of a
hero, or a potentate, catches every eye, and is pursued with clamorous
praise, or,--its common reverberator!--abuse: but in nothing is the
force of denomination more striking than in the term Novel; a species of
writing which, though never mentioned, even by its supporter, but with a
look that fears contempt, is not more rigidly excommunicated, from its
appellation, in theory, than sought and fostered, from its attractions,
in practice.

So early was I impressed myself with ideas that fastened degradation to
this class of composition, that at the age of adolescence, I struggled
against the propensity which, even in childhood, even from the moment I
could hold a pen, had impelled me into its toils; and on my fifteenth
birth-day, I made so resolute a conquest over an inclination at which I
blushed, and that I had always kept secret, that I committed to the
flames whatever, up to that moment, I had committed to paper. And so
enormous was the pile, that I thought it prudent to consume it in the
garden.

You, dear Sir, knew nothing of its extinction, for you had never known
of its existence. Our darling Susanna, to whom alone I had ever ventured
to read its contents, alone witnessed the conflagration; and--well I
remember!--and wept, with tender partiality, over the imaginary ashes of
Caroline Evelyn, the mother of Evelina.

The passion, however, though resisted, was not annihilated: my bureau
was cleared; but my head was not emptied; and, in defiance of every
self-effort, Evelina struggled herself into life.

If then, even in the season of youth, I felt ashamed of appearing to be
a votary to a species of writing that by you, Sir, liberal as I knew you
to be, I thought condemned; since your large library, of which I was
then the principal librarian, contained only one work of that class;[6]
how much deeper must now be my blush,--now, when that spring of
existence has so long taken its flight,--transferring, I must hope, its
genial vigour upon your grandson![7]--if the work which I here present
to you, may not shew, in the observations which it contains upon various
characters, ways, or excentricities of human life, that an exterior the
most frivolous may enwrap illustrations of conduct, that the most rigid
preceptor need not deem dangerous to entrust to his pupils; for, if what
is inculcated is right, it will not, I trust, be cast aside, merely
because so conveyed as not to be received as a task. On the contrary, to
make pleasant the path of propriety, is snatching from evil its most
alluring mode of ascendency. And your fortunate daughter, though past
the period of chusing to write, or desiring to read, a merely romantic
love-tale, or a story of improbable wonders, may still hope to
retain,--if she has ever possessed it,--the power of interesting the
affections, while still awake to them herself, through the many much
loved agents of sensibility, that still hold in their pristine energy
her conjugal, maternal, fraternal, friendly, and,--dearest Sir!--her
filial feelings.

[Footnote 6: Fielding's _Amelia_.]

[Footnote 7: Alexander Charles Lewis d'Arblay.]

Fiction, when animating the design of recommending right, has always
been permitted and cultivated, not alone by the moral, but by the pious
instructor; not alone to embellish what is prophane, but to promulgate
even what is sacred, from the first aera of tuition, to the present
passing moment. Yet I am aware that all which, incidentally, is treated
of in these volumes upon the most momentous of subjects, may HERE, in
this favoured island, be deemed not merely superfluous, but, if
indulgence be not shewn to its intention, impertinent; and HERE, had I
always remained, the most solemn chapter of the work,--I will not
anticipate its number,--might never have been traced; for, since my
return to this country, I have been forcibly struck in remarking, that
all sacred themes, far from being either neglected, or derided, are
become almost common topics of common discourse; and rather, perhaps,
from varying sects, and diversified opinions, too familiarly discussed,
than defyingly set aside.

But what I observed in my long residence abroad, presented another
picture; and its colours, not, indeed, with cementing harmony, but to
produce a striking contrast, have forcibly, though not, I hope,
glaringly tinted my pen.

Nevertheless, truth, and my own satisfaction, call upon me to mention,
that, in the circle to which, in Paris, I had the honour, habitually, to
belong, piety, generally, in practice as well as in theory, held its
just pre-eminence; though almost every other society, however cultured,
brilliant, and unaffectedly good, of which occasionally I heard, or in
which, incidentally, I mixed, commonly considered belief and bigotry as
synonymous terms.

They, however, amongst my adopted friends, for whose esteem I am most
solicitous, will suffer my design to plead, I trust, in my favour; even
where my essays, whether for their projection, or their execution, may
most sarcastically be criticised.

Strange, indeed, must be my ingratitude, could I voluntarily give
offence where, during ten unbroken years, I should, personally, have
known nothing but felicity, had I quitted a country, or friends, I,
could have forgotten. For me, however, as for all mankind, concomitant
circumstances took their usual charge of impeding any exception to the
general laws of life.

And now, dear Sir, in leaving you to the perusal of these volumes, how
many apprehensions would be hushed, might I hope that they would revive
in your feelings the partial pleasure with which you cherished their
predecessors!

Will the public be offended, if here, as in private, I conclude my
letter with a prayer for my dearest Father's benediction and
preservation? No! the public voice, and the voice of his family is one,
in reverencing his virtues, admiring his attainments, and ardently
desiring that health, peace of mind, and fulness of merited honours, may
crown his length of days, and prolong them to the utmost verge of
enjoyable mortality!

    F. B. d'ARBLAY.
    _March 14. 1814_




VOLUME I




CHAPTER I


During the dire reign of the terrific Robespierre, and in the dead of
night, braving the cold, the darkness and the damps of December, some
English passengers, in a small vessel, were preparing to glide silently
from the coast of France, when a voice of keen distress resounded from
the shore, imploring, in the French language, pity and admission.

The pilot quickened his arrangements for sailing; the passengers sought
deeper concealment; but no answer was returned.

'O hear me!' cried the same voice, 'for the love of Heaven, hear me!'

The pilot gruffly swore, and, repressing a young man who was rising,
peremptorily ordered every one to keep still, at the hazard of discovery
and destruction.

'Oh listen to my prayers!' was called out by the same voice, with
increased and even frightful energy; 'Oh leave me not to be massacred!'

'Who's to pay for your safety?' muttered the pilot.

'I will!' cried the person whom he had already rebuffed, 'I pledge
myself for the cost and the consequence!'

'Be lured by no tricks;' said an elderly man, in English; 'put off
immediately, pilot.'

The pilot was very ready to obey.

The supplications from the land were now sharpened into cries of agony,
and the young man, catching the pilot by the arm, said eagerly, ''Tis
the voice of a woman! where can be the danger? Take her in, pilot, at my
demand, and my charge!'

'Take her in at your peril, pilot!' rejoined the elderly man.

Rage had elevated his voice; the petitioner heard it, and
called--screamed, rather, for mercy.

'Nay, since she is but a woman, and in distress, save her, pilot, in
God's name!' said an old sea officer. 'A woman, a child, and a fallen
enemy, are three persons that every true Briton should scorn to misuse.'

The sea officer was looked upon as first in command; the young man,
therefore, no longer opposed, separated himself from a young lady with
whom he had been conversing, and, descending from the boat, gave his
hand to the suppliant.

There was just light enough to shew him a female in the most ordinary
attire, who was taking a whispering leave of a male companion, yet more
meanly equipped.

With trembling eagerness, she sprang into the vessel, and sunk rather
than sat upon a place that was next to the pilot, ejaculating fervent
thanks, first to Heaven, and then to her assistant.

The pilot now, in deep hoarse accents, strictly enjoined that no one
should speak or move till they were safely out at sea.

All obeyed; and, with mingled hope and dread, insensible to the weather,
and dauntless to the hazards of the sea, watchful though mute, and
joyful though filled with anxiety, they set sail.

In about half an hour, the grumbling of the pilot, who was despotic
master of the boat, was changed into loud and vociferous oaths.

Alarmed, the passengers concluded that they were chaced. They looked
around,--but to no purpose; the darkness impeded examination.

They were happily, however, mistaken; the lungs of the pilot had merely
recovered their usual play, and his humour its customary vent, from a
belief that all pursuit would now be vain.

This proved the signal to general liberty of speech; and the young lady
already mentioned, addressing herself, in a low voice, to the gentleman
who had aided the Incognita, said, 'I wonder what sort of a dulcinea you
have brought amongst us! though, I really believe, you are such a
complete knight-errant, that you would just as willingly find her a
tawny Hottentot as a fair Circassian. She affords us, however, the
vivifying food of conjecture,--the only nourishment of which I never
sicken!--I am glad, therefore, that 'tis dark, for discovery is almost
always disappointment.'

'She seems to be at prayers.'

'At prayers? She's a nun, then, depend upon it. Make her tell us the
history of her convent.'

'Why what's all this, woman?' said the pilot, in French, 'are you afraid
of being drowned?'

'No!' answered she, in the same language, 'I fear nothing now--it is
therefore I am thankful!'

Retreating, then, from her rude neighbour, she gently approached an
elderly lady, who was on her other side, but who, shrinking from her,
called out, 'Mr Harleigh, I shall be obliged to you if you will change
places with me.'

'Willingly;' he answered; but the young lady with whom he had been
conversing, holding his coat, exclaimed, 'Now you want to have all the
stories of those monks and abbesses to yourself! I won't let you stir, I
am resolved!'

The stranger begged that she might not incommode any one; and drew back.

'You may sit still now, Mr Harleigh,' said the elderly lady, shaking
herself; 'I do very well again.'

Harleigh bit his lip, and, in a low voice, said to his companion, 'It is
strange that the facility of giving pain should not lessen its pleasure!
How far better tempered should we all be to others, if we anticipated
the mischief that ill humour does to ourselves!'

'Now are you such a very disciple of Cervantes,' she replied, 'that I
have no doubt but your tattered dulcinea has secured your protection for
the whole voyage, merely because old aunt Maple has been a little ill
bred to her.'

'I don't know but you are right, for nothing so uncontrollably excites
resistance, as grossness to the unoffending.'

He then, in French, enquired of the new passenger, whether she would not
have some thicker covering, to shelter her from the chill of the night;
offering her, at the same time, a large wrapping coat.

She thanked him, but declared that she was perfectly warm.

'Are you so, faith?' cried the elderly man already mentioned, 'I wish,
then, you would give me your receipt, Mistress; for I verily think that
my blood will take a month's thawing, before it will run again in my
veins.'

She made no answer, and, in a tone somewhat piqued, he added, 'I believe
in my conscience those outlandish gentry have no more feeling without
than they have within!'

Encreasing coldness and darkness repressed all further spirit of
conversation, till the pilot proclaimed that they were halfway over the
straits.

A general exclamation of joy now broke forth from all, while the new
comer, suddenly casting something into the sea, ejaculated, in French,
'Sink, and be as nothing!' And then, clasping her hands, added, 'Heaven
be praised, 'tis gone for ever!'

The pilot scolded and swore; every one was surprised and curious; and
the elderly man plumply demanded, 'Pray what have you thrown overboard,
Mistress?'

Finding himself again unanswered, he rather angrily raised his voice,
saying, 'What, I suppose you don't understand English now? Though you
were pretty quick at it when we were leaving you in the lurch! Faith,
that's convenient enough!'

'For all I have been silent so long,' cried the old sea officer, 'it has
not been for want of something to say; and I ask the favour that you
won't any of you take it ill, if I make free to mention what has been
passing, all this time, in my mind; though it may rather have the air of
a hint than a compliment; but as I owe to being as much in fault as
yourselves, I hope you won't be affronted at a little plain dealing.'

'You are mighty good to us, indeed, Sir!' cried Mrs Maple, 'but pray
what fault have you to charge Me with, amongst the rest?'

'I speak of us in a body, Madam, and, I hope, with proper shame! To
think that we should all get out of that loathsome captivity, with so
little reverence, that not one amongst us should have fallen upon his
knees, to give thanks, except just this poor outlandish gentlewoman;
whose good example I recommend it to us all now to follow.'

'What, and so overturn the boat,' said the elderly man, 'that we may all
be drowned for joy, because we have escaped being beheaded?'

'I submit to your better judgment, Mr Riley,' replied the officer, 'with
regard to the attitude; and the more readily, because I don't think that
the posture is the chief thing, half the people that kneel, even at
church, as I have taken frequent note, being oftener in a doze than in a
fit of devotion. But the fear of shaking the boat would be but a poor
reason to fear shaking our gratitude, which seems to me to want it
abundantly. So I, for one, give thanks to the Author of all things!'

'You are a fine fellow, noble Admiral!' cried Mr Riley, 'as fine a
fellow as ever I knew! and I honour you, faith! for I don't believe
there is a thing in the world that requires so much courage as to risk
derision, even from fools.'

A young man, wrapped up in flannels, who had been undisguisedly enjoying
a little sneering laugh, now became suddenly grave, and pretended not to
heed what was passing.

Mrs Maple protested that she could not bear the parade of saying her
prayers in public.

Another elderly lady, who had hitherto seemed too sick to speak,
declared that she could not think of giving thanks, till she were sure
of being out of danger.

And the young lady, laughing immoderately, vowed that she had never seen
such a congress of quizzes in her life; adding, 'We want nothing, now,
but a white foaming billow, or a shrill whistle from Boreas, to bring us
all to confession, and surprise out our histories.'

'Apropos to quizzes,' said Mr Riley, addressing the hitherto silent
young man, 'how comes it, Mr Ireton, that we have not had one word from
you all this time?'

'What do you mean by apropos, Sir?' demanded the young man, somewhat
piqued.

'Faith, I don't very well know. I am no very good French dictionary. But
I always say apropos, when I am at a loss how to introduce any thing.
Let us hear, however, where you have been passing your thoughts all this
time. Are you afraid the sea should be impregnated with informers,
instead of salt, and so won't venture to give breath to an idea, lest it
should be floated back to Signor Robespierre, and hodge-podged into a
conspiracy?'

'Ay, your thoughts, your thoughts! give us your thoughts, Ireton!' cried
the young lady, 'I am tired to death of my own.'

'Why, I have been reflecting, for this last hour or two, what a singular
circumstance it is, that in all the domains that I have scampered over
upon the continent, I have not met with one young person who could hit
my fancy as a companion for life.'

'And I, Sir, think,' said the sea officer, turning to him with some
severity, 'that a man who could go out of old England to chuse himself a
wife, never deserves to set foot on it again! If I knew any worse
punishment, I should name it.'

This silenced Mr Ireton; and not another word was uttered, till the
opening of day displayed the British shore.

The sea officer then gave a hearty huzza, which was echoed by Harleigh;
while Riley, as the light gleamed upon the old and tattered garments of
the stranger, burst into a loud laugh, exclaiming, 'Faith, I should like
to know what such a demoiselle as this should come away from her own
country for? What could you be afraid of, hay! demoiselle?'--

She turned her head from him in silence. Harleigh enquired, in French,
whether she had escaped the general contagion, from which almost all in
the boat had suffered, of sickness.

She cheerfully replied, Yes! She had escaped every evil!

'The demoiselle is soon contented,' said Riley; 'but I cannot for my
life make out who she is, nor what she wants. Why won't you tell us,
demoiselle? I should like to know your history.'

'Much obliged for the new fellow traveller you have given us, Mr
Harleigh!' said Mrs Maple, contemptuously examining her; 'I have really
some curiosity myself, to be informed what could put into such a body's
mind as that, to want to come over to England.'

'The desire of learning the language, I hope!' cried Harleigh, 'for I
should be sorry that she knew it already!'

'I wish, at least, she would tell us,' said the young lady, 'how she
happened to find out our vessel just at the moment we were sailing.'

'And I should be glad to discover,' cried Riley, 'why she understands
English on and off at her pleasure, now so ready, and now answering one
never a word.'

The old sea officer, touching his hat as he addressed her, said, 'For my
part, Madam, I hope the compliment you make our country in coming to it,
is that of preferring good people to bad; in which case every Englishman
should honour and welcome you.'

'And I hope,' cried Harleigh, while the stranger seemed hesitating how
to answer, 'that this patriotic benevolence is comprehended; if not, I
will attempt a translation.'

'I speak French so indifferently, which, however, I don't much mind,'
cried the Admiral, 'that I am afraid the gentlewoman would hardly
understand me, or else I would translate for myself.'

The stranger now, with a strong expression of gratitude, replied in
English, but with a foreign accent, 'It is only how to thank you I am at
a loss, Sir; I understand you perfectly.'

'So I could have sworn!' cried Riley, with a laugh, 'I could have sworn
that this would be the turn for understanding English again! And you can
speak it, too, can you, Mistress?'

'And pray, good woman,' demanded Mrs Maple, staring at her, 'how came
you to learn English? Have you lived in any English family? If you have,
I should be glad to know their names.'

'Ay, their names! their names!' was echoed from Mrs Maple by her niece.

The stranger looked down, and stammered, but said nothing that could
distinctly be heard.

Riley, laughing again, though provoked, exclaimed, 'There! now you ask
her a question, she won't comprehend a word more! I was sure how 'twould
be! They are clever beings, those French, they are, faith! always
playing fools' tricks, like so many monkies, yet always lighting right
upon their feet, like so many cats!'

'You must resign your demoiselle, as Mr Riley calls her, for a heroine;'
whispered the young lady to Mr Harleigh. 'Her dress is not merely
shabby; 'tis vulgar. I have lost all hope of a pretty nun. She can be
nothing above a house-maid.'

'She is interesting by her solitary situation,' he answered, 'be she
what she may by her rank: and her voice, I think, is singularly
pleasing.'

'Oh, you must fall in love with her, I suppose, as a thing of course.
If, however, she has one atom that is native in her, how will she be
choaked by our foggy atmosphere!'

'And has our atmosphere, Elinor, no purifying particles, that, in
defiance of its occasional mists, render it salubrious?'

'Oh, I don't mean alone the foggy air that she must inhale; but the
foggy souls whom she must see and hear. If she have no political bias,
that sets natural feelings aside, she'll go off in a lethargy, from
_ennui_, the very first week. For myself I confess, from my happiness in
going forth into the world at this sublime juncture, of turning men into
infants, in order to teach them better how to grow up, I feel as if I
had never awaked into life, till I had opened my eyes on that side of
the channel.'

'And can you, Elinor, with a mind so powerful, however--pardon
me!--wild, have witnessed....'

'Oh, I know what you mean!--but those excesses are only the first froth
of the cauldron. When once 'tis skimmed, you will find the composition
clear, sparkling, delicious!'

'Has, then, the large draught which, in a two years' residence amidst
that combustion, you have, perforce, quaffed, of revolutionary beverage,
left you, in defiance of its noxious qualities, still thus....' He
hesitated.

'Inebriated, you would say, Albert,' cried she, laughing, 'if you
blushed not for me at the idea. But, in this one point, your liberality,
though matchless in every other, is terribly narrowed by adhesion to
old tenets. You enjoy not therefore, as you ought, this glorious epoch,
that lifts our minds from slavery and from nothingness, into play and
vigour; and leaves us no longer, as heretofore, merely making believe
that we are thinking beings.'

'Unbridled liberty, Elinor, cannot rush upon a state, without letting it
loose to barbarism. Nothing, without danger, is suddenly unshackled:
safety demands control from the baby to the despot.'

'The opening essays here,' she replied, 'have certainly been calamitous:
but, when all minor articles are progressive, in rising to perfection,
must the world in a mass alone stand still, because its amelioration
would be costly? Can any thing be so absurd, so preposterous, as to seek
to improve mankind individually, yet bid it stand still collectively?
What is education, but reversing propensities; making the idle
industrious, the rude civil, and the ignorant learned? And do you not,
for every student thus turned out of his likings, his vagaries, or his
vices, to be new modelled, call this alteration improvement? Why, then,
must you brand all similar efforts for new organizing states, nations,
and bodies of society, by that word of unmeaning alarm, innovation?'

