The Virginians by William Makepeace Thackeray (top books to read txt) 📕

Lady Yarmouth, pray? Why did you not improve that connexion? She took a great fancy to you. I desire you will be constant at her ladyship's evenings, and lose no opportunity of paying court to her.”

Thus the old woman who had loved Harry so on his first appearance in England, who had been so eager for his company, and pleased with his artless conversation, was taking the side of the world, and turning against him. Instead of the smiles and kisses with which the fickle old creature used once to greet him, she received him with coldness; she became peevish and patronising; she cast gibes and scorn at him before her guests, making his honest face flush with humiliation, and awaking the keenest pangs of grief and amazement in his gentle, manly heart. Madame de Bernstein's servants, who used to treat him with such eager respect, scarcely paid him now any attention. My lady was often indisposed or engaged when he called on her; her people did not press him to wait; did not volunteer to ask whether he would stay and dine, as they used in the days when he was the Fortunate Youth and companion of the wealthy and great. Harry carried his woes to Mrs. Lambert. In a passion of sorrow he told her of his aunt's cruel behaviour to him. He was stricken down and dismayed by the fickleness and heartlessness of the world in its treatment of him. While the good lady and her daughters would move to and fro, and busy themselves with the cares of the house, our poor lad would sit glum in a window-seat, heart-sick and silent.

“I know you are the best people alive,” he would say to the ladies, “and the kindest, and that I must be the dullest company in the world—yes, that I am.”

“Well, you are not very lively, Harry,” says Miss Hetty, who began to command him, and perhaps to ask herself, “What? Is this the gentleman whom I took to be such a hero?”

“If he is unhappy, why should he be lively?” asks Theo, gently. “He has a good heart, and is pained at his friends' desertion of him. Sure there is no harm in that?”

“I would have too much spirit to show I was hurt, though,” cries Hetty, clenching her little fists. “And I would smile, though that horrible old painted woman boxed my ears. She is horrible, mamma. You think so yourself, Theo! Own, now, you think so yourself! You said so last night, and acted her coming in on her