'To reverse, Elinor, is not to new model, but to destroy. This
education, with which you illustrate your maxims, does it begin with the
birth? Does it not, on the contrary, work its way by the gentlest
gradations, one part almost imperceptibly preparing for another,
throughout all the stages of childhood to adolescence, and of
adolescence to manhood? If you give Homer before the Primer, do you
think that you shall make a man of learning? If you shew the planetary
system to the child who has not yet trundled his hoop, do you believe
that you will form a mathematician? And if you put a rapier into his
hands before he has been exercised with foils,--what is your guarantee
for the safety of his professor?'

Just then the stranger, having taken off her gloves, to arrange an old
shawl, in which she was wrapt, exhibited hands and arms of so dark a
colour, that they might rather be styled black than brown.

Elinor exultingly drew upon them the eyes of Harleigh, and both taking,
at the same instant, a closer view of the little that was visible of the
muffled up face, perceived it to be of an equally dusky hue.

The look of triumph was now repeated.

'Pray, Mistress,' exclaimed Mr Riley, scoffingly fixing his eyes upon
her arms, 'what part of the world might you come from? The settlements
in the West Indies? or somewhere off the coast of Africa?'

She drew on her gloves, without seeming to hear him.

'There!' said he, 'now the demoiselle don't understand English again!
Faith, I begin to be entertained with her. I did not like it at first.'

'What say you to your dulcinea now, Harleigh?' whispered Elinor; 'you
will not, at least, yelep her the Fair Maid of the Coast.'

'She has very fine eyes, however!' answered he, laughing.

The wind just then blowing back the prominent borders of a French
night-cap, which had almost concealed all her features, displayed a large
black patch, that covered half her left cheek, and a broad black ribbon,
which bound a bandage of cloth over the right side of her forehead.

Before Elinor could utter her rallying congratulations to Harleigh, upon
this sight, she was stopt by a loud shout from Mr Riley; 'Why I am
afraid the demoiselle has been in the wars!' cried he. 'Why, Mistress,
have you been trying your skill at fisty cuffs for the good of your
nation? or only playing with kittens for your private diversion?'

'Now, then, Harleigh,' said Elinor, 'what says your quixotism now? Are
you to become enamoured with those plaisters and patches, too?'

'Why she seems a little mangled, I confess; but it may be only by
scrambling from some prison.'

'Really, Mr Harleigh,' said Mrs Maple, scarcely troubling herself to
lower her voice as, incessantly, she continued surveying the stranger,
'I don't think that we are much indebted to you for bringing us such
company as this into our boat! We did not pay such a price to have it
made a mere common hoy. And without the least enquiry into her
character, too! without considering what one must think of a person who
could look out for a place, in a chance vessel, at midnight!'

'Let us hope,' said Harleigh, perceiving, by the down-cast eyes of the
stranger, that she understood what passed, 'that we shall not make her
repent her choice of an asylum.'

'Ah! there is no fear!' cried she, with quickness.

'Your prepossession, then, is, happily, in our favour?'

'Not my prepossession, but my gratitude!'

'This is true practical philosophy, to let the sum total of good
outbalance the detail, which little minds would dwell upon, of evil.'

'Of evil! I think myself at this moment the most fortunate of human
beings!'

This was uttered with a sort of transport that she seemed unable to
control, and accompanied with a bright smile, that displayed a row of
beautifully white and polished teeth.

Riley now, again heartily laughing, exclaimed, 'This demoiselle amuses
me mightily! she does, faith! with hardly a rag to cover her this cold
winter's night; and on the point of going to the bottom every moment, in
this crazy little vessel; with never a friend to own her body if she's
drowned, nor an acquaintance to say a word to before she sinks; not a
countryman within leagues, except our surly pilot, who grudges her even
life-room, because he's afraid he shan't be the better for her: going to
a nation where she won't know a dog from a cat, and will be buffetted
from pillar to post, if she don't pay for more than she wants; with all
this, she is the most fortunate of human beings! Faith, the demoiselle
is soon pleased! She is, faith! But why won't you give me your receipt,
Mistress, for finding all things so agreeable?'

'You would be sorry, Sir, to take it!'

'I fear, then,' said Harleigh, 'it is only past suffering that bestows
this character of bliss upon simple safety?'

'Pray, Mr Riley,' cried Mrs Maple, 'please to explain what you mean, by
talking so freely of our all going to the bottom? I should be glad to
know what right you had to make me come on board the vessel, if you
think it so crazy?'

She then ordered the pilot to use all possible expedition for putting
her on shore, at the very first jut of land; adding, 'you may take the
rest of the company round, wherever you chuse, but as to me, I desire to
be landed directly.'

She could not, however, prevail; but, in the panic which had seized her,
she grew as incessant in reproach as in alarm, bitterly bewailing the
moment that she had ever trusted herself to such an element, such a
vessel, and such guides.

'See,' said Harleigh, in a low voice to the stranger, 'how little your
philosophy has spread; and how soon every evil, however great, is
forgotten when over, to aggravate the smallest discomfort that still
remains! What recompence, or what exertion would any one of us have
thought too great, for obtaining a place in this boat only a few hours
ago! Yet you, alone, seem to have discovered, that the true art of
supporting present inconvenience is to compare it with past
calamity,--not with our disappointed wishes.'

'Calamity!' repeated she with vivacity, 'ah! if once I reach that
shore,--that blessed shore! shall I have a sorrow left?'

'The belief that you will not,' said he, smiling, 'will almost suffice
for your security, since, certainly, half our afflictions are those
which we suffer through anticipation.'

There was time for nothing more; the near approach to land seeming to
fill every bosom, for the instant, with sensations equally
enthusiastic.




CHAPTER II


Upon reaching the British shore, while Mrs Maple, her niece, the elderly
lady, and two maid-servants, claimed and employed the aid of the
gentlemen, the Incognita, disregarding an offer of Harleigh to return
for her, darted forward with such eagerness, that she was the first to
touch the land, where, with a fervour that seemed resistless, she
rapturously ejaculated, 'Heaven, Heaven be praised!'

The pilot, when he had safely disembarked his passengers, committed the
charge of his vessel to a boy, and, abruptly accosting the stranger,
demanded a recompence for the risk which he had run in saving her life.

She was readily opening her work bag to seek for her purse, but the old
sea officer, approaching, and holding her arm, gravely asked whether she
meant to affront him; and, turning to the pilot, somewhat dictatorially
said, 'Harkee, my lad! we took this gentlewoman in ourselves; and I have
seen no reason to be sorry for it: but she is our passenger, and not
your's. Come to the inn, therefore, and you shall be satisfied,
forthwith, for her and the rest of us, in a lump.'

'You are infinitely good, Sir,' cried the stranger, 'but I have no
claim--.'

'That's your mistake, gentlewoman. An unprotected female, provided she's
of a good behaviour, has always a claim to a man's care, whether she be
born amongst our friends or our foes. I should be ashamed to be an
Englishman, if I held it my duty to think narrower than that. And a man
who could bring himself to be ashamed of being an Englishman, would find
it a difficult solution, let me tell you, my good gentlewoman, to
discover what he might glory in. However, don't think that I say this to
affront you as a foreigner, for I hope I am a better Christian. I only
drop it as a matter of fact.'

'Worthy Admiral,' said Mr Harleigh, now joining them, 'you are not, I
trust, robbing me of my office? The pecuniary engagement with the pilot
was mine.'

'But the authority which made him act,' returned the officer, 'was
mine.'

A bright smile, which lightened up the countenance of the Incognita,
again contrasted her white teeth with her dingy complexion; while
dispersing the tears that started into her eyes, 'Fie upon me!' she
cried, 'to be in England and surprised at generosity!'

'Gentlewoman,' said the Admiral, emphatically, 'if you want any help,
command my services; for, to my seeming, you appear to be a person of as
right a way of thinking, as if you had lisped English for your
mother-tongue.'

He then peremptorily insisted that the boat's company should discharge
the pilot, without any interference on the part of the lone traveller,
as soon as it had done with the custom-house officers.

This latter business was short; there was nothing to examine: not a
trunk, and scarcely a parcel, had the hurry and the dangers of escape
hazarded.

They then proceeded to the principal inn, where the Admiral called all
the crew, as he styled the party, to a spacious room, and a cheering
fire, of which he undertook the discipline.

The sight of this meanly attired person, invited into the apartment both
by the Admiral and Mr Harleigh, with a civility that seemed blind to her
shabby appearance, proved so miraculous a restorative to Mrs Maple,
that, rising from a great chair, into which, with a declaration that she
was half dead from her late fright and sickness, she had thrown herself,
she was endowed with sudden strength of body to stand stiffly upright,
and of lungs to pronounce, in shrill but powerful accents, 'Pray, Mr
Harleigh, are we to go on any farther as if we were to live all our
lives in a stage coach? Why can't that body as well stay in the
kitchen?'

The stranger would hastily have retired, but the Admiral, taking her
softly by the shoulder, said, 'I have been a commanding officer the best
part of my life, Gentlewoman; and though a devil of a wound has put me
upon the superannuated list, I am not sunk into quite such a fair
weather chap, as to make over my authority, in such a little pitiful
skiff's company as this, to petticoat government;--though no man has a
better respect for the sex, in its proper element; which, however, is
not the sea. Therefore, Madam,' turning to Mrs Maple, 'this gentlewoman
being my own passenger, and having comported herself without any offence
either to God or man, I shall take it kind if you will treat her in a
more Christian-like manner.'

While Mrs Maple began an angry reply, the stranger forced herself out of
the apartment. The Admiral followed.

'I hope, gentlewoman,' he was beginning, 'you won't be cast down, or
angry, at a few vagaries--' when, looking in her face, he saw a
countenance so gaily happy, that his condolence was changed into pleased
astonishment. 'Angry!' she repeated, 'at a moment such as this!--a
moment of so blessed an escape!--I should be the most graceless of
wretches, if I had one sensation but of thankfulness and joy!'

'You are a very brave woman,' said the Admiral, 'and I am sorry,'
looking at her tattered clothing, 'to see you in no better plight:
though, perchance, if you had been born to more glitter without, you
might have had less ore within. However, if you don't much like the
vapouring of that ancient lady, which I have no very extraordinary
liking to myself, neither, why stay in another room till we have done
with the pilot; and then, if I can be of any use in helping you to your
friends, I shall be glad to be at your service. For I take it for
granted, though you are not in your own country, you are too good a
woman to be without friends, as I know no worse sign of a person's
character.'

He then joined his fellow-voyagers, and the stranger went on to enquire
for the master of the house.

Sounds from without, that seemed to announce distress, catching, soon
after, the attentive ear of Harleigh, he opened the door, and perceived
that the stranger was returned to the passage, and in evident disorder.

The sea officer briskly advanced to her. 'How now!' he cried,
'disheartened at last? Well! a woman can be but a woman! However, unless
you have a mind to see all my good opinion blown away--thus!--in a
whiff, you won't think of drooping, now once you are upon British
ground. For though I should scorn, I hope, to reproach you for not being
a native born, still, not to be over-joyed that you can say, Here I am!
would be a sure way to win my contempt. However, as I don't take upon me
to be your governor, I'll send your own countryman to you, if you like
him better,--the pilot?'

'Not for the universe! Not for the universe!' she eagerly cried, and,
darting into an empty room, with a hasty apology, shut the door.

'Mighty well, indeed!' said Mrs Maple, who, catching the contagion of
curiosity, had deigned to listen; 'so her own countryman, the only
person that she ought to belong to, she shuts the door upon!'

She then protested, that if the woman were not brought forth, before the
pilot, who was already paid and gone, had re-embarked, she should always
be convinced that she had lost something, though she might not find out
what had been taken from her, for a twelve-month afterwards.

The landlord, coming forward, enquired whether there were any
disturbance; and, upon the complaint and application of Mrs Maple, would
have opened the door of the closed apartment; but the Admiral and
Harleigh, each taking him by an arm, declared the person in that room to
be under their protection.

'Well, upon my word,' cried Mrs Maple, 'this is more than I could have
expected! We are in fine hands, indeed, for a sea officer, and an
Admiral, that ought to be our safe-guard, to take part with our native
enemy, that, I make no doubt, is sent amongst us as a spy for our
destruction!'

'A lady, Madam,' said the Admiral, looking down rather contemptuously,
'must have liberty to say whatever she pleases, a man's tongue being as
much tied as his hands, not to annoy the weaker vessel; so that, let her
come out with what she will, she is amenable to no punishment; unless
she take some account of a man's inward opinion; in which case she can't
be said to escape quite so free as she may seem to do. This, Madam, is
all the remark that I think fit to make to you. But as for you, Mr
Landlord, when the gentlewoman in this room has occasion to consult you,
she speaks English, and can call you herself.'

He would then have led the way to a general retreat, but Mrs Maple
angrily desired the landlord to take notice, that a foreigner, of a
suspicious character, had come over with them by force, whom he ought to
keep in custody, unless she would tell her name and business.

The door of the apartment was now abruptly opened by the stranger, who
called out 'O no! no! no!--Ladies!--Gentlemen!--I claim your
protection!'

'It is your's, Madam!' cried Harleigh, with emotion.

'Be sure of it, Gentlewoman!' cried the old officer; 'We did not bring
you from one bad shore to another. We'll take care of you. Be sure of
it!'

The stranger wept. 'I thought not,' she cried, 'to have shed a tear in
England; but my heart can find no other vent.'

'Very pretty! very pretty, indeed, Gentlemen!' said Mrs Maple; 'If you
can answer all this to yourselves, well and good; but as I have not
quite so easy a conscience, I think it no more than my duty to inform
the magistrates myself, of my opinion of this foreigner.'

She was moving off; but the stranger rushed forth, and with an
expression of agonized affright, exclaimed, 'Stay! Madam, stay! hear but
one word! I am no foreigner,--I am English!'--

Equal astonishment now seized every one; but while they stared from her
to each other, the Admiral said: 'I am cordially glad to hear it!
cordially! though why you should have kept secret a point that makes as
much for your honour as for your safety, I am not deep enough to
determine. However, I won't decide against you, while I am in the dark
of your reasons; though I own I have rather a taste myself for things
more above board. But for all that, Ma'am, if I can be of any use to
you, make no scruple to call upon me.'

He walked back to the parlour, where all now, except Harleigh, assembled
to a general breakfast, of which, during this scene, Riley, for want of
an associate, had been doing the honors to himself. The sick lady, Mrs
Ireton, was not yet sufficiently recovered to take any refreshment; and
the young man, her son, had commanded a repast on a separate table.

Harleigh repeated to the stranger, as she returned, in trembling, to her
room, his offer of services.

'If any lady of this party,' she answered, 'would permit me to say a few
words to her not quite in public, I should thankfully acknowledge such a
condescension. And if you, Sir, to whom already I owe an escape that
calls for my eternal gratitude, if you, Sir, could procure me such an
audience--'

'What depends upon me shall surely not be left undone,' he replied; and,
returning to the parlour, 'Ladies,' he said, 'this person whom we have
brought over, begs to speak with one of you alone.'

'Alone!' repeated Mrs Maple, 'How shocking! Who can tell what may be her
designs?'

'She means that we should go out to hold a conference with her in the
passage, I suppose?' said Mrs Ireton, the sick lady, to whom the
displeasure raised by this idea seemed to restore strength and speech;
'or, perhaps, she would be so good as to receive us in the kitchen? Her
condescension is really edifying! I am quite at a loss how I shall shew
my sense of such affability.'

'What, is that black insect buzzing about us still?' cried her son, 'Why
what the deuce can one make of such a grim thing?'

'O, it's my friend the demoiselle, is it?' said Riley; 'Faith, I had
almost forgotten her. I was so confoundedly numbed and gnawn, between
cold and hunger, that I don't think I could have remembered my father, I
don't, faith! before I had recruited. But where's poor demoiselle?
What's become of her? She wants a little bleaching, to be sure; but she
has not bad eyes; nor a bad nose, neither.'

'I am no great friend to the mystical,' said the Admiral, 'but I
promised her my help while she stood in need of my protection, and I
have no tide to withdraw it, now that I presume she is only in need of
my purse. If any of the ladies, therefore, mean to go to her, I beg to
trouble them to carry this.' He put a guinea upon the table.

'Now that she is so ready to tell her story,' said Elinor, 'I am
confident that there is none to tell. While she was enveloped in the
mystical, as the Admiral phrases it, I was dying with curiosity to make
some discovery.'

'O the poor demoiselle!' cried Riley, 'why you can't think of leaving
her in the lurch, at last, ladies, after bringing her so far? Come, lend
me one of your bonnets and your fardingales, or what is it you call your
things? And twirl me a belt round my waist, and something proper about
my neck, and I'll go to her myself, as one of your waiting maids: I
will, faith!'

'I am glad, at least, niece Elinor, that this once,' said Mrs Maple,
'you are reasonable enough to act a little like me and other people. If
you had really been so wild as to sustain so glaring an impostor----'

'If, aunt?--don't you see how I am scalding my throat all this time to
run to her?' replied Elinor, giving her hand to Harleigh.

As they re-entered the passage, the stranger, rushing from her room with
a look the most scared and altered, exclaimed, that she had lost her
purse.

'This is complete!' cried Elinor, laughing; 'and will this, too,
Harleigh, move your knight-errantry? If it does--look to your heart! for
I won't lose a moment in becoming black, patched, and pennyless!'

She flew with this anecdote to the breakfast parlour; while the
stranger, yet more rapidly, flew from the inn to the sea-side, where she
carefully retraced the ground that she had passed; but all examination
was vain, and she returned with an appearance of increased dismay.

Meeting Harleigh at the door, his expression of concern somewhat calmed
her distress, and she conjured him to plead with one of the ladies, to
have the charity to convey her to London, and thence to help her on to
Brighthelmstone. 'I have no means,' she cried, 'now, to proceed unaided;
my purse, I imagine, dropt into the sea, when, so unguardedly! in the
dark, I cast there--' She stopt, looked confused, and bent her eyes upon
the ground.

'To Brighthelmstone?' repeated Harleigh; 'some of these ladies reside
not nine miles from that town. I will see what can be done.'

She merely entreated, she said, to be allowed to travel in their suite,
in any way, any capacity, as the lowest of attendants. She was so
utterly reduced by this dreadful loss, that she must else beg her way on
foot.

Harleigh hastened to execute this commission; but the moment he named
it, Elinor called out, 'Do, pray, Mr Harleigh, tell me where you have
been secreting your common sense?--Not that I mean to look for
it!--'twould despoil me of all the dear freaks and vagaries that give
zest to life!'

'Poor demoiselle!' cried Riley, throwing half a crown upon the table,
'she shall not be without my mite, for old acquaintance sake.'

'What! has she caught even you, Mr Cynical Riley?' cried Elinor; 'you,
who take as much pleasure in lowering or mortifying your
fellow-creatures, as Mr Harleigh does in elevating, or relieving them?'

'Every one after his own fashion, Miss Nelly. The best amongst us has as
little taste for being thwarted as the worst. He has, faith! We all
think our own way the only one that has any common sense. Mine, is that
of a diver: I seek always for what is hidden. What is obvious soon
surfeits me. If this demoiselle had named herself, I should never have
thought of her again; but now, I'm all agog to find her out.'

'Why does she not say who she is at once?' cried Mrs Maple. 'I give
nothing to people that I know nothing of; and what had she to do in
France? Why don't she tell us that?'

'Can such a skin, and such a garb, be worth so much breath?' demanded
Ireton, taking up a news-paper.

Harleigh enquired of Mrs Ireton, whether she had succeeded in her
purposed search, of a young woman to replace the domestic whom she had
left in France, and to attend her till she arrived at her house in town.

'No, Sir,' she answered; 'but you don't mean, I presume, to recommend
this vagabond to be about my person? I should presume not; I should
presume you don't mean that? Not but that I should be very sensible to
such a mark of distinction. I hope Mr Harleigh does not doubt that? I
hope he does not suspect I should want a proper sensibility to such an
honour?'

'If you think her a vagabond, Madam,' replied Harleigh, 'I have not a
word to offer: but neither her language nor her manners incline me to
that opinion. You only want an attendant till you reach your family, and
she merely desires and supplicates to travel free. Her object is to get
to Brighthelmstone. And if, by waiting upon you, she could earn her
journey to London, Mrs Maple, perhaps, in compassion to her pennyless
state, might thence let her share the conveyance of some of her people
to Lewes, whence she might easily find means to proceed.'

The two elderly ladies stared at each other, not so much as if
exchanging enquiries how to decline, but in what degree to resent this
proposition; while Elinor, making Harleigh follow her to a window, said,
'No, do inform me, seriously and candidly, what it is that urges you to
take the pains to make so ridiculous an arrangement?'

'Her apparently desolate state.'

'Now do put aside all those fine sort of sayings, which you know I laugh
at, and give me, instead, a little of that judgment which you so often
quarrel with me for not giving to you; and then honestly tell me, can
you really credit that any thing but a female fortune-hunter, would
travel so strangely alone, or be so oddly without resource?'

'Your doubts, Elinor, are certainly rational; and I can only reply to
them, by saying, that there are now and then uncommon causes, which,
when developed, shew the most extraordinary situations to be but their
mere simple effect.'

'And her miserable accoutrement?--And all those bruises, or sores, and
patches, and bandages?--'

'The detail, I own, Elinor, is unaccountable and ill looking: I can
defend no single particular, even to myself; but yet the whole, the
all-together, carries with it an indescribable, but irresistible
vindication. This is all I can say for befriending her.'

'Nay, if you think her really distressed,' cried Elinor, 'I feel ready
enough to be her handmaid; and, at all events, I shall make a point to
discover whom and what she may be, that I may know how to value your
judgment, in odd cases, for the future. Who knows, Harleigh, but I may
have some to propose for your decision of my own?'

The Admiral, after some deliberation, said, that, as it was certainly
possible that the poor woman might really have lost her purse, which
he, for one, believed to be the simple truth, he could not refuse to
help her on to her friends; and, ringing for the landlord, he ordered
that a breakfast should be taken to the gentlewoman in the other room,
and that a place should be secured for her in the next day's stage to
London; for all which he would immediately deposit the money.

'And pray, Mr Landlord,' said Mrs Maple, 'let us know what it was that
this body wanted, when she desired to speak with you?'

'She asked me to send and enquire at the Post-office if there were any
letter directed for L.S., to be left till called for; and when she heard
that there was none, I thought, verily, that she would have swooned.'

Elinor now warmly united with Harleigh, in begging that Mrs Maple would
let her servants take charge of the young woman from London to Lewes,
when, through the charity of the Admiral, she should arrive in town. Mrs
Maple pronounced an absolute negative; but when Elinor, not less
absolutely, declared that, in that case, she would hire the traveller
for her own maid; and the more readily because she was tired to death of
Golding, her old one, Mrs Maple, though with the utmost ill will, was
frightened into compliance; and Elinor said that she would herself carry
the good news to the Incognita.

The landlord desired to know in what name the place was to be taken.

This, also, Elinor undertook to enquire, and, accompanied by Harleigh,
went to the room of the stranger.

They found her standing pensively by the window; the breakfast, which
had been ordered for her by the Admiral, untouched.

'I understand you wish to go to Brighthelmstone?' said Elinor.

The stranger courtsied.

'I believe I know every soul in that place. Whom do you want to see
there?--Where are you to go?'

She looked embarrassed, and with much hesitation, answered, 'To ... the
Post-office, Madam.'

'O! what, you are something to the post-master, are you?'

'No, Madam ... I ... I ... go to the Post-office only for a letter!'

'A letter? Well! an hundred or two miles is a good way to go for a
letter!'

'I am not without hopes to find a friend.--The letter I had expected
here was only to contain directions for the meeting.'

'O! if your letter is to be personified, I have nothing more to say. A
man, or a woman?--which is it?'

'A woman, Madam.'

'Well, if you merely wish to go to Brighthelmstone, I'll get you
conveyed within nine miles of that place, if you will come to me, at Mrs
Maple's, in Upper Brooke-street, when you get to town.'

Surprise and pleasure now beamed brightly in the eyes of the stranger,
who said that she should rejoice to pass through London, where, also,
she particularly desired to make some enquiries.

'But we have no means for carrying you thither, except by the stage; and
one of our gentlemen offers to take a place in it for you.'

The stranger looked towards Harleigh, and confusion seemed added to her
embarrassment.

Harleigh hastily spoke. 'It is the old officer,--that truly benevolent
veteran, who wishes to serve you, and whose services, from the nobleness
of his character, confer still more honour than benefit.'

Again she courtsied, and with an air in which Harleigh observed, with
respect, not displeasure, her satisfaction in changing the object of
this obligation.

'Well, that's settled,' said Elinor; 'but now the landlord wants your
name, for taking your place.'

'My place?--Is there no machine, Madam, that sets off immediately?'

'None sooner than to-morrow. What name am I to tell him?'

'None sooner than to-morrow?'

'No; and if you do not give in your name, and secure it, you may be
detained till the next day.'

'How very unfortunate!' cried she, walking about the room.

'Well, but what is your name?'

A crimson of the deepest hue forced its way through her dark complexion:
her very eyes reddened with blushes, as she faintly answered, 'I cannot
tell my name!'

She turned suddenly away, with a look that seemed to expect resentment,
and anticipate being abandoned.

Elinor, however, only laughed, but laughed 'in such a sort' as
proclaimed triumph over Harleigh, and contempt for the stranger.

Harleigh drew Elinor apart, saying, 'Can this, really, appear to you so
ridiculous?'

'And can you, really, Harleigh, be allured by so glaring an adventurer?
a Wanderer,--without even a name!'

'She is not, at least, without probity, since she prefers any risk, and
any suspicion, to falsehood. How easily, otherwise, might she assume any
appellation that she pleased!'

'You are certainly bewitched, Harleigh!'

'You are certainly mistaken, Elinor! yet I cannot desert her, till I am
convinced that she does not merit to be protected.'

Elinor returned to the stranger. 'You do not chuse, then, to have your
place secured?'

'O yes Madam!--if it is impossible for me to attend any lady to town.'

'And what name shall you like for the book-keeper? Or what
initials?--What think you of L.S.?'

She started; and Harleigh, again taking Elinor aside, more gravely said,
'Elinor, I am glad I am not--at this moment--my brother!--for certainly
I could not forbear quarrelling with you!'

'I heartily wish, then,' cried she, with quickness, 'that,--at this
moment!--you were your brother!'

Harleigh, now, addressing the stranger, in whose air and manner distress
seemed palpably gaining ground, gently said, 'To save you any further
trouble, I will take a place in my own name, and settle with the
landlord, that, if I do not appear to claim it, it is to be made over to
the person who produces this card. The book-keeper shall have such
another for a check.'

He put into her hand a visiting ticket, on which was engraven Mr
Harleigh, and, not waiting for her thanks, conducted Elinor back to the
parlour, saying, 'Pardon me, Elinor, that I have stopt any further
enquiries. It is not from a romantic admiration of mystery, but merely
from an opinion that, as her wish of concealment is open and confessed,
we ought not, through the medium of serving her, to entangle her into
the snares of our curiosity.'

'Oh, you are decided to be always right, I know!' cried Elinor,
laughing, though piqued; 'and that is the very reason I always hate you!
However, you excite my curiosity to fathom her; so let her come to me in
town, and I'll take her under my own care, if only to judge your
discernment, by finding out how she merits your quixotism.'

Harleigh then returned to the young woman, and hesitatingly said,
'Pardon my intrusion, but--permit me, as you have so unfortunately lost
your purse-'

'If my place, Sir,' hastily interrupted the stranger, 'is taken, I can
require nothing else.'

'Yet--you have the day to pass here; and you will with difficulty exist
merely upon air, even where so delightedly you inhale it; and Miss
Joddrel, I fear, has forgotten to bring you the little offering of your
veteran friend; therefore--'

'If he has the infinite goodness to intend me any, sir, permit, at
least, that he may be my only pecuniary creditor! I shall want no
addition of that sort, to remember,--gratefully and for ever! to whom it
is I owe the deepest obligation of my life!'

Is this a house-maid? thought Harleigh; and again he rejoiced in the
perseverance with which he had supported her; and, too much respecting
her refusal to dispute it, expressed his good wishes for her welfare,
and took leave; yet would not set out upon his journey till he had again
sought to interest the old officer in her favour.

The guinea was still upon the tea-table; but the Admiral, who, in the
fear of double dealing, had conceived some ideas to the disadvantage of
the Incognita, no sooner heard that she had declined receiving any
succour except from himself, than, immediately softened, he said that he
would take care to see her well treated.

Harleigh then drove after the carriage of Mrs Maple and Elinor, who were
already on their way to London.




CHAPTER III


The Admiral immediately repaired to the stranger. 'Young woman,' he
cried, 'I hope you don't take it into your mind, that I was more
disposed to serve you while I thought you of foreign culture, than now I
know you to be of our own growth? If I came forwarder then, it was only
because I was afraid that those who have had less occasion than I have
had, to get the upper hand of their prejudices, would keep backwarder.'

The stranger bowed her thanks.

'But as to me,' he continued, 'I have had the experience of what it is
to be in a strange land; and, moreover, a prisoner: in which time I came
to an agreement with myself--a person over whom I keep a pretty tight
hand! because why? If I don't the devil will! So I came, I say, to an
agreement with myself, to remember all the ill-usage I then met with, as
a memento to forbear exciting in others, those black passions which
sundry unhandsome tricks excited, in those days, in myself.'

Observing her breakfast to be utterly neglected, he demanded, with an
air of some displeasure, whether she had no longing to taste the food of
her mother country again?

The fulness of her mind, she answered, had deprived her of appetite.

'Poor girl! poor woman!' cried he, compassionately, 'for I hardly know
which to call you, those cap-flounces pon the cheeks making a young
woman look no better than an old one. However, be you which you may, I
can't consent to see you starve in a land of plenty; which would be a
base ingratitude to our Creator, who, in dispensing the most to the
upper class; grants us the pleasure of dispensing the overplus,
ourselves, to the under class; which I take to be the true reason of
Providence for ordering that difference between the rich and the poor;
as, most like, we shall all find, when we come to give in our accounts
in t'other world.'

He then enquired what it was she intended to do; adding, 'I don't mean
as to your secrets, because they are what I have no right to meddle
with; though I disapprove your having any, they being of little service,
except to keep foul deeds from the light; for what is fair loves to be
above board. Besides, as every thing is sure to come out, sooner or
later, it only breeds suspicion and trouble for nothing, to
procrastinate telling to-day with your own free will, what you may be
certain will be known to-morrow, or next day, with or without it. Don't
be discomposed, however, for I don't say this by way of a sift, nor yet
for a reproach; I merely drop it as a piece of advice.'

'And I should be happy, Sir, to endeavour to deserve it, by frankly
explaining my situation, but that the least mistake, the smallest
imprudence, might betray me to insupportable wretchedness.'

'Why then, if that's the case, you are very right to hold your tongue.
If the law never makes a person condemn himself, much less ought a
little civility. There are dangers enough in the world without running
risks out of mere compliment.'

Then putting his guinea before her, upon the table, he charged her to
keep it unbroken till she set out, assuring her that he should himself
order whatever she could require for her dinner, supper, and lodging,
and settle for the whole with the landlord; as well as with the
book-keeper for her journey to London.

The stranger seemed almost overpowered with gratitude; but interrupting
what she attempted to say, 'No thankings,' he cried, 'young woman! it's
a bad sign when a good turn surprises a person. I have not escaped from
such hard fare with my body, to leave my soul behind me; though, God
knows, I may forget it all fast enough. There's no great fear of mortal
man's being too good.'

Then, wishing her farewell, he was quitting the room, but, thoughtfully
turning back, 'Before we part,' he said, 'it will be but Christian-like
to give you a hint for your serious profit. In whatever guise you may
have demeaned yourself, up to this present date, which is a solution I
don't mean to meddle with, I hope you'll always conduct yourself in a
becoming manner, for the rest of your days, in remembrance of your great
good fortune, in landing safely upon this happy shore.'

He was going, but the Incognita stopt him, and again the dark hue of
her skin, was inadequate to disguise the deep blushes that were burning
upon her cheeks, as she replied, 'I see, Sir, through all your
benevolence, that you believe me to be one of those unhappy persons,
whose misfortunes have been the effect of their crimes: I have no way to
prove my innocence; and assertion may but make it seem more doubtful;
yet--'

'You are right! you are right!' interrupted he; 'I am no abettor of
assertions. They are but a sort of cheap coinage, to make right and
wrong pass current together.'

'I find I have been too quick,' she answered, 'in thinking myself happy!
to receive bounty under so dreadful a suspicion, proves me to be in a
desolate state indeed!'

'Young woman,' said the Admiral, in a tone approaching to severity,
'don't complain! We must all bear what we have earned. I can't but see
what you are, though it's what I won't own to the rest of the crew, who
think a flaw in the character excuse plenty for letting a poor weak
female starve alive; for which, to my seeming, they deserve to want a
crust of bread themselves. But I hope I know better than that where the
main fault is apt to lie; for I am not ignorant how apt our sex is to
misbehave to yours; especially in slighting you, if you don't slight
them; a thing not to be defended, either to God or man. But for all
that, young woman, I must make free to remark, that the devil himself
never yet put it into a man's head, nor into the world's neither, to
abandon, or leave, as you call it, desolate, a woman who has kept tight
to her own duty, and taken a modest care of herself.'

The eyes of the stranger were now no longer bright from their mere
natural lustre, nor from the beams of quick surprize, or of sudden
vivacity; 'twas with trembling emotion that they shone, and with
indignation that they sparkled. She took up the guinea, from which her
sight seemed averted with horror, and said, 'Pardon me, Sir, but I must
beg you to receive this again.'

'Why, what now? do you think, because I make no scruple to give you an
item that I don't fancy being imposed upon; do you think, I say, because
of that, I have so little Christian charity, as not to know that you may
be a very good sort of woman in the main, for all some flaunty coxcomb
may have played the scoundrel, and left you to the wide world, after
teaching you to go so awry, that he knows the world will forsake you
too? a thing for which, however, he'll pay well in time; as I make no
doubt but the devil takes his own notes of all such actions.'

She now cast the guinea upon the table. 'I would rather, Sir,' she
cried, 'beg alms of every passenger that I may meet, than owe succour to
a species of pity that dishonours me!'

The Admiral looked at her with earnestness. 'I don't well know,' he
said, 'what class to put you in; but if you are really a virtuous woman,
to be sure I ought to ask your pardon for that little hint I let drop;
and, moreover, if I asked it upon my knees, I can't say I should think
it would be over-much, for affronting a virtuous woman, without cause.
And, indeed, if I were free to confess the truth, I must own there's
something about you, which I don't over-much know what to call, but that
is so agreeable, that it goes against me to think ill of you.'

'Ah, Sir! think well of me, then!--let your benevolence be as liberal as
it is kind, and try, for once, to judge favourably of a stranger upon
trust!'

'Well, I will! I will, then! if you have the complaisance to wish for my
good opinion, I will!' cried he, nodding, while his eyes glistened;
'though it's not my general method, I can tell you, young woman, to go
the direct opposite road to my understanding. But, out of the way as
things may look, you seem to me, in the main, to be an innocent person;
so pray, Ma'am, don't refuse to accept this little token of my good
will.'

The countenance of the stranger exhibited strong indecision. He enjoined
her, however, to keep the guinea, and, after struggling vainly to speak,
she sighed, and seemed distressed, but complied.

He nodded again, saying, 'Be of good cheer, my dear. Nothing comes of
being faint-hearted. I give you my promise I'll see you in town. And, if
I find that you turn out to be good; or, moreover, if you turn good,
after having unluckily been t'other thing, I'll stand your friend. You
may depend upon it.'

With a look of mingled kindness and concern, he then left the room.

And here, shocked, yet relieved, and happy, however forlorn, she
remained, till a waiter brought her a fowl, a tart, and a pint of white
wine, according to commands issued by the Admiral. She then heard that
the whole of the boat-party had set off for London, except Mrs Ireton,
the sick lady, who did not think herself sufficiently recovered to
travel till the next day, and who had enquired for some genteel young
lady to attend her to town; but she was so difficult, the waiter said,
to please, that she had rejected half-a-dozen candidates who had been
presented to her successively. She seemed very rich, he added, for she
ordered things at a great rate, though she found fault with them as fast
as they were carried to her; but what had put her the most out of humour
of all, was that the young gentleman, her son, had set off without her,
in a quarrel: which was not, however, so much to be wondered at, for the
maids of the two other ladies said that the gentlewoman was of so
aggravating a humour, that nobody could live with her; which had
provoked her own woman to leave her short in France, and hire herself to
a French lady.

The little repast of the stranger was scarcely over, when the waiter
brought her word that the sick lady desired to see her up stairs.

Extremely surprised, she demanded for what purpose.

He answered, that a seventh young person whom he had taken into the
lady's room, with an offer to serve her, upon being sharply treated, had
as sharply replied; which had so affronted her, that she had ordered
that no one else should be brought into her presence; though in two
minutes more, she had rung the bell, said she was too ill to be left
alone, and bid him fetch her the woman who came over from France.

The stranger, at first, refused to obey this imperious summons; but the
wish of placing herself under female protection during her journey,
presently conquered her repugnance, and she accompanied the messenger
back.

Mrs Ireton was reclining upon an easy chair, still somewhat disordered
from her voyage, though by no means as much in need of assistance for
her shattered frame, as of amusement for her restless mind.

'So!' she cried, 'you are here still? Pray,--if I may ask so
confidential a question,--what acquaintance may you have found in this
inn?--The waiters?--or the grooms?'

'I was told, Madam, that you had some commands for me.'

'O, you are in haste, are you? you want to be shewing off those patches
and bandages, perhaps? You won't forget a veil, I hope, to preserve your
white skin? Not but 'twould be pity to make any sort of change in your
dress, 'tis so prodigiously tasty!'

The stranger, offended, was now moving off, but, calling her back, 'Did
not the waiter,' Mrs Ireton demanded, 'give you to understand that I
sent for you?'

'Yes, Madam; and therefore--'

'Well, and what do you suppose it was for? To let you open and shut the
door, just to give me all the cold wind of the passages? You suppose it
was for that, do you? You surmize that I have a passion for the
tooth-ache? You conclude that I delight in sneezing?--coughing?--and a
stuft-up nose?'

'I am sorry, Madam,--'

'Or perhaps you think me so robust, that it would be kind to give me a
little indisposition, to prevent my growing too boisterous? You may deem
my strength and health to be overbearing? and be so good as to intend
making me more delicate? You may be of opinion that it would render me
more interesting?'

'Indeed, Madam,'--

'Or, you may fancy that a friendly catarrh might be useful, in
furnishing me with employment, from ordering water-gruel, and balm-tea,
and barley-water, and filling up my leisure in devising successive
slops?'

The difficulty of being heard made the stranger now cease to attempt
speaking; and Mrs Ireton, after sundry similar interrogatories, angrily
said, 'So you really don't think fit to initiate me into your motives
for coming to me, without troubling yourself to learn mine for admitting
you into my presence?'

'On the contrary, Ma'am, I desire--'

'O! I am mistaken, am I? It's on the contrary, is it? You are vastly
kind to set me right; vastly kind, indeed! Perhaps you purpose to give
me a few lessons of behaviour?'

'I am so wholly at a loss, Madam, why I have been summoned, that I can
divine no reason why I should stay. I beg, therefore, to take my leave.'

Again she was retreating; but Mrs Ireton, struck by her courage, began
to conceive that the mystery of her birth and business, might possibly
terminate in a discovery of her belonging to a less abject class than
her appearance announced; and therefore, though firmly persuaded that
what might be diminished in poverty, would be augmented in disgrace, her
desire was so inflamed to develop the secret, that, softening her tone,
she asked the young person to take a chair, and then entered into
discourse with some degree of civility.

Yet with all this restraint, inflicted upon a nature that, to the
privilege of uttering whatever it suggested, claimed that of hearing
only what it liked, she could gather no further intelligence, than that
the stranger had received private information of the purposed sailing of
the vessel, in which they all came over: but her birth, her name, her
connexions, her actual situation, and her object in making the voyage,
resisted enquiry, eluded insinuation, and baffled conjecture.
Nevertheless, her manners were so strikingly elevated above her attire,
that, notwithstanding the disdain with which, in the height of her
curiosity, Mrs Ireton surveyed her mean apparel, and shrunk from her
dusky skin, she gave up her plan of seeking for any other person to wait
upon her, during her journey to town, and told the Incognita that, if
she could make her dress a little less shocking, she might relinquish
her place in the stage-coach, to occupy one in a post-chaise.

To avoid new and untried risks, in travelling wholly alone, the stranger
acceded to this proposal; and immediately, by the assistance of the maid
of the inn, appropriated the guinea of the Admiral to purchasing decent
clothing, though of the cheapest and coarsest texture.

The next morning they set off together for London.




CHAPTER IV


The good understanding with which the eagerness of curiosity on one
side, and the subjection of caution on the other, made the travellers
begin their journey, was of too frail a nature to be of long endurance.
'Tis only what is natural that flows without some stimulus; what is
factitious prospers but while freshly supplied with such materials as
gave it existence. Mrs Ireton, when she found that neither questions,
insinuations, nor petty artifices to surprise confessions, succeeded in
drawing any forth, cast off a character of softness that so little paid
the violence which its assumption did her humour; while the stranger,
fatigued by finding that not one particle of benevolence, was mixed with
the avidity for amusement which had given her a place in the chaise,
ceased all efforts to please, and bestowed no further attentions, than
such as were indispensably due to the mistress of the vehicle in which
she travelled.

At a little distance from Rochester, the chaise broke down. No one was
hurt; but Mrs Ireton deemed the mere alarm an evil of the first
magnitude; remarking that this event might have brought on her death;
and remarking it with the resentment of one who had never yet considered
herself as amenable to the payment of that general, though dread debt to
nature. She sent on a man and horse for another carriage, and was forced
to accept the arm of the stranger, to support her till it arrived. But
so deeply was she impressed with her own ideas of the hardships that she
endured, that she put up at the first inn, went to bed, sent for an
apothecary, and held it to be an indispensable tribute to the delicacy
of her constitution, to take it for granted that she could not be
removed for some days, without the most imminent hazard to her life.

Having now no other resource, she hung for comfort, as well as for
assistance, upon her fellow-traveller, to whom she gave the interesting
post of being the repository of all her complaints, whether against
nature, for constructing her frame with such exquisite daintiness, or
against fate, for its total insensibility to the tenderness which that
frame required. And though, from recently quitting objects of sorrow,
and scenes of woe, in the dreadful apparel of awful reality, the
Incognita had no superfluous pity in store for the distresses of
offended self-importance, she yet felt relief from experiencing milder
usage, and spared no assiduity that might purchase its continuance.

It was some days before Mrs Ireton thought that she might venture to
travel, without appearing too robust. And, in this period, one only
circumstance called forth, with any acrimony, the ill humour of her
disposition. This was a manifest alteration in the complexion of her
attendant, which, from a regular and equally dark hue, appeared, on the
second morning, to be smeared and streaked; and, on the third, to be of
a dusky white. This failed not to produce sundry inquisitive comments;
but they never succeeded in obtaining any explanatory replies. When,
however, on the fourth day, the shutters of the chamber, which, to give
it a more sickly character, had hitherto been closed, were suffered to
admit the sun-beams of a cheerful winter's morning, Mrs Ireton was
directed, by their rays, to a full and marvellous view, of a skin
changed from a tint nearly black, to the brightest, whitest, and most
dazzling fairness. The band upon the forehead, and the patch upon the
cheek, were all that remained of the original appearance.

The first stare at this unexpected metamorphosis, was of unmingled
amazement; but it was soon succeeded by an expression of something
between mockery and anger, evinced, without ceremony or reserve, by the
following speech: 'Upon my word, Ma'am, you are a very complete figure!
Beyond what I could have conjectured! I own that! I can't but own that.
I was quite too stupid to surmize so miraculous a change. And pray,
Ma'am, if I may take the liberty to enquire,--who are you?'

The stranger looked down.

'Nay, I ought not to ask, I confess. It's very indelicate, I own; very
rude, I acknowledge; but, I should imagine, it can hardly be the first
time that you have been so good as to pardon a little rudeness. I don't
know, I may be mistaken, to be sure, but I should imagine so.'

The Incognita now raised her eyes. A sense of ill treatment seemed to
endue her with courage; but her displeasure, which, though not uttered,
was not disguised, no sooner reached the observation of Mrs Ireton, than
she conceived it to be an insolence to justify redoubling her own.

'You are affronted, I hope, Ma'am? Nay, you have reason enough, I
acknowledge; I can't but acknowledge that! to see me impressed with so
little awe by your wonderful powers; for 'twas but an hour or two since,
that you were the blackest, dirtiest, raggedest wretch I ever beheld;
and now--you are turned into an amazing beauty! Your cheeks are all
bedaubed with _rouge_, and you are quite a belle! and wondering, I
suppose, that I don't beseech you to sit on the sofa by my side! And, to
be sure, it's very ill bred of me: I can't deny that; only as it is one
of the rudenesses that I conceive you to have had the goodness to submit
to before, I hope you'll forgive it.'

The young woman begged leave to retire, till she should be called for
the journey.

'O! what, you have some other metamorphosis to prepare, perhaps? Those
bandages and patches are to be converted into something else? And pray,
if it will not be too great a liberty to enquire, what are they to
exhibit? The order of Maria Theresa? or of the Empress of all the
Russias? If I did not fear being impertinent, I should be tempted to ask
how many coats of white and red you were obliged to lay on, before you
could cover over all that black.'

The stranger, offended and tired, without deigning to make any answer,
walked back to the chamber which she had just quitted.

The astonished Mrs Ireton was in speechless rage at this unbidden
retreat; yet anger was so inherently a part of her composition, that the
sight she saw with the most lively sensation was whatever authorized its
vent. She speedily, therefore, dispatched a messenger, to say that she
was taken dangerously ill, and to desire that the young woman would
return.

The Incognita, helpless for seeking any more genial mode of travelling,
obeyed the call, but had scarcely entered the apartment, when Mrs
Ireton, starting, and forgetting her new illness, exclaimed, in a
powerful voice, 'Why, what is become of your black patch?'

The young woman, hastily putting her hand to her cheek, blushed
extremely, while she answered, 'Bless me, it must have dropt off!--I
will run and look for it.'

Mrs Ireton peremptorily forbade her to move; and, staring at her with a
mixture of curiosity and harshness, ordered her to draw away her hand.
She resisted for some time, but, overpowered by authoritative commands,
was reduced, at length, to submit; and Mrs Ireton then perceived, that
neither wound, scar, nor injury of any sort, had occasioned the patch to
have been worn.

The excess of her surprize at this discovery, led her to apprehend some
serious imposition. She fearfully, therefore, rose, to ring the bell,
still fixing her eyes upon the face of the young woman, who, in her
confusion, accidentally touching the bandage which crossed her forehead,
displaced it, and shewed that feature, also, as free from any cause for
having been bound up, as the cheek.

It was now rather consternation than amazement with which Mrs Ireton was
seized, till the augmenting disorder, and increasing colour of her new
attendant, changed all fear of any trick into personal pique at having
been duped; and she protested that if such beggar-stratagems were played
upon her any more, she would turn over the impostor to the master of the
inn.

The paleness of terror with which this menace overspread the complexion
of the stranger, forced a certain, however unwilling conviction upon the
mind of Mrs Ireton, that _rouge_, at least, was not amongst the
artifices of which she had to complain. But, though relieved from her
own alarm, by the alarm which she inspired, she was rather irritated
than appeased in finding something less to detect, and, scoffingly
perusing her face, 'You are a surprising person, indeed!' she cried, 'as
surprising a person as ever I had the honour to see! So you had
disfigured yourself in that horrid manner, only to extort money from us
upon false pretences? Very ingenious, indeed! mighty ingenious, I
confess! Why that new skin must have cost you more than your new gown.
Pray which did you get the best bargain?'

The stranger did not dare risk any sort of reply.

'O, you don't chuse to tell me? But how could I be so indiscreet as to
ask such a thing? Will it be impertinent, too, if I enquire whether you
always travel with that collection of bandages and patches? and of black
and white outsides? or whether you sometimes change them for wooden legs
and broken arms?'

Not a word of answer was returned.

'So you won't tell me that, neither? Nay, you are in the right, I own.
What business is it of mine to confine your genius to only one or two
methods of maiming or defacing yourself? as if you did not find it more
amusing to be one day lame, and another blind; and, to-day, it should
seem, dumb? The round must be entertaining enough. Pray do you make it
methodically? or just as the humour strikes you?'

A fixed silence still resisted all attack.

'O, I am diving too deeply into the secrets of your trade, am I? Nay, I
ought to be contented, I own, with the specimens with which I have
already been indulged. You have not been niggardly in varying them. You
have been bruised and beaten; and dirty and clean; and ragged and whole;
and wounded and healed; and a European and a Creole, in less than a
week. I suppose, next, you will dwindle into a dwarf; and then, perhaps,
find some surprising contrivance to shoot up into a giantess. There is
nothing that can be too much to expect from so great an adept in
metamorphoses.'

The pleasure of giving vent to spleen, disguised from Mrs Ireton, that
by rendering its malignancy so obvious, she blunted its effect. She
continued, therefore, her interrogatories a considerable time, before
she discovered, that the stillness with which they were heard was
produced by resolution, not awe. Almost intolerably offended when a
suspicion of this truth occurred, she assumed a tone yet more imperious.
'So I am not worth an answer? You hold it beneath you to waste your
breath upon me? And do you know whom it is you dare treat in this
manner? Do you imagine that I am a fellow-adventurer?'

The hand of the young woman was now upon the lock of the door, but
there, trembling, it stopt, withheld by a thousand terrors from
following its first impulse; and the entrance of a waiter, with
information that a chaise was at the door, interrupted any further
discourse. The journey was resumed, and the rest of the way was only
rendered supportable to the stranger, from the prospect that its
conclusion would terminate all intercourse with one who, so wilfully and
so wantonly, seemed to revel in her powers of mockery and derision.




CHAPTER V


Upon the entrance of the travellers into London, the curiosity of Mrs
Ireton was more than ever inflamed, to find that the journey, with all
its delays, was at an end, before she had been able to gratify that
insatiable passion in a single point. Yet every observation that she
could make tended to redouble its keenness. Neither ill humour nor
haughtiness, now the patches and bandages were removed, could prevent
her from perceiving that the stranger was young and beautiful; nor from
remarking that her air and manner were strikingly distinguished from the
common class. One method, however, still remained for diving into this
mystery; it was clear that the young woman was in want, whatever else
might be doubtful. Mrs Ireton, therefore, resolved to allow no
recompense for her attendance, but in consideration of what she would
communicate of her history.

At a large house in Grosvenor Square they stopt. Mrs Ireton turned
exultingly to the stranger: but her glance met no gratification. The
young woman, instead of admiring the house, and counting the number of
steps that led to the vestibule, or of windows that commanded a view of
the square, only cast her eyes upwards, as if penetrated with
thankfulness that her journey was ended.

Surprised that stupidity should thus be joined with cunning, Mrs Ireton
now intently watched the impression which, when her servants appeared,
would be made by their rich liveries.

The stranger, however, without regarding them, followed their mistress
into the hall, which that lady was passing through in stately silence,
meaning to confound the proud vagrant more completely, by dismissing her
from the best drawing-room; when the words, 'Permit me, Madam, to wish
you good morning,' made her look round. She then saw that her late
attendant, without waiting for any answer, was tranquilly preparing to
be gone. Amazed and provoked, she deigned to call after her, and desired
that she would come the next day to be paid.

'I am more than paid already, Madam,' the Incognita replied, 'if my
little services may be accepted as cancelling my obligation for the
journey.'

She had no difficulty, now, to leave the house without further
interruption, so astonished was Mrs Ireton, at what she thought the
effrontery of a speech, that seemed, in some measure, to level her with
this adventurer; though, in her own despite, she was struck with the air
of calm dignity with which it was uttered.

The Wanderer obtained a direction to the house of Mrs Maple, from a
servant; and demanded another to Titchfield Street. To the latter she
rapidly bent her steps; but, there arrived, her haste ended in
disappointment and perplexity. She discovered the apartment in which,
with her husband and child, the lady whom she sought had resided; but it
was no longer inhabited; and she could not trace whether her friend had
set off for Brighthelmstone, or had only changed her lodging. After a
melancholy and fruitless search, she repaired, though with feet and a
mind far less eager, to Upper Brooke Street, where she soon read the
name of Mrs Maple upon the door of one of the capital houses. She
enquired for Miss Joddrel, and begged that young lady might be told,
that a person who came over in the same boat with her from France,
requested the honour of admission.

To this message she presently heard the voice of Elinor, from the
landing-place, answer, 'O, she's come at last! Bring her up Tomlinson,
bring her up!'

'Yes, Ma'am; but I'll promise you she is none of the person you have
been expecting.'

'How can you tell that Tomlinson? What sort of figure is she?'

'As pretty as can be.'

'As pretty as can be, is she? Go and ask her name.'

The man obeyed.

The stranger, disconcerted, answered, 'My name will not be known to Miss
Joddrel, but if she will have the goodness to receive, I am sure she
will recollect me.'

Elinor, who was listening, knew her voice, and, calling Tomlinson up
stairs, and heartily laughing, said, 'You are the greatest fool in the
whole world, Tomlinson! It is she! Bid her come to me directly.'

Tomlinson did as he was ordered, but grinned, with no small
satisfaction, at sight of the surprise with which, when they reached the
landing-place, his young mistress looked at the stranger.

'Why, Tomlinson,' she cried, 'who have you brought me hither?'

Tomlinson smirked, and the Incognita could not herself refrain from
smiling, but with a countenance so little calculated to excite distrust,
that Elinor, crying, 'Follow me,' led the way into her dressing room.

The young woman, then, with an air that strongly supplicated for
indulgence, said, 'I am truly shocked at the strange appearance which I
must make; but as I come now to throw myself upon your protection, I
will briefly--though I can enter into no detail--state to you how I am
circumstanced.'

'O charming! charming!' cried Elinor, clapping her hands, 'you are
going, at last, to relate your adventures! Nay, no drawing back! I won't
be disappointed! If you don't tell me every thing that ever you did in
your life, and every thing that ever you said, and every thing that ever
you thought,--I shall renounce you!'

'Alas!' answered the Incognita, 'I am in so forlorn a situation, that I
must not wonder if you conclude me to be some outcast of society,
abandoned by my friends from meriting their desertion,--a poor destitute
Wanderer, in search of any species of subsistence!'

'Don't be cast down, however,' cried Elinor, 'for I will help you on
your way. And yet you have exactly spoken Aunt Maple's opinion of you.'

'And I have no right, I acknowledge, to repine, at least, none for
resentment: yet, believe me, Madam, such is not the case! and if, as you
have given me leave to hope, you will have the benevolence to permit me
to travel in your party, or in whatever way you please, to
Brighthelmstone, I may there meet with a friend, under whose protection
I may acquire courage to give a more intelligible account of myself.'

A rap at the street door made Elinor ring the bell, and order, that when
Mr Harleigh came, he should be shewn immediately up stairs.

Harleigh, presently appearing, looked round the apartment, with striking
eagerness, yet evident disappointment; and, slightly bowing to the
scarcely noticed, yet marked courtsie of the stranger, said, 'Tomlinson
told me that our fellow-traveller was at last arrived?'

Elinor, taking the young woman apart, whispered a hasty injunction that
she would not discover herself. Then, addressing Harleigh, 'I believe,'
she said, 'you dream of nothing but that dismal Incognita. However, do
not fancy you have all the mysterious charmers to yourself. I have one
of my own, now; and not such a dingy, dowdy heroine as yours!'

Harleigh turned with quickness to the stranger; but she looked down, and
her complexion, and bloom, and changed apparel, made a momentary
suspicion die away.

Elinor demanded what news he had gathered of their strayed voyager?

None, he answered; and uneasily added, that he feared she had either
lost herself, or been misled, or betrayed, some other way.

'O, pray don't waste your anxiety!' cried Elinor; 'she is in perfect
safety, I make no doubt.'

'I should be sorry,' he gravely replied, 'to think you in equal danger.'

'Should you?' cried she in a softened tone; 'should you, Harleigh, be
sorry if any evil befel me?'

'But why,' he asked, 'has Tomlinson given me this misinformation?'

'And why, Mr Harleigh, because Tomlinson told you that a stranger was
here, should you conclude it could be no other than your black
fugitive?'

Again Harleigh turned to the traveller, and fixed his eyes upon her
face: the patch, the bandage, the large cap, had hitherto completely
hidden its general form; and the beautiful outline he now saw, with so
entire a contrast of complexion to what he remembered, again checked, or
rather dissolved his rising surmizes.

Elinor begged him to be seated, and to quiet his perturbed spirit.

He took a chair, but, in passing by the young woman, her sex, her
beauty, her modest air, gave him a sensation that repelled his using it,
and he leant upon its back, looking expressively at Elinor; but Elinor
either marked not the hint, or mocked it. 'So you have really,' she
said, 'taken the pains to go to that eternal inn again, to enquire after
this maimed and defaced Dulcinea? What in the world can have inspired
you with such an interest for this wandering Creole?

    ''Tis not her face does love create,
    For there no graces revel.'--

The bell of Mrs Maple now ringing, Elinor made a sign to the Incognita
not to avow herself, and flew down stairs to caution Tomlinson to
silence.

The chair which Harleigh had rejected for himself, he then offered to
the fair unknown. She declined it, but in a voice that made him start,
and wish to hear her speak again. His offer then became a request, and
she thanked him in a tone that vibrated certainty upon his ears, that it
could be no other than the voice of his fellow-voyager.

He now looked at her with an earnest gaze, that seemed nearly to draw
his eyes from their sockets. The embarrassment that he occasioned her
brought him to his recollection, and, apologising for his behaviour, he
added; 'A person--a lady--who accompanied us, not long since, from
abroad, had a voice so exactly resembling yours--that I find it rather
impossible than difficult not to believe that I hear the same. Permit me
to ask--have you any very near relation returned lately from France?'

She blushed, but without replying.

'I fancy,' he cried, 'I must have encountered two sisters?--yet you have
some reason, I own, to be angry at such a supposition--such a
comparison--'

He paused, and a smile, which she could not repress, forced her to
speak; 'By no means!' she cried; 'I know well how good you have been to
the person to whom you allude, and I beg you will allow me--in her
name--to return you the most grateful acknowledgements.'

Harleigh, now, yet more curiously examining her, said, 'It would not
have been easy to have forborne taking an interest in her fate. She was
in evident distress, yet never suffered herself to forget that she had
escaped from some yet greater. Her mind seemed fraught with strength and
native dignity. There was something singular, indescribable, in her
manner of supporting the most harassing circumstances. It was impossible
not to admire her.'

The blush of the stranger now grew deeper, but she remained silent, till
Elinor, re-entering, cried, 'Well, Harleigh, what say you to my new
demoiselle? And where would you have looked for your heart, if such had
seemed your Dulcinea?'

'I should, perhaps, have been but the safer!' answered he, laughing.

'Pho! you would not make me believe any thing so out of nature, as that,
when you were in such a tindery fit as to be kindled by that dowdy, you
could have resisted being blown into flames at once by a creature such
as this?'

'Man is a perverse animal, Elinor; that which he regards as pointed for
his destruction, frequently proves harmless. We are all--boys and
libertines alone excepted--upon our guard against beauty; for, as every
sense is up in arms to second its assault, our pride takes the alarm,
and rises to oppose it. Our real danger is where we see no risk.'

'You enchant me, Harleigh! I am never so delighted as when I hear beauty
set at nought--for I always suspect, Harleigh, that you do not think me
handsome?'

'If I think you better than handsome, Elinor--'

'Pho! you know there is no such better in nature; at least not in such
nature as forms taste in the mind of man; which I certainly do not
consider as the purest of its works; though you all hold it, yourselves,
to be the noblest. Nevertheless, imagination is all-powerful; if,
therefore, you have taken the twist to believe in such sublimity, you
may, perhaps, be seriously persuaded, that your heart would have been
more stubborn to this dainty new Wanderer than to your own
walnut-skinned gypsey.'

'Walnut-skinned?'

'Even so, noble knight-errand, even so! This person whom you now behold,
and whom, if we believe our eyes, never met them till within this half
hour, if we give credit to our ears, scrambled over with us in that
crazy boat from France.'

Harleigh was here summoned to Miss Maple, and Elinor returned to her
interrogatories; but the stranger only reverted to her hopes, that she
might still depend upon the promised conveyance to Brighthelmstone?

'Tell me, at least, what it was you flung into the sea?'

'Ah, Madam, that would tell every thing!'

'You are a most provoking little devil,' cried Elinor, impatiently, 'and
I am half tempted to have nothing more to say to you. Give me, however,
some account how you managed matters with that sweet tender dove Mrs
Ireton.'

The recital that ensued of the disasters, difficulties, and choler of
that lady, proved so entertaining to Elinor, that she soon not only
renewed her engagement of taking her unknown guest free to Lewes, but
joined the warmest assurances of protection. 'Not that we must attempt,'
she cried, 'to get rid of the spite of Aunt Maple, for if we do, alter
so completely the basis of her composition, that she won't know how to
stand upright.'

'But now,' she continued, 'where are you to dine? Aunt Maple is too
fusty to let you sit at our table.'

The stranger earnestly solicited permission to eat alone: Elinor
consented; assigned her a chamber, and gave orders to Mrs Golding, her
own maid, to take care of the traveller.

The repast below stairs was no sooner finished, than Elinor flew back to
summon the Incognita to descend for exhibition. 'I have told them all,'
she said, 'that you are arrived, though I have revealed nothing of your
metamorphosis; and there is a sister of mine, a conceited little thing,
who is just engaged to be married, and who is wild to see you; and it is
a rule, you know, to deny nothing to a bride elect; probably, poor
wretch, because every one knows what a fair way she is in to be soon
denied every thing! That quiz, Harleigh, would not stay; and that
nothingly Ireton has nearly shrugged his shoulders out of joint, at the
very idea of so great a bore as seeing you again. Come, nevertheless; I
die to enjoy Aunt Maple's astonishment at your new phiz.'

The stranger sought to evade this request as a pleasantry; but finding
that it was insisted upon seriously, protested that she had neither
courage nor spirits for being produced as an object of sport.

Elinor now again felt a strong temptation to draw back from her promise;
but while, between anger and generosity, she hung suspended, a message
arrived from Mrs Maple, to order that the woman from France should be
sent to the kitchen.

Elinor, changing the object of her displeasure, now warmly repeated her
resolution to support the stranger; and, hastening to the
dining-parlour, declared to her aunt, and to the party, that the woman
from France should not be treated with indignity; that she was evidently
a person who had been too well brought up to be consigned to domestics;
and that she herself admired, and would abet her spirit, in refusing to
be stared at like a wild beast.




CHAPTER VI


The affairs of Mrs Maple kept her a week longer in London; but the
impatience of the Wanderer to reach Brighthelmstone, was compelled to
yield to an utter inability of getting thither unaided. During this
period, she gathered, from various circumstances, that Elinor had been
upon the point of marriage with the younger brother of Harleigh, a
handsome and flourishing lawyer; but that repeated colds, ill treated,
or neglected, had menaced her with a consumption, and she had been
advised to try a change of climate. Mrs Maple accompanied her to the
south of France, where she had resided till her health was completely
re-established. Harleigh, then, in compliment to his brother, who was
confined by his profession to the capital, crossed the Channel to attend
the two ladies home. They had already arrived at ---- on their return,
when an order of Robespierre cast them into prison, whence enormous
bribes, successful stratagems, and humane, though concealed assistance
from some compassionate inhabitants of the town, enabled them, in common
with the Admiral, the Iretons, and Riley, to effect their escape to a
prepared boat, in which, through the friendly darkness of night, they
reached the harbour of their country and their wishes.

The stranger learnt also from Elinor, by whom secresy or discretion were
as carelessly set aside, as by herself they were fearfully practised,
that young Ireton, urged by a rich old uncle, and an entailed estate, to
an early marriage, after addressing and jilting half the women of
England, Scotland, and Ireland, had run through France, Switzerland, and
Italy, upon the same errand; yet was returned home heart-whole, and
hand-unshackled; but that, she added, was not the extraordinary part of
the business, male coquets being just as common, and only more
impertinent than female; all that was worth remarking, was his conduct
for the last few days. Some accounts which he had to settle with her
aunt, had obliged him to call at their house, the morning after their
arrival in London. He then saw Selina, Elinor's younger sister, a wild
little girl, only fourteen years of age, who was wholly unformed, but
with whom he had become so desperately enamoured, that, when Mrs Maple,
knowing his character, and alarmed by his assiduities, cautioned him not
to make a fool of her young niece, he abruptly demanded her in marriage.
As he was very rich, Mrs Maple had, of course, Elinor added, given her
consent, desiring only that he would wait till Selina reached her
fifteenth birth-day; and the little girl, when told of the plan, had
considered it as a frolic, and danced with delight.

During this interval, the time of the stranger was spent in the tranquil
employment of needle-work, for which she was liberally supplied with
cast-off materials, to relieve her necessities, from the wardrobe of
Elinor, through whose powerful influence she was permitted to reside
entirely up stairs. Here she saw only her protectress, into whose
apartment Mrs Maple did not deign, and no one else dared, to intrude
unbidden. The spirit of contradiction, which was termed by Elinor the
love of independence, fixed her design of supporting the stranger, to
whom she delighted to do every good office which Mrs Maple deemed
superfluous, and whom she exulted in thus exclusively possessing, as a
hidden curiosity. But when she found that no enquiry produced any
communication, and that nothing fresh offered for new defiance to Mrs
Maple, a total indifference to the whole business took place of its
first energy, and the young woman, towards the end of the week, fell
into such neglect that it was never mentioned, and hardly even
remembered, that she was an inhabitant of the house.

When the morning, most anxiously desired by herself, for the journey to
Lewes, arrived, she heard the family engaged in preparations to set off,
yet received no intimation how she was to make one of the party. With
great discomfort, though with tolerable patience, she awaited some
tidings, till the sound of carriages driving up to the street door,
alarmed her with apprehensions of being deserted, and, hastily running
down stairs, she was drawn by the voice of Elinor to the door of the
breakfast-parlour; but the sound of other voices took from her the
courage to open it, though the baggage collected around her shewed the
journey so near, that she deemed it unsafe to return to her chamber.

In a few minutes, Harleigh, loaded with large drawings, crossed the
hall, and, observing her distress, enquired into its cause.

She wished to speak to Miss Joddrel.

He entered the parlour, and sent out Elinor, who, exclaiming, 'O, it's
you, is it? Mercy on me! I had quite forgotten you!--' ran back, crying,
'Aunt, here's your old friend, the grim French voyager! Shall she come
in?'

'Come in? What for, Miss Joddrel? Because Mr Harleigh was so kind as to
make a hoy of my boat, does it follow that you are to make a booth of my
parlour?'

'She is at the door!' said Harleigh, in a low voice.

'Then she is at her proper place; where else should such a sort of body
be?'

Harleigh took up a book.

'O, but do let her come in, Aunt, do let her come in!' cried the young
Selina. 'I was so provoked at not seeing her the other day, that I could
have cried with pleasure! and sister Elinor has kept her shut up ever
since, and refused me the least little peep at her.'

The opposition of Mrs Maple only the more strongly excited the curiosity
of Selina, who, encouraged by the clamorous approbation of Elinor, flew
to the door.

There, stopping short, she called out, 'La! here's nothing but a young
woman!--La! Aunt, I'm afraid she's run away!'

'And if she is, Niece, we shall not break our hearts, I hoped not but,
if she's decamped, it's high time I should enquire whether all is safe
in the house.'

'Decamped?' cried Elinor, 'Why she's at the door! Don't you know her,
Aunt? Don't you see her, Ireton?'

The stranger, abashed, would have retreated. Harleigh, raising his eyes
from his book, shook his head at Elinor, who, laughing and regardless,
seized the hand of the young person, and dragged her into the parlour.

'Who is this?' said Mrs Maple.

'Who, Aunt? Why your memory is shorter than ever! Don't you recollect
our dingy French companion, that you took such a mighty fancy to?'

Mrs Maple turned away with angry contempt; and the housekeeper, who had
been summoned, appearing, orders were given for a strict examination
whether the swarthy traveller, who followed them from France, were
gone.

The stranger, changing colour, approached Elinor, and with an air that
claimed her protection, said, 'Will you not, Madam, have the goodness to
explain who I am?'

'How can I,' cried Elinor, laughing, 'when I don't know it myself?'

Every one stared; Harleigh turned round; the young woman blushed, but
was silent.

'If here is another of your Incognitas, Miss Joddrel,' said Mrs Maple,
'I must beg the favour that you'll desire her to march off at once. I
don't chuse to be beset by such sort of gentry quite so frequently.
Pray, young woman, what is it you want here?'

'Protection, Madam, and compassion!' replied the stranger, in a tone of
supplication.

'I protest,' said Mrs Maple, 'she has just the same sort of voice that
that black girl had! and the same sort of cant! And pray, young woman,
what's your name?'

'That's right, Mrs Maple, that's right!' cried Ireton; 'make her tell
her name!'

'To be sure I shall!' said Mrs Maple, seating herself on a sofa, and
taking out her snuff-box. 'I have a great right to know the name of a
person that comes, in this manner, into my parlour. Why do you not
answer, young woman?'

The stranger, looking at Elinor, clasped her hands in act of entreaty
for pity.

'Very fine, truly!' said Mrs Maple: 'So here's just the second edition
of the history of that frenchified swindler!'

'No, no, Aunt; it's only the sequel to the first part, for it's the same
person, I assure you. Did not you come over with us from France,
Mademoiselle? In the same boat? and with the same surly pilot?'

The stranger silently assented.

Mrs Maple, now, doubly enraged, interrogated her upon the motives of her
having been so disfigured, with the sternness and sharpness of
addressing a convicted cheat.

The stranger, compelled to speak, said, with an air of extreme
embarrassment, 'I am conscious, Madam, how dreadfully all appearances
are against me! Yet I have no means, with any prudence, to enter into an
explanation: I dare not, therefore, solicit your good opinion, though my
distress is so urgent, that I am forced to sue for your assistance,--I
ought, perhaps, to say your charity!'

'I don't want,' said Mrs Maple, 'to hear all that sort of stuff over
again. Let me only know who you are, and I shall myself be the best
judge what should be done for you. What is it, then, once for all, that
you call yourself? No prevarications! Tell me your name, or go about
your business.'

'Yes, your name! your name!' repeated Elinor.

'Your name! your name!' echoed Selina.

'Your name! your name!' re-echoed Ireton.

The spirits and courage of the stranger seemed now to forsake her; and,
with a faultering voice, she answered, 'Alas! I hardly know it myself!'

Elinor laughed; Selina tittered; Ireton stared; the leaves of the book
held by Harleigh were turned over with a speed that shewed how little
their contents engaged him; and Mrs Maple, indignantly swelling,
exclaimed, 'Not know your own name? Why I hope you don't come into my
house from the Foundling Hospital?'

Harleigh, throwing down his book, walked hastily to Mrs Maple, and said,
in a low voice, 'Yet, if that should be the case, would she be less an
object of compassion? of consideration?'

'What your notions may be upon such sort of heinous subjects, Mr
Harleigh,' Mrs Maple answered, with a look of high superiority, 'I do
not know; but as for mine, I think encouraging things of that kind, has
a very immoral tendency.'

Harleigh bowed, not as acquiescent in her opinion, but as declining to
argue it, and was leaving the room, when Elinor, catching him by the
arm, called out, 'Why, Harleigh! what are you so sour for? Are you,
also, angry, to see a clean face, and a clean gown? I'll make the
demoiselle put on her plasters and patches again, if that will please
you better.'

This forced him to smile and to stay; and Elinor then ended the
inquisition, by proposing that the stranger should go to Lewes in the
chaise with Golding, her own maid, and Fenn, Mrs Maple's housekeeper.

Mrs Maple protested that she would not allow any such indulgence to an
unknown pauper; and Mrs Fenn declared, that there were so many hats,
caps, and things of consequence to take care of, that it would be
impossible to make room for a mouse.

Elinor, ever alert to carry a disputed point, felt her generosity doubly
excited to support the stranger; and, after some further, but
overpowered opposition from Mrs Maple, the hats, caps, and things of
consequence were forced to submit to inferior accommodation, and the
young woman obtained her request, to set off for Sussex, with the
housekeeper and Elinor's maid.




CHAPTER VII


The house of Mrs Maple was just without the town of Lewes, and the
Wanderer, upon her arrival there, learnt that Brighthelmstone was still
eight miles farther. She earnestly desired to go on immediately; but how
undertake such a journey on foot, so late, and in the dark month of
December, when the night appears to commence at four o'clock in the
afternoon? Her travelling companions both left her in the court-yard,
and she was fain, uninvited, to follow them to the apartment of the
housekeeper; where she was beginning an apology upon the necessity that
urged her intrusion, when Selina came skipping into the room.

The stranger, conceiving some hope of assistance from her extreme youth,
and air of good humour, besought her interest with Mrs Maple for
permission to remain in the house till the next day. Selina carried the
request with alacrity, and, almost instantly returning, gave orders to
the housekeeper to prepare a bed for her fellow-traveller, in the little
room upon the stairs.

The gratitude excited by this support was so pleasant to the young
patronness, that she accompanied her _protegee_ to the destined little
apartment, superintended all the regulations for her accommodation and
refreshments, and took so warm a fancy to her, that she made her a visit
every other half-hour in the course of the evening; during which she
related, with earnest injunctions to secresy, all the little incidents
of her little life, finishing her narration by intimating, in a
rapturous whisper, that she should very soon have a house of her own, in
which her aunt Maple would have no sort of authority. 'And then,' added
she, nodding, 'perhaps I may ask you to come and see me!'

No one else appeared; and the stranger might tranquilly have passed the
night, but from internal disturbance how she should reach
Brighthelmstone the following morning, without carriage, friends, money,
or knowledge of the road thither.

Before the tardy light invited her to rise the next day, her new young
friend came flying into the room. 'I could not sleep,' she cried, 'all
last night, for the thought of a play that I am to have a very pretty
dress for; and that we have fixed upon acting amongst ourselves; and so
I got up on purpose to tell you of it, for fear you should be gone.'

She then read through every word of her own part, without a syllable of
any other.

They were both soon afterwards sent for into the parlour by Elinor, who
was waiting breakfast for Mrs. Maple, with Harleigh and Ireton. 'My dear
demoiselle,' she cried, 'how fares it? We were all so engrossed last
night, about a comedy that we have been settling to massacre, that I
protest I quite forgot you.'

'I ought only, Madam,' answered the stranger, with a sigh, 'to wonder,
and to be grateful that you have ever thought of me.'

'Why what's the matter with you now? Why are you so solemn? Is your
noble courage cast down? What are you projecting? What's your plan?'

'When I have been to Brighthelmstone, Madame, when I have seen who--or
what may await me there--'

Mrs. Maple, now appearing, angrily demanded who had invited her into the
parlour? telling her to repair to the kitchen, and make known what she
wanted through some of the servants.

The blood mounted into the cheeks of the Incognita, but she answered
only by a distant courtsie, and turning to Elinor and Selina, besought
them to accept her acknowledgements for their goodness, and retired.

Selina and Elinor, following her into the ante-room, asked how she meant
to travel?

She had one way only in her power; she must walk.

'Walk?' exclaimed Harleigh, joining them, 'in such a season? And by such
roads?'

'Walk?' cried Ireton, advancing also, 'eight miles? In December?'

'And why not, gentlemen?' called out Mrs Maple, 'How would you have such
a body as that go, if she must not walk? What else has she got her feet
for?'

'Are you sure,' said Ireton, 'that you know the way?'

'I was never in this part of the world till now.'

'Ha! Ha! pleasant enough! And what are you to do about money? Did you
ever find that purse of yours that you--lost, I think, at Dover?'

'Never!'

'Better and better!' cried Ireton, laughing again, yet feeling for his
own purse, and sauntering towards the hall.

Harleigh was already out of sight.

'Pour soul!' said Selina, 'I am sure, for one, I'll help her.'

'Let us make a subscription,' said Elinor, producing half a guinea, and
looking round to Mrs Maple.

Selina joined the same sum, full of glee to give, for the first time, as
much as her sister.

Mrs Maple clamorously ordered them to shut the parlour door.

With shame, yet joy, the stranger accepted the two half guineas,
intimated her hopes that she should soon repay them, repeated her
thanks, and took leave.

The sisters would still have detained her, but Mrs Maple peremptorily
insisted upon breakfasting without further delay.

The Incognita was proceeding to the housekeeper's room, for a packet of
the gifts of Elinor, but she was stopt in the hall by Ireton, who was
loitering about, playing with his purse, and jerking and catching it
from hand to hand.

'Here, my dear,' he cried, 'look at this, and take what you will from
it.'

She coldly thanked him, and, saying that the young ladies had amply
supplied her, would have moved on: but he prevented her, repeating his
offer, and adding, while with uncontrolled freedom he stared at her,
'How the deuce, with such a pretty face as that, could you ever think of
making yourself look such a fright?'

She told him that she was in haste.

'But what was the whim of it?'

She desired him to make way, every moment of day-light being precious to
her.

'Hang day-light!' cried he, 'I never liked it; and if you will but wait
a few minutes--'

Selina, here, running to call him to breakfast, he finished in a
whisper, 'I'll convey you in my own chaise wherever you like to go;' and
then, forced to put up his purse, he gallantly handed his fair
bride-elect back to the parlour.

The stranger, entering the housekeeper's room, met Harleigh, who
seriously remonstrated against her walking project, offering his servant
to procure her a post-chaise. The sigh of her negative expressed its
melancholy economy, though she owned a wish that she could find some
meaner vehicle that would be safe.

Harleigh then disappeared; but, a few minutes afterwards, when she was
setting out from the garden-gate, she again met him, and he told her
that he was going to order a parcel from a stationer's at
Brighthelmstone; and that a sort of chaise-cart, belonging to a farmer
just by, would be sent for it, almost immediately. 'I do not recommend,'
added he, smiling, 'such a machine for its elegance; and, if you would
permit me to offer you one more eligible--'

A grave motion of the head repressed him from finishing his phrase, and
he acquainted her that he had just been to the farm, to bespeak a sober
driver, with whom he had already settled for his morning's work.

This implied assurance, that he had no plan of following the machine,
induced her to agree to the proposition; and, when the little carriage
was in sight, he expressed his good wishes that she might find the
letter, or the friend, that she desired, and returned to the breakfast
parlour.

The length of the way, joined to the dirt of the roads, made her truly
sensible of his consideration, in affording her this safe conveyance.

When she arrived at the Post-office, the words, 'Oh, you are come at
last!' struck her ear, from the street; but not conceiving herself to be
addressed, they failed to catch her attention, till she saw, waiting to
give her his hand, while exclaiming, 'What the deuce can have made you
so long in coming?' young Ireton.

Far less pleased than surprised, she disengaged herself from him with
quickness, and enquired for the post-master.

He was not within.

She was extremely disturbed, and at a loss where to wait, or what to do.

'Why did not you stay for my chaise?' said Ireton. 'When I found that
you were gone, I mounted my steed, and came over by a short cut, to see
what was become of you; and here you have kept me cooling my heels all
this devil of a time. That booby of a driver must have had a taste for
being out-crawled by a snail.'

Without answering him, she asked whether there were any clerk at hand,
to whom she could apply?

Oh, yes! and she was immediately shewn into an office, and followed,
without any ceremony, by Ireton, though she replied not a word to any
thing that he said.

A young man here received her, of whom, in a fearful voice, she demanded
whether he had any letter directed for L.S., to be left till called for.

'You must make her tell you her name, Sir!' cried Ireton, with an air of
importance. 'I give you notice not to let her have her letter, without a
receipt, signed by her own hand. She came over with Mrs Maple of Lewes,
and a party of us, and won't say who she is. 'T has a very ugly look,
Sir!'

The eye of the stranger accused him, but vainly, of cruelty.

The clerk, who listened with great curiosity, soon produced a foreign
letter, with the address demanded.

While eagerly advancing to receive it, she anxiously enquired, whether
there were no inland letter with the same direction?

None, she was answered.

Ireton then, clapping his hand upon the shoulder of the clerk,
positively declared, that he would lodge an information against him, if
he delivered any letter, under such circumstances, without a signed
receipt.

An almost fainting distress was now visible in the face of the
Incognita, as the clerk, surprised and perplexed, said, 'Have you any
objection, Ma'am, to giving me your name?'

She stammered, hesitated, and grew paler, while Ireton smiled
triumphantly, when the party was suddenly joined by Harleigh.

Ireton ceased his clamour, and hung back, ashamed.

Harleigh, approaching the stranger, with an apology for his intrusion,
was struck with her disordered look, and enquired whether she were ill?

'Ah, Sir!' she cried, reviving with hope at his sight, and walking
towards the window, whither, wondering, he followed, 'assist me in
mercy!--you know, already, that some powerful motive deters me from
naming myself--'

'Have I been making any indiscreet enquiry?' cried he, gently, yet in a
tone of surprise.

'You? O no! You have been all generosity and consideration!'

Harleigh, much gratified, besought her to explain herself with openness.

'They insist upon my telling my name--or they detain my letter!'

'Is that all?' said he, and, going to the clerk, he demanded the letter,
for which he gave his own address and receipt, with his word of honour
that he was authorised to require it by the person to whom it was
written.

He then delivered it into her hand.

The joy of its possession, joined to the relief from such persecution,
filled her with a delight which, though beaming from all her features,
she had not yet found words to express, when Ireton, whom Harleigh had
not remarked, burst into a significant, though affected laugh.

'Why, Harleigh! why, what the deuce can have brought you hither?' cried
he. Harleigh wished to retort the question; but would not hazard a
raillery that might embarrass the stranger, who now, with modest grace,
courtsied to him; while she passed Ireton without notice, and left the
room.

Each wished to follow her, but each was restrained by the other. Ireton,
who continued laughing maliciously, owned that his journey to
Brighthelmstone had been solely to prevail with the clerk to demand the
name of the stranger, before he gave up the letter; but Harleigh
protested that he had merely ridden over to offer his mediation for her
return to Lewes, if she should miss the friend, or letter, of which she
came in search.

Ireton laughed still more; and hoped that, from such abundant charity,
he would attribute his own ride, also, to motives of as pure
benevolence. He then begged he might not interfere with the following up
of so charitable a purpose: but Harleigh assured him that he had neither
right, pretension, nor design to proceed any farther.

'If that's the case,' cried Ireton, 'since charity is the order of the
day, I'll see what is become of her myself.'

He ran out of the room.

Harleigh, following, soon joined him, and they saw the Incognita enter a
milliner's shop. They then separated; Harleigh pleading business for not
returning immediately to Lewes; while Ireton, mounting his horse, with
an accusing shake of the head, rode off.

Harleigh strolled to the milliner's, and, enquiring for some gloves,
perceived, through the glass-door of a small parlour, the stranger
reading her letter.

He begged that the milliner would be so good as to tell the lady in the
inner room, that Mr Harleigh requested to speak to her.

A message thus open could neither startle nor embarrass her, and he was
instantly admitted.

He found her pale and agitated. Her letter, which was in her hand, she
hastily folded, but looked at nothing else, while she waited an
explanation of his visit.

'I could not,' he said, 'go back to Lewes without knowing whether your
expectations are answered in coming hither; or whether you will permit
me to tell the Miss Joddrels that they may still have the pleasure to be
of some use to you.'

She appeared to be unable to speak.

'I fear to seem importunate,' he continued, 'yet I have no intention,
believe me, to ask any officious questions. I respect what you have said
of the nature of your situation, too much to desire any information
beyond what may tend to alleviate its uneasiness.'

She held her hands before her eyes, to hide her fresh gushing tears, but
they trickled fast through her fingers, as she answered, 'My situation
is now deplorable indeed!--I have no letter, no direction from the
person whom I had hoped to meet; and whose abode, whose address, I know
not how to discover! I must not apply to any of my original friends:
unknown, and in circumstances the most strange, if not suspicious, can I
hope to make myself any new ones?--Can I even subsist, when, though thus
involved in mystery, I am as indigent as I am friendless, yet dare not
say who, nor what I am,--and hardly even know it myself!'

Touched with compassion, he drew nearer to her, meaning, from an almost
unconscious impulse of kindness, to take her hand; but feeling, with
equal quickness, the impropriety of allowing his pity such a
manifestation, he retreated to his first place, and, in accents of
gentle, but respectful commiseration, expressed his concern for her
distress.

Somewhat soothed, yet heavily sighing, 'To fail finding,' she said,
'either the friend, or her direction, that I expected, overwhelms me
with difficulty and perplexity. And even this letter from abroad, though
most welcome, has grievously disappointed me! I am promised, however,
another, which may bring me, perhaps, happier tidings. I must wait for
it patiently; but the person from whom it comes little imagines my
destitute state! The unfortunate loss of my purse makes it, by this
delay of all succour, almost desperate!'

The hand of Harleigh was involuntarily in his pocket, but before he
could either draw out his purse, or speak, she tremulously added,
colouring, and holding back, 'I am ashamed to have mentioned a
circumstance, which seems to call for a species of assistance, that it
is impossible I should accept.'

Harleigh bowed, acquiescent.

Her eyes thanked him for sparing her any contest, and she then
gratefully acceded to his proposal, of soliciting for her the renewed
aid and countenance of the Miss Joddrels, from whom some little notice
might be highly advantageous, in securing her decent treatment, during
the few days,--perhaps more,--that she might be kept waiting at
Brighthelmstone for another letter.

He gently exhorted her to re-animate her courage, and hoped to convince
her, by the next morning, that he had not intruded upon her retirement
from motives of idle and useless curiosity.

As soon as he was gone, she treated with Miss Matson, the milliner, to
whom Harleigh had considerately named her as a young person known to Mrs
Maple, for a small room in her house during a few days; and then,
somewhat revived, she endeavoured, by recollecting the evils which she
had escaped, to look forward, with better hopes of alleviation, to those
which might yet remain to be encountered.




CHAPTER VIII


The next morning, the Wanderer had the happy surprise of seeing Elinor
burst into her chamber. 'We are all on fire,' she cried, 'at our house,
so I am come hither to cool myself. Aunt Maple and I have fought a noble
battle; but I have won the day.'

She then related, that Harleigh had brought them an account of her
disappointments, her letter, her design to wait for another, and her
being at the milliner's. 'Aunt Maple,' she continued, 'treated the whole
as imposition; but I make it a rule never to let her pitiful system
prevail in the house. And so, to cut the matter short, for I hate a long
story, I gave her to understand, that, if she would not let you return
to Lewes, and stay with us till your letter arrives, I should go to
Brighthelmstone myself, and stay with you. This properly frightened her;
for she knew I would keep my word.'

'And would you, Madam?' said the stranger, smiling.

'Why not? Do you think I would not do a thing only because no one else
would do it? I am never so happy as in ranging without a guide. However,
we came to a compromise this morning; and she consents to permit your
return, provided I don't let you enter her chaise, and engage for
keeping you out of every body's way.'

The stranger, evidently hurt and offended, declined admission upon such
terms. Her obligations, she said, were already sufficiently heavy, and
she would struggle to avoid adding to their weight, and to supply her
own few wants herself, till some new resource might open to her
assistance.

Elinor, surprised, hastily demanded whether she meant to live alone,
that she might only be aided, and only be visited by Mr Harleigh.

The stranger looked all astonishment.

'Nay, that will certainly be the most pleasant method; so I don't affect
to wonder at it; nevertheless--'

She hesitated, but her face was tinted with a glow of disturbance, and
her voice announced strong rising emotion, as she presently added, 'If
you think of forming any attachment with that man--' She stopt abruptly.

The heightened amazement of the stranger kept her for a few instants
speechless; but the troubled brow of Elinor soon made her with firmness
and spirit answer, 'Attachment? I protest to you, Madam, except at those
periods when his benevolence or urbanity have excited my gratitude, my
own difficulties have absorbed my every thought!'

'I heartily congratulate your apathy!' said Elinor, her features
instantly dilating into a smile; 'for he is so completely a
non-descript, that he would else incontestably set you upon hunting out
for some new Rosamund's Pond. That is all I mean.'

She then, but with gaiety and good humour, enquired whether or not the
stranger would return to Lewes.

Nothing, to the stranger, could be less attractive at this moment; yet
the fear of such another misinterpretation and rebuff, and the
unspeakable dread of losing, in her helpless situation, all female
countenance, conquered her repugnance.

Elinor then said that she would hurry home, and send off the same
elegant machine from the farm, which, she found, had been made use of in
her service the preceding day.

Far from exhilarated was the young person whom she left, who, thus
treated, could scarcely brook the permission to return, which before she
would have solicited. Small are the circumstances which reverse all our
wishes! and one hour still less resembles another in our feelings, than
in our actions.

Upon arriving again at the house of Mrs Maple, she was met by Selina,
who expressed the greatest pleasure at her return, and conducted her to
the little room which she had before occupied; eagerly announcing that
she had already learnt half her part, which she glibly repeated, crying,
'How lucky it is that you are come back; for now I have got somebody to
say it to!'

Mrs Maple, she added, had refused her consent to the whole scheme, till
Elinor threatened to carry it into execution in Farmer Gooch's barn, and
to invite all the county.

She then entered into sundry details of family secrets, the principal of
which was, that she often thought that she should be married before her
sister Elinor, though Sister Elinor was twenty-two years old, and she
herself was only fourteen: but Sister Elinor had had a violent quarrel
with Mr Dennis Harleigh, whom she had been engaged to marry before she
went abroad, about the French Revolution, which Sister Elinor said was
the finest thing in the world, but which Mr Dennis said was the very
worst. But, for all that, he loved her so, that he had made his brother
fetch her home, and wanted the marriage to take place directly: and Aunt
Maple wished it too, of all things, because Sister Elinor was so hard to
manage; for, now she was of age, she did everything that she liked; and
she protested that she would not give her consent, unless Mr Dennis
promised to change his opinion upon the French Revolution; so they
quarrelled again the day before they left town; and Aunt Maple, quite
frightened, invited Mr Harleigh, the elder brother, to come and spend a
week or two at Lewes, to try to bring matters round again.

These anecdotes were interrupted by the appearance of Elinor, of whom
the Incognita entreated, and obtained, permission to reside, as in town,
wholly in her own room.

'I wish you could hear,' said Elinor, 'how we all settle your history in
the parlour. No two of us have the same idea of whom or what you are.'
She then entered upon the subject of the play, which was to be the
Provoked Husband, in compliment to Miss Arbe, a young lady of celebrated
talents, who, having frequently played the part of Lady Townly, with
amazing applause, at private theatres, had offered her services for that
character, but would study no other. This, Elinor complained, was
singularly provoking, as Harleigh, who alone of the whole set was worth
acting with, must necessarily be Lord Townly. However, since she could
not try her own theatrical skill, by the magnetizing powers of
reciprocated exertions, she determined, in relinquishing what was
brilliant, to adopt at least what was diverting; for which reason she
had taken the part of Lady Wronghead. Selina was to be Miss Jenny;
Ireton, 'Squire Richard; and she had pitched upon Mr Scope and Miss
Bydel, two famous, formal quizzes, residing in Lewes, to compliment them
with the fogrum parts of Manly and Lady Grace; characters which always
put the audience to sleep; but that, as they were both good sort of
souls, who were never awake themselves, they would not find out. The
other parts she had chiefly arranged for the pleasure of giving a lesson
of democracy to Aunt Maple; for she had appointed Sir Francis Wronghead
to Mr Stubbs, an old steward belonging to Lord Rockton; Count Basset to
young Gooch, a farmer's son; Myrtylla to Golding, her own maid, and
John Moody to Tomlinson, the footman.

The air of attention with which the stranger listened, whether she
answered or not, renewed again in Elinor the pleasure which she had
first found in talking to her; and thus, between the two sisters, she
had almost constantly a companion till near midnight.

To be left, then, alone was not to be left to unbroken slumbers. She had
no dependence, nor hope, but in an expected second letter, yet had
devised no means to secure its immediate reception, even if its quick
arrival corresponded with her wishes. As soon, therefore, as she heard
the family stirring the next morning, she descended, with an intention
of going to the housekeeper's room, to make some arrangement for that
purpose.

Ireton, who caught a glimpse of her upon the stairs, met and stopt her.
'My dear,' he cried, 'don't think me such a prig as to do you any
mischief; but take a hint! Don't see quite so much of a certain young
lady, whom I don't wish should know the world quite so soon! You
understand me, my dear?'

Inexpressibly offended, she was contemptuously shrinking from him, when
they were joined by Harleigh, who asked, with an air of respect that was
evidently meant to give a lesson to Ireton, whether she would permit him
to call at the post-office, to order that her letters should be
forwarded to Lewes.

This offer was irresistible, and, with looks of the brightest gratitude,
she was uttering her acknowledgements, when the voice of Elinor, from a
distance, sounding tremulous and agitated, checked her, and she hastily
retreated.

But her room-door was only shut to be almost instantly thrown open by
Elinor herself, who, entering with a large parcel in her hands, while
her face shewed pain and disorder, said, 'See how I have been labouring
to assist and to serve you, at the very moment of your insidious
duplicity!'

Thunderstruck by the harshness of an attack nearly as incomprehensible
as it was vehement, the stranger fixed her eyes upon her accuser with a
look that said, Are you mad?

The silent, yet speaking expression was caught by Elinor, who, struck
with sudden shame, frankly begged her pardon; and, after a little
reflexion, coolly added, 'You must never mind what I say, nor what I do;
for I sport all sort of things, and in all sort of manners. But it is
merely to keep off stagnation: I dread nothing like a lethargy. But pray
what were you all about just now?'

The Incognita related her intended purpose; its interruption; the offer
of Mr Harleigh; and its acceptance.

Elinor looked perturbed again, and said, 'You seem mighty fond,
methinks, of employing Mr Harleigh for your Mercury!'

'He is so good as to employ himself. I could never think of taking such
a liberty.'

Elinor put up her lip; but told her to make what use she could of the
parcel, and, with an abrupt 'Good morning,' went down to breakfast.

The stranger, amazed and confounded, remained for some time absorbed by
conjectures upon this scene.

The parcel contained cast-off clothes of almost every description; but,
much as she required such aid, the manner in which it was offered
determined her upon its rejection.

In a few hours, the maid who brought her meals, was desired by Mr
Harleigh to inform her, that he had executed her commission at the
post-office.

This assurance revived her, and enabled her to pass the day in tolerable
tranquillity, though perfectly alone, and without any species of
employment to diversify her ruminations, or help to wear away the
tediousness of expectation.

When the next day, however, and the next, passed without her seeing any
of the family, she felt disconcerted and disturbed. To be abandoned by
Elinor, and even by Selina, made her situation appear worse than
forlorn; and her offended spirit deemed the succour thus afforded her,
inadequate to compensate for the endurance of universal disesteem and
avoidance. She determined, therefore, to quit the inhospitable mansion,
persuaded that no efforts could be too difficult, no means too
laborious, that might rescue her from an abode which she could no longer
inhabit, without seeming to herself to be degraded.

But the idea of this project had a facility of which its execution did
not partake. She had no money, save what she had received from the two
sisters; even that, by a night and day spent at the milliner's, was much
diminished. She could not quit the neighbourhood of Brighthelmstone,
while still in expectation of a letter; and if, while awaiting it in any
other house, the compassion, or the philanthropy of Harleigh should urge
him to see her, might not Elinor conclude that she had only retreated to
receive his visits alone?

Apprehensions such as these frightened her into forbearance: but in
teaching her prudence, they did not endow her with contentment. Her
hours lingered in depression and uncertainty; her time was not employed
but consumed; her faculties were not enjoyed, but wasted.

Yet, upon more mature reflexion, she enquired by what right she expected
kinder treatment. Unknown, unnamed, without any sort of recommendation,
she applied for succour, and it was granted her: if she met with the
humanity of being listened to, and the charity of being assisted, must
she quarrel with her benefactors, because they gave not implicit credit
to the word of a lonely Wanderer for her own character? or think herself
ill used that their donations and their aid were not delicate as well as
useful?

This sober style of reasoning soon chased away resentment, and, with
quieter nerves, she awaited some termination to her suspence and
solitude.

Meantime, most of the other inhabitants of the house, were engaged by
studying their parts for the intended representation, which so
completely occupied some by choice, and others by complaisance, or
necessity, that no visit or excursion was made abroad, till several days
after their arrival at Lewes. Mrs Maple then, with her whole party,
accepted an invitation to dine and spend the evening with the family of
their principal actress, Miss Arbe; but a sudden indisposition with
which that lady was seized after dinner, forced them home again early in
the evening. Their return being unexpected, the servants were all out,
or out of the way, but, entering by a door leading from the garden,
which they found open, they were struck with the sound of music. They
stopped, and distinctly heard a harp; they listened, and found that it
was played with uncommon ability.

''Tis my harp!' cried Selina, 'I am sure of that!'

'Your harp?' said Mrs Maple; 'why who can be playing it?'

'Hist! dear ladies,' said Harleigh; ''tis some exquisite performer.'

'It must be Lady Kendover, then,' said Mrs Maple, 'for nobody else comes
to our house that plays the harp.'

A new movement was now begun; it was slow and pathetic, and played with
so much taste and expression, though mixed with bursts of rapid
execution, that the whole auditory was equally charmed and surprized;
and every one, Mrs Maple herself not excepted, with uplifted finger
seemed to beseech attention from the rest.

An Arpeggio succeeded, followed by an air, which produced, alternately,
tones sweet, yet penetrating, of touching pathos or impassioned
animation; and announced a performer whom nature had gifted with her
finest feelings, to second, or rather to meet the soul-pervading
refinements of skilful art.

When the voice ceased, the harp was still heard; but some sounds made by
an involuntary, though restrained tribute of general approbation,
apparently found their way to the drawing-room, where it was played; for
suddenly it stopped, the instrument seemed hastily to be put away, and
some one was precipitately in motion.

Every body then hastened up stairs; but before they could reach the
landing-place, a female figure, which they all instantly recognized for
that of the unknown young woman, glided out of the drawing-room, and,
with the quick motion of fear, ran up another flight of stairs.

'Amazing!' cried Mrs Maple, stopping short; 'could any body have
credited assurance such as this? That bold young stroller has been
obtruding herself into my drawing-room, to hear Lady Kendover play!'

Harleigh, who had contrived to be the first to enter the apartment, now
returned to the door, and, with a smile of the most animated pleasure,
said, 'No one is here!--Not a creature!'

His tone and air spoke more than his words, and, to the quick
conceptions of Elinor, pronounced: This divine singer, whom you were all
ready to worship, is no other than the lonely Wanderer whom you were all
ready to condemn!

Mrs Maple now, violently ringing the bell, ordered one of her servants
to summon the woman who came from abroad.

The stranger obeyed, with the confused look of a person who expected a
reprimand, to which she had not courage to reply.

'Be so good as to tell me,' said Mrs Maple, 'what you have been into my
drawing-room for? and whether you know who it is, that has taken the
liberty to play upon my niece's harp?'

The Incognita begged a thousand pardons, but said that having learnt,
from the house-maid, that the family was gone out for the day, she had
ventured to descend, to take a little air and exercise in the garden.

'And what has that to do with my niece's harp?--And my drawing-room?'

'The door, Madam, was open.--It was long since I had seen an
instrument--I thought no one would hear me--'

'Why you don't pretend that it was you who played?'

The young woman renewed her apology.

'You?--You play upon a harp?--And pray who was it that sung?'

The stranger looked down.

'Well, this is surprising indeed!--And pray where might such a body as
you learn these things?--And what use can such a body want them for? Be
so good as to tell me that; and who you are?'

The stranger, in the utmost disturbance, painfully answered, 'I am truly
ashamed, Madam, so often to press for your forbearance, but my silence
is impelled by necessity! I am but too well aware how incomprehensible
this must seem, but my situation is perilous--I cannot reveal it! I can
only implore your compassion!--'

She retired hastily.

No one pursued nor tried to stop her. All, except Harleigh, remained
nearly stupified by what had passed, for no one else had ever considered
her but as a needy travelling adventurer. To him, her language, her air,
and her manner, pervading every disadvantage of apparel, poverty, and
subjection, had announced her, from the first, to have received the
education, and to have lived the life of a gentlewoman; yet to him,
also, it was as new, though not as wonderful, as to the rest, to find in
her all the delicately acquired skill, joined to the happy natural
talents, which constitute a refined artist.

Elinor seemed absorbed in mortification, not sooner to have divined what
Harleigh had so immediately discovered; Selina, triumphant, felt
enchanted with an idea that the stranger must be a disguised princess;
Mrs Maple, by a thousand crabbed grimaces, shewed her chagrin, that the
frenchified stroller should not rather have been detected as a positive
vagabond, then proved, by her possession of cultivated talents, to have
been well brought up; and Ireton, who had thought her a mere female
fortune-hunter, was utterly overset, till he comforted himself by
observing, that many mere adventurers, from fortuitous circumstances,
obtain accomplishments that may vie, in brilliancy, with those acquired
by regular education and study.

Doubts, however, remained with all: they were varied, but not removed.
The mystery that hung about her was rather thickened than cleared, and
the less she appeared like an ordinary person, the more restless became
conjecture, to dive into some probable motive, for the immoveable
obstinacy of her concealment.

The pause was first broken by Elinor, who, addressing Harleigh, said,
'Tell me honestly, now, what, all together, you really and truly think
of this extraordinary demoiselle?'

'I think her,' answered he, with readiness, 'an elegant and well bred
young woman, under some extraordinary and inexplicable difficulties: for
there is a modesty in her air which art, though it might attain, could
not support; and a dignity in her conduct in refusing all succour but
yours, that make it impossible for me to have any doubt upon the
fairness of her character.'

'And how do you know that she refuses all succour but mine? Have you
offered her yours?'

'She will not let me go so far. If she perceive such an intention, she
draws back, with a look that would make the very mentioning it
insolent.'

Elinor ran up stairs.

She found the stranger disturbed and alarmed, though she was easily
revived upon seeing Elinor courteous, almost respectful; for, powerfully
struck by a discovery, so completely accidental, of talents so superior,
and satisfied by the assurance just received from Harleigh, that his
pecuniary aid had never been accepted, she grew ashamed of the angry
flippancy with which she had last quitted the room, and of the resolute
neglect with which she had since kept aloof. She now apologized for
having stayed away, professed a design to be frequent in her future
visits, and presented, with generous importunity, the trifles which she
blushed to have offered so abruptly.

Addressed thus nearly upon equal terms, the stranger gracefully accepted
the donation, and, from the relief produced by this unexpected good
treatment, her own manners acquired an ease, and her language a flow,
that made her strikingly appear to be what Harleigh had called her, a
well bred and elegant young woman; and the desire of Elinor to converse
with her no longer hung, now, upon the mere stimulus of curiosity; it
became flattering, exhilarating, and cordial.

The stranger, in return, upon nearer inspection, found in Elinor a solid
goodness of heart, that compensated for the occasional roughness, and
habitual strangeness of her manners. Her society was gay and original;
and, to great quickness of parts, and liberality of feeling, she joined
a frankness of character the most unbounded. But she was alarming and
sarcastic, aiming rather to strike than to please, to startle than to
conquer. Upon chosen and favourite subjects she was impressive, nay
eloquent; upon all others she was careless, flighty, and indifferent,
and constantly in search of matter for ridicule: yet, though severe,
almost to ferocity, where she conceived herself to be offended, or
injured, she became kind, gentle, and generously conceding, when
convinced of any errour.

Selina, when her sister retired, tripped fleetly into the chamber,
whisperingly revealing, that it was Mr Ireton who had persuaded her to
relinquish her visits; but that she would now make them as often as
ever.

Thus supported and encouraged, the stranger, again desiring to stay in
the house, earnestly wished to soften the ill will of Mrs Maple; and
having heard, from Selina, that the play occupied all hands, she begged
Mrs Fenn to accept her services at needle-work.

Mrs Fenn conveyed the proposal to her mistress, who haughtily protested
that she would have nothing done under her roof, by she did not know
who; though she tacitly suffered Mrs Fenn to try the skill of the
proposer with some cambric handkerchiefs.

These she soon returned, executed with such admirable neatness, that Mrs
Fenn immediately found her other similar employment; which she presented
to her with the air of conferring the most weighty of obligations.

And such, in the event, it proved; for she now continued to receive
daily more business of the same sort, without any hint relative to her
departure; and heard, through Selina, that Mrs Maple herself had
remarked, that this was the first singer and player she had ever known,
who had not been spoilt by those idle habits for a good huswife.

The Incognita now thankfully rejoiced in the blessing bestowed upon her,
by that part of her education, which gave to her the useful and
appropriate female accomplishment of needle-work.




CHAPTER IX


Mrs Maple was of opinion, that every woman ought to live with a needle
and thread in her hand; the stranger, therefore, had now ample
occupation; but as labour, in common with all other evils, is relative,
she submitted cheerfully to any manual toil, that could rescue her from
the mental burthen of exciting ill will and reproach.

Two days afterwards, Elinor came to summon her to the drawing-room. They
were all assembled, she said, to a rehearsal, and in the utmost
confusion for want of a prompter, not a soul, except Miss Arbe, knowing
a word, or a cue, of any part but his own; and Miss Arbe, who took upon
her to regulate every thing, protested that she could not consent to go
on any longer in so slovenly a manner.

In this dilemma it had occurred to Elinor to have recourse to the
stranger; but the stranger desired to be excused: Mrs Maple seemed now
to be softened in her favour; and it would be both imprudent and
improper to risk provoking fresh irritation, by coming forward in an
enterprise that was a known subject of dissention.

Elinor, when she had formed a wish, never listened to an objection.
'What an old fashioned style you prose in!' she cried; 'who could
believe you came so lately from France? But example has no more force
without sympathy, than precept had without opinion! However, I'll get
you a licence from Aunt Maple in a minute.'

She went down stairs, and, returning almost immediately, cried, 'Aunt
Maple is quite contented. I told her I was going to send for Mr Creek, a
horrible little pettifogging wretch, who lives in this neighbourhood,
and whom she particularly detests, to be our prompter; and this so
woefully tormented her, that she proposed you herself. I have ample
business upon my hands, between my companions of the buskin, and this
pragmatical old aunt; for Harleigh himself refused to act against her
approbation, till I threatened to make over Lord Townly to Sir Lyell
Sycamore, a smart beau at Brighthelmstone, that all the mammas and aunts
are afraid of. And then poor aunty was fain, herself, to request
Harleigh to take the part. I could manage matters no other way.'

Personal remonstrances were vain, and the stranger was forced down
stairs to the theatrical group.

All that was known of her situation having been sketched by Elinor, and
detailed by Selina, the mixt party there assembled, was prepared to
survey her with a curiosity which she found extremely abashing. She
requested to have the book of the play; but Elinor, engaged in arranging
the entrances and exits, did not heed her. Harleigh, however,
comprehending the relief which any occupation for the eyes and hands
might afford her, presented it to her himself.

It preserved her not, nevertheless, from a volley of questions, with
which she was instantly assailed from various quarters. 'I find Ma'am,
you are lately come from abroad,' said Mr Scope, a gentleman self-dubbed
a deep politician, and who, in the most sententious manner, uttered the
most trivial observations: 'I have no very high notion, I own, of the
morals of those foreigners at this period. A man's wife and daughters
belong to any man who has a taste to them, as I am informed. Nothing is
very strict. Mr Robertspierre, as I am told, is not very exact in his
dealings.'

'But I should like to know,' cried Gooch, the young farmer, 'whether it
be true, of a reality, that they've got such numbers and numbers, and
millions and millions of red-coats there, all made into generals, in the
twinkling, as one may say, of an eye?'

'Money must be a vast scarce commodity there,' said Mr Stubbs, the
steward: 'did you ever happen to hear, Ma'am, how they go to work to get
in their rents?'

Before the stranger could attempt any reply to these several addresses,
Miss Arbe, who was the principal person of the party, seating herself in
the chair of honour, desired her to advance, saying, 'I understand you
sing and play amazingly well. Pray who were your masters?'

While the Incognita hesitated, Miss Bydel, a collateral and uneducated
successor to a large and unexpected fortune, said, 'Pray, first of all,
young woman, what took you over to foreign parts? I should like to know
that.'

Elinor, now, being ready, cut short all further investigation by
beginning the rehearsal.

During the first scenes, the voice of the Incognita was hardly audible.
The constraint of her forced attendance, and the insurmountable
awkwardness of her situation, made all exertion difficult, and her tones
were so languid, and her pronunciation was so inarticulate, that Elinor
began seriously to believe that she must still have recourse to Mr
Creek. But Harleigh, who reflected how much the faculties depend upon
the mind's being disengaged, saw that she was too little at her ease to
be yet judged.

Every one else, absorbed in his part and himself, in the hope of being
best, or the shame of being worst; in the fear of being out, or the
confusion of not understanding what next was to be done, was regardless
of all else but his own fancied reputation of the hour.

Harleigh, however, as the play proceeded, and the inaccuracy of the
performers demanded greater aid, found the patience of his judgment
recompensed, and its appreciation of her talents just. Her voice, from
seeming feeble and monotonous, became clear and penetrating: it was
varied, with the nicest discrimination, for the expression of every
character, changing its modulation from tones of softest sensibility, to
those of archest humour; and from reasoning severity, to those of
uncultured rusticity.

When the rehearsal was over, Miss Bydel, who had no other idea of the
use of speech than that of asking questions, said, 'I should be glad,
before you go, to say a few words to you, young woman, myself.'

The stranger stood still.

'In the first place, tell me, if you please, what's your name?'

The Incognita coloured at this abrupt demand, but remained silent.

'Nay,' said Miss Bydel, 'your name, at least, can be no such great
secret, for you must be called something or other.'

Ireton, who had hitherto appeared decided not to take any notice of her,
now exclaimed, with a laugh, 'I will tell you what her name is, Miss
Bydel; 'tis L.S.'

The stranger dropt her eyes, but Miss Bydel, not comprehending that
Ireton meant two initial letters, said. 'Elless? Well I see no reason
why any body should be ashamed to own their name is Elless.'

Selina, tittering, would have cleared up the mistake; but Ireton,
laughing yet more heartily, made her a sign to let it pass.

Miss Bydel continued: 'I don't want to ask any of your secrets, as I
say, Mrs Elless, for I understand you don't like to tell them; but it
will be discovering no great matter, to let me know whether your friends
are abroad, or in England? and what way you were maintained before you
got your passage over in Mrs Maple's boat.'

'Don't let that young person go,' cried Miss Arbe, who had now finished
the labours of her theatrical presidency, 'till I have heard her play
and sing. If she is so clever, as you describe her, she shall perform
between the acts.'

The stranger declared her utter inability to comply with such a request.

'When I believed myself unheard,' she cried, 'musick, I imagined, might
make me, for a few moments, forget my distresses: but an expected
performance--a prepared exhibition!--pardon me!--I have neither spirits
nor powers for such an attempt!'

Her voice spoke grief, her look, apprehension; yet her manner so
completely announced decision, that, unopposed even by a word, she
re-mounted the stairs to her chamber.

She was, there, surprised by the sight of a sealed packet upon her
table, directed, 'For L.S. at her leisure.'

She opened it, and found ten bank notes, of ten pounds each.

A momentary hope which she had indulged, that this letter, by some
accidental conveyance, had reached her from abroad, was now changed into
the most unpleasant perplexity: such a donation could not come from any
of the females of the family; Mrs Maple was miserly, and her enemy; and
the Miss Joddrels knew, by experience, that she would not refuse their
open assistance: Mr Harleigh, therefore, or Mr Ireton, must have
conveyed this to her room.

If it were Mr Ireton, she concluded he meant to ensnare her distress
into an unguarded acceptance, for some latent purpose of mischief; if it
were Mr Harleigh, his whole behaviour inclined her to believe, that he
was capable of such an action from motives of pure benevolence: but she
could by no means accept pecuniary aid from either, and determined to
keep the packet always ready for delivery, when she could discover to
whom it belonged.

She was surprised, soon afterwards, by the sight of Selina. 'I would not
let Mr Ireton hinder me from coming to you this once,' she cried, 'do
what he could; for we are all in such a fidget, that there's only you, I
really believe, can help us. Poor Miss Arbe, while she was teaching us
all what we have to do, put her part into her muff, and her favourite
little dog, that she doats upon, not knowing it was there, poor thing,
poked his nose into the muff to warm himself; and when Miss Arbe came
to take her part, she found he had sucked it, and gnawed it, and nibbled
it, all to tatters! And she says she can't write it out again if she was
to have a diamond a word for it; and as to us, we have all of us got
such immensities to do for ourselves, that you are the only person; for
I dare say you know how to write. So will you, now, Ellis? for they have
all settled, below, that your real name is Ellis.'

The stranger answered that she should gladly be useful in any way that
could be proposed. The book, therefore, was brought to her, with writing
implements, and she dedicated herself so diligently to copying, that the
following morning, when Miss Arbe was expected, the part was prepared.

Miss Arbe, however, came not; a note arrived in her stead, stating that
she had been so exceedingly fatigued the preceding day, in giving so
many directions, that she begged they would let somebody read her part,
and rehearse without her; and she hoped that she should find them more
advanced when she joined them on Monday.

The stranger was now summoned not only as prompter, but to read the part
of Lady Townly. She could not refuse, but her compliance was without any
sort of exertion, from a desire to avoid, not promote similar calls for
exhibition.

Elinor remarked to Harleigh, how inadequate were her talents to such a
character. Harleigh acquiesced in the remark; yet his good opinion, in
another point of view, was as much heightened, as in this it was
lowered: he saw the part which she had copied for Miss Arbe; and the
beautiful clearness of the hand-writing, and the correctness of the
punctuation and orthography, convinced him that her education had been
as successfully cultivated for intellectual improvement, as for elegant
accomplishments.

Elinor herself, now, would only call the stranger Miss Ellis, a name
which, she said, she verily believed that Miss Bydel, with all her
stupidity, had hit upon, and which therefore, henceforth, should be
adopted.




CHAPTER X


The Incognita continued to devote herself to needle-work till the
morning of the next rehearsal. She was then again called to the double
task of prompting, and of reading the part of Lady Townly, Miss Arbe
having, unceremoniously, announced, that as she had already performed
that character three several times, and to the most brilliant audiences,
though at private theatres, any further practice for herself would be a
work of supererogation; and if the company, she added, would but be so
good as to remember her directions, she need only attend personally at
the final rehearsal.

The whole party was much offended by this insinuation of its
inferiority, as well as by so contemptuous an indifference to the
prosperity of the enterprize. Nor was this the only difficulty caused by
the breach of attendance in Miss Arbe. The entertainment was to conclude
with a cotillon, of which Ireton had brought the newest steps and method
from France, but which, through this unexpected failure, the sett was
incomplete for practising. Elinor was persuaded, that in keeping the
whole group thus imperfect, both in the play and in the dance, it was
the design of Miss Arbe to expose them all to ridicule, that her own
fine acting and fine steps might be contrasted to the greater advantage.
To obviate, as much as possible, this suspected malice, the stranger was
now requested to stand up with them; for as she was so lately come from
abroad, they concluded that she might know something of the matter.

They were not mistaken: the steps, the figure, the time, all were
familiar to her; and she taught the young Selina, dropt hints to Elinor,
endeavoured to set Miss Bydel right, and gave a general, though
unpremeditated lesson to every one, by the measured grace and lightness
of her motions, which, little as her attire was adapted to such a
purpose, were equally striking for elegance and for modesty.

Harleigh, however, alone perceived her excellence: the rest had so much
to learn, or were so anxious to shine, that if occasionally they
remarked her, it was rather to be diverted by seeing any one dance so
ill equipped, than to be struck with the elevated carriage which no such
disadvantage could conceal.

Early on the morning preceding the intended representation, the stranger
was summoned to the destined theatre, where, while she was aiding the
general preparations, of dresses, decorations, and scenery, previous to
the last grand rehearsal, which, in order to try the effect of the
illuminations, was fixed to take place in the evening, Mrs Maple, with
derision marked in every feature of her face, stalked into the room, to
announce to her niece, with unbridled satisfaction, that all her fine
vagaries would now end in nothing, as Miss Arbe, at last, had the good
sense to refuse affording them her countenance.

Elinor, though too much enraged to inquire what this meant, soon,
perforce, learnt, that an old gentleman, a cousin of Miss Arbe's, had
ridden over with an apology, importing, that the most momentous reasons,
yet such as could not be divulged, obliged his relation to decline the
pleasure of belonging to their dramatic party.

The offence given by this abrupt renunciation was so general, though
Elinor, alone, allowed it free utterance, that Mr Giles Arbe, the bearer
of these evil tidings, conceived it to be more advisable to own the
plump truth, he said, at once, than to see them all so affronted without
knowing what for; though he begged them not to mention it, his cousin
having peremptorily charged him not to speak out: but the fact was, that
she had repented her engagement ever since the first rehearsal; for
though she should always be ready to act with the Miss Joddrels, who
were nieces to a baronet, and Mr Harleigh, who was nephew to a peer, and
Mr Ireton, who was heir to a large entailed estate; she was yet
apprehensive that it might let her down, in the opinion of the noble
theatrical society to which she belonged, if she were seen exhibiting
with such common persons as farmers and domestics; whom, however, for
all his cousin's nicety, Mr Giles said he thought to be full as good men
as any other; and, sometimes, considerably better.

Mrs Maple was elevated into the highest triumph by this explanation. 'I
told you how it would be!' she cried. 'Young ladies acting with mere
mob! I am truly rejoiced that Miss Arbe has given you the slip.'

Elinor heard this with a resentment, that determined her, more
vehemently than ever, not to abandon her project; she proudly,
therefore, returned thanks, by Mr Giles, for the restoration of the
part, which she had resigned in mere complaisance, as there was nothing
in the world she so much desired as to act it herself, even though it
must be now learnt in the course of a day; and she begged leave, as a
mark that she was not offended at the desertion, to borrow the dress of
the character, which she knew to be ready, and with which she would
adorn herself the following night, at the performance.

This last clause, she was well aware, would prove the most provoking
that she could devise, to Miss Arbe, who was renowned for being
finically tenacious of her attire; but Elinor would neither add a word
to her message, nor suffer one to be taken from it; and when Mr Giles
Arbe, frightened at the ill success of his confidence, would have
offered some apology, she drove him from the house, directing a trusty
person in the neighbourhood, to accompany him back, with positive orders
not to return without the dress.

She then told the stranger to study the part of Lady Wronghead, to fill
up the chasm.

The stranger began some earnest excuses, but they were lost in the
louder exclamations of Mrs Maple, whose disappointment in finding the
scheme still supported, was aggravated into rage, by the unexpected
proposition of admitting the stranger into the sett.

'What, Miss Joddrel!' she cried, 'is it not enough that you have made us
a by-word in the neighbourhood, by wanting to act with farmers and
servants? Must you also bring a foundling girl into your sett? an
illegitimate stroller, who does not so much as know her own name?'

The stranger, deeply reddening, gravely answered, 'Far from wishing to
enter into any plan of amusement, I could not have given my consent to
it, even if solicited.'

'Nobody asks what you could have done, I hope!' Mrs Maple began, when
Elinor, pushing the stranger into a large light closet, and throwing the
part after her, shut the door, charging her not to lose a moment, in
getting ready for the final rehearsal that very evening.

The Incognita, fixed not to look at the manuscript, now heard, perforce,
a violent quarrel between the aunt and the niece, the former protesting
that she would never agree to such a disgrace, as suffering a poor
straggling pauper to mix herself publicly with their society; and the
latter threatening, that, if forced to grant such a triumph to Miss
Arbe, as that of tamely relinquishing the undertaking, she would leave
the country and settle at once in France, and in the house of
Robespierre himself.

Harleigh, who, in a hasty and dashing, but masterly manner, was
colouring some scenery; had hitherto been silent; but now, advancing, he
proposed, as a compromise, that the performance should be deferred for a
week, in which time Miss Sycamore, a young lady at Brighthelmstone, whom
they all knew, would learn, he doubted not, the part, and supply, with
pleasure, the vacant place.

To this Mrs Maple, finding no hope remained that she could abolish the
whole project, was sullenly assenting, when Elinor reproachfully
exclaimed, 'What, Don Quixote! is your spirit of chivalry thus cooled?
and are you, too, for rejecting, with all this scorn, the fellow-voyager
you were so strenuous to support?'

'Scorn?' repeated Harleigh, 'No! I regard her, rather, with reverence.
'Tis she herself that has declined the part, and with a dignity that
does her honour. All she suffers to be discerned of her, announces
distinguished merit; and yet, highly as I have conceived of her
character, she is unknown to us; except by her distresses; and these,
though they call loudly for our sympathy and assistance, and, through
the propriety of her conduct, lay claim to our respect, may be thought
insufficient by the world, to justify Mrs Maple, who has two young
ladies so immediately under her care, for engaging a perfect stranger,
in a scheme which has no reference to humanity, or good offices.'

'Ah ha, Mr Harleigh!' cried Ireton, shaking his head, 'you are afraid of
what she may turn out! You think no better of her, at last, than I do.'

'I think, on the contrary, so well of her,' answered Harleigh, 'that I
am sincerely sorry to see her thus haughtily distanced. I often wish
these ladies would as generously, as I doubt not that they might safely,
invite her into their private society. Kindness such as that might
produce a confidence, which revolts from public and abrupt enquiry; and
which, I would nearly engage my life, would prove her innocence and
worth, and vindicate every trust.'

He then begged them to consider, that, should their curiosity and
suspicions work upon her spirits, till she were urged to reveal,
prematurely, the secret of her situation, they would themselves be the
first to condemn her for folly and imprudence, if breaking up the
mystery of her silence should affect either her happiness or her safety.

Mrs Maple would have been inconsolable at a defence against which she
had nothing positive to object, had she not reaped some comfort from
finding that even Harleigh opposed including the stranger in the acting
circle.

The delay of the performance, and an application to Miss Sycamore,
seemed now settled, when Mrs Fenn, the housekeeper, who was also aiding
in the room, lamented the trouble to be renewed for the
supper-preparations, as neither the fish, nor the pastry, nor sundry
other articles, could keep.

This was a complaint to which Mrs Maple was by no means deaf. The
invitations, also, were made; the drawing-room was given up for the
theatre; another apartment was appropriated for a green-room; and there
was not any chance that the house could be restored to order, nor the
maids to their usual occupations, till this business were finally over.

Her rancour now suddenly relented, with regard to the stranger, and, to
the astonishment of every one, she stopt Harleigh from riding over to
Brighthelmstone, to apply to Miss Sycamore, by concedingly saying, that,
since Mr Harleigh had really so good an opinion of the young woman who
came from France, she must confess that she had herself, of late, taken
a much better notion of her, by finding that she was so excellent a
needle-woman; and, therefore, she did not see why they should send for
so finical a person as Miss Sycamore, who was full of airs and
extravagance, to begin all over again, and disappoint so much company,
when they had a body in the house who might do one of the parts, so as
to pass amongst the rest, without being found out for what she was.

Harleigh expressed his doubts whether the young person herself, who was
obviously in very unpleasant circumstances, might chuse to be brought
forward in so public an amusement.

The gentleness of Mrs Maple was now converted into choler; and she
desired to know, whether a poor wretch such as that, who had her meat,
drink, and lodging for nothing, should be allowed to chuse any thing for
herself one way or another.

Elinor, dropping, though not quite distinctly, some sarcastical
reflections upon the persistence of Harleigh in preferring Miss Sycamore
to his Dulcinea, retired to her room to study the part of Lady Townly;
saying that she should leave them full powers, to wrangle amongst
themselves, for that of Lady Wronghead.

Harleigh, who had not seen the stranger turned into the closet, now
entered it, in search of a pencil. Not a little was then his surprize to
find her sketching, upon the back of a letter, a view of the hills,
downs, cottages, and cattle, which formed the prospect from the window.

It was beautifully executed, and undoubtedly from nature. Harleigh, with
mingled astonishment and admiration, clasped his hands, and
energetically exclaimed, 'Accomplished creature! who ... and what are
you?'

Confused, she blushed, and folded up her little drawing. He seemed
almost equally embarrassed himself, at the expression and the question
which had escaped him. Mrs Maple, following, paradingly told the
stranger, that, as she had hemmed the last cambric-handkerchiefs so
neatly, she might act, upon this particular occasion, with the Miss
Joddrels; only first premising, that she must not own to a living soul
her being such a poor forlorn creature; as the only way to avoid
disgrace to themselves, amongst their acquaintance, for admitting her,
would be to say that she was a young lady of family, who came over with
them from France.

To the last clause, the stranger calmly answered that she could offer no
objection, in a manner which, to the attentive Harleigh, clearly
indicated that it was true; but that, with respect to performing, she
was in a situation too melancholy, if not disastrous, to be capable of
making any such attempt.

Mrs Maple was so angry at this presumption, that she replied, 'Do as you
are ordered, or leave my house directly!' and then walked, in high
wrath, away.

The stranger appeared confounded: she felt an almost resistless impulse
to depart immediately; but something stronger than resentment told her
to stay: it was distress! She paused a moment, and then, with a sigh,
took up the part, and, without looking at Harleigh, who was too much
shocked to offer any palliation for this grossness, walked pensively to
her chamber.

She was soon joined by Elinor, who, in extreme ill humour, complained
that that odious Lady Townly was so intolerably prolix, that there was
no getting her endless babbling by heart, at such short notice: and
that, but for the triumph which it would afford to Miss Arbe, to find
out their embarrassment, and the spite that it would gratify in Aunt
Maple, the whole business should be thrown up at once. Sooner, however,
than be conquered, either by such impertinence, or such malignity, she
would abandon Lady Townly to the prompter, whom Miss Arbe might have the
surprise and amusement to dizen out in her fine attire.

Then, declaring that she hated and would not act with Miss Sycamore, who
was a creature of insolence and conceit, she flung the part of Lady
Townly to the Incognita, saying, that she must abide herself by that of
Lady Wronghead; a name which she well merited to keep for the rest of
her life, from her inconceivable mismanagement of the whole affair.

The stranger earnestly entreated exemption from the undertaking, and
solicited the intercession of Elinor with Mrs Maple, to soften the hard
sentence denounced against her refusal. To act such a character as that
of Lady Townly, she should have thought formidable, if not impossible,
even in her gayest moments: but now, in a situation the most helpless,
and with every reason to wish for obscurity, the exertion would be the
most cruel that could be exacted.

Elinor, however, listened only to herself: Miss Arbe must be mortified;
Mrs Maple must be thwarted; and Miss Sycamore must be omitted: these
three things, she declared, were indispensable, and could only be
accomplished by defying all obstacles, and performing the comedy upon
the appointed day.

The stranger now saw no alternative between obsequiously submitting, or
immediately relinquishing her asylum.

How might she find another? she knew not where even to seek her friend,
and no letter was arrived from abroad.

There was no resource! She decided upon studying the part.

This was not difficult: she had read it at three rehearsals, and had
carefully copied it; but she acquired it mechanically because
unwillingly, and while she got the words by rote, scarcely took their
meaning into consideration.

When called down, at night, to the grand final rehearsal, she gave equal
surprise to Harleigh, from finding her already perfect in so long a
part, and from hearing her repeat it with a tameness almost lifeless.

At the scene of the reconciliation, in the last act, he took her hand,
and slightly kissed the glove. Ireton called out, 'Embrace!
embrace!--the peace-making is always decided, at the theatre, by an
embrace. You must throw your arms lovingly over one another's
shoulders.'

Harleigh did not advance, but he looked at the stranger, and the blush
upon her cheeks shewed her wholly unaccustomed even to the mention of
any personal liberty; Ireton, however, still insisting, he laughingly
excused himself, by declaring, that he must do by Lord Townly as he
would do by himself; and he never meant, should he marry, to be tender
to his wife before company.

Mrs Maple now, extremely anxious for her own credit, told all the
servants, that she had just discovered, that the stranger who came from
France, was a young lady of consequence, and she desired that they would
make a report to that effect throughout the neighbourhood; and, in the
new play-bills which were now written, she suffered to see inserted,
Lady Townly by Miss Ellis.

Harleigh was the first to address the stranger by this name, previously
taking an opportunity, with an air of friendly regard, to advise that
she would adopt it, till she thought right to declare her own. She
thanked him gratefully for his counsel, confessing, that she had long
felt the absurdity of seeming nameless; and adding, 'but I had made no
preparation for what I so little expected, as the length of time in
which I have been kept in this almost unheard of situation! and the
hourly hope of seeing it end, made me decide to spare myself, at least
by silence, from deceit.'

The look of Harleigh shewed his approbation of her motive, while his
words strengthened her conviction, that it must now give way to the
necessity of some denomination. 'Be it Ellis, then,' said she, smiling,
'though evasion may, perhaps, be yet meaner than falsehood!
Nevertheless, I am rather more contented to make use of this name, which
accident has bestowed upon me, than positively to invent one for
myself.'

Ellis, therefore, which appellation, now, will be substituted for that
of the Incognita, seeing no possibility of escaping this exhibition,
comforted herself, that, however repugnant it might be to her
inclinations and her sense of propriety, it gave her, at least, some
chance, during the remainder of her stay at Lewes, of being treated with
less indignity.




CHAPTER XI


The hope of meeting with more consideration in the family, inspirited
Ellis with a wish, hitherto unfelt, of contributing to the purposed
entertainment. The part which she had been obliged to undertake, was too
prominent to be placed in the back ground; and the whole performance
must be flat, if not ridiculous, unless Lady Townly were a principal
person. She read over, therefore, repeated, and studied the character,
with an attention more alive to its meaning, style, and diversities; and
the desire which animated all that she attempted, of doing with her best
means whatever unavoidably must be done, determined her to let no effort
in her power be wanting, to enliven the representation.

The lateness of this resolution, made her application for its
accomplishment so completely fill up her time, that not a moment
remained for those fears of self-deficiency, with which diffidence and
timidity enervate the faculties, and often, in sensitive minds, rob them
of the powers of exertion.

When the hour of exhibition approached, and she was summoned to the
apartment destined for the green-room, universal astonishment was
produced by her appearance. It was not from her dress; they had seen,
and already knew it to be fanciful and fashionable; nor was it the
heightened beauty which her decorations displayed; this, as she was
truly lovely, was an effect that they expected: but it was from the ease
with which she wore her ornaments, the grace with which she set them
off, the elegance of her deportment, and an air of dignified modesty,
that spoke her not only accustomed to such attire, but also to the good
breeding and refined manners, which announce the habits of life to have
been formed in the superior classes of society.

Selina, as she opened the door, exultingly called out, 'Look! look! only
look at Ellis! did you ever see any thing in the world so beautiful?'

Ireton, to whom dress, far more than feature or complexion, presented
attraction, exclaimed, 'By my soul, she's as handsome as an angel!'

Elinor, thus excited, came forward; but seemed struck speechless.

They now all flocked around her; and Mrs Maple, staring, cried, 'Why who
did you get to put your things on for you?' when suddenly recollecting
the new account which she had herself given, and caused to be spread of
this young person, she forced a laugh, and added, 'Bless me, Miss Ellis,
if I had not quite forgotten whom I was speaking to! Why should not Miss
Ellis know how to dress herself as well as any other young lady?'

'Why, indeed,' said Miss Bydel, 'it makes a prodigious change, a young
lady's turning out a young lady, instead of a common young woman. I've
seen a good many of the Ellis's. Pray, Ma'am, does your part of the
family come from Yorkshire? or Devonshire? for I should like to know.'

'And, if there were any gentlemen of your family, with you, Ma'am, in
foreign parts,' said Mr Scope, 'I should be glad to have their opinion
of this Convention, now set up in France: for as to ladies, though they
are certainly very pleasing, they are but indifferent judges in the
political line, not having, ordinarily, heads of that sort. I speak
without offence, inferiority of understanding being no defect in a
female.'

'Well, I thought from the first,' said young Gooch, 'and I said it to
sisters, that the young lady was a young lady, by her travelling, and
that. But pray, Ma'am, did you ever look on, to see that Mr Robert Speer
mow down his hundreds, like to grass in a hay-field? We should not much
like it if they were to do so in England. But the French have no spirit.
They are but a poor set; except their generals, or the like of that.
And, for them, they'll fight you like so many lions. They are afraid of
nobody.'

'By what I hear, Ma'am,' said Mr Stubbs, 'a gentleman, in that country,
may have rents due to the value of thousands, and hardly receive a frog,
as one may say, an acre.'

While thus her fellow-performers surrounded the Incognita, Harleigh,
alone, held back, absorbed in contemplating the fine form, which a
remarkably light and pretty robe, now first displayed; and the beautiful
features, and animated complexion, which were set off to their utmost
lustre, by the waving feathers, and artificial flowers, which were woven
into her soft, glossy, luxuriant brown hair. But though he forbore
offering her any compliments, he no sooner observed that she was seized
with a sudden panic, upon a servant's announcing, that the expected
audience, consisting of some of the principal families of Sussex, was
arrived, than he addressed, and endeavoured to encourage her.

'I am aware, Sir,' she said, 'that it may seem rather like vanity than
diffidence, for one situated as I am to feel any alarm; for as I can
have raised no expectations, what have I to fear from giving any
disappointment? Nevertheless, now the time is come, the attempt grows
formidable. It must seem so strange--so wond'rous strange,--to those who
know not how little my choice has been consulted--'

She was interrupted, for all was ready; and Harleigh was summoned to
open the piece, by the famous question, 'Why did I marry?'

The fright which now had found its way into the mind of the new Lady
Townly, augmented every moment till she appeared; and it was then so
great, as nearly to make her forget her part, and occasion what,
hesitatingly, she was able to utter, to be hardly audible, even to her
fellow-performers. The applause excited by her beauty, figure, and
dress, only added to her embarrassment. She with difficulty kept to her
post, and finished her first scene with complete self-discontent.
Elinor, who watched her throughout it, lost all admiration of her
exterior attractions, from contempt of her feeble performance.

But her second scene exhibited her in another point of view; her
self-displeasure worked her up to exertions that brought forth the
happiest effects; and her evident success produced ease, by inspiring
courage. From this time, her performance acquired a wholly new
character: it seemed the essence of gay intelligence, of well bred
animation, and of lively variety. The grace of her motions made not only
every step but every turn of her head remarkable. Her voice modulated
into all the changes that vivacity, carelesness, pride, pleasure,
indifference, or alarm demanded. Every feature of her face spoke her
discrimination of every word; while the spirit which gave a charm to the
whole, was chastened by a taste the most correct; and while though
modest she was never awkward; though frightened, never ungraceful.

A performance such as this, in a person young, beautiful, and wholly
new, created a surprize so powerful, and a delight so unexpected, that
the play seemed soon to have no other object than Lady Townly, and the
audience to think that no other were worth hearing or beholding; for
though the politeness exacted by a private representation, secured to
every one an apparent attention, all seemed vapid and without merit in
which she was not concerned; while all wore an air of interest in which
she bore the smallest part; and she soon never spoke, looked, nor moved,
but to excite pleasure, admiration, and applause, amounting to rapture.

Whether this excellence were the result of practice and instruction, or
a sudden emanation of general genius, accidentally directed to a
particular point, was disputed by the critics amongst the audience; and
disputed, as usual, with the greater vehemence, from the impossibility
of obtaining documents to decide, or direct opinion. But that which was
regarded as the highest refinement of her acting, was a certain air of
inquietude, which was discernible through the utmost gaiety of her
exertions, and which, with the occasional absence and sadness, that had
their source in her own disturbance, was attributed to deep research
into the latent subjects of uneasiness belonging to the situation of
Lady Townly. This, however, was nature, which would not be repressed;
not art, that strove to be displayed.

But no pleasure excited by her various powers, approached to the
pleasure which they bestowed upon Harleigh, who could look at, could
listen to her alone. To himself, he lost all power of doing justice;
wrapt up in the contemplation of an object thus singular, thus
excelling, thus mysterious, all ambition to personally shining was
forgotten. He could not fail to speak his part with sense and feeling;
he could not help appearing fashioned to represent a man of rank and
understanding; but that address which gives life and meaning to every
phrase; that ingenuity, which beguiles the audience into an illusion,
which, for the current moment, inspires the sympathy due to reality;
that skill which brings forth on the very instant, all the effect which,
to the closet reader, an author can hope to produce from reflection;
these, the attributes of good acting, and for which his taste, his
spirit, and his judgment all fitted him, were now, from slackened
self-attention, beyond his reach, though within his powers. At a public
theatre, such an actress might have proved a spur to have urged the
exertions of competition; in this private one, where success, except to
vanity, was unimportant, her merit was, to Harleigh, an absorbent that
occupied, exclusively, all his faculties.

In the last act, where Lady Townly becomes serious, penitent, and
pathetic, the new actress appeared to yet greater advantage: the state
of her mind accorded with distress, and her fine speaking eyes, her
softly touching voice, her dejected air, and penetrating countenance,
made quicker passage to the feelings of her auditors, even than the
words of the author. All were moved, tears were shed from almost every
eye, and Harleigh, affected and enchanted, at the moment of the
peace-making, took her hand with so much eagerness, and pres

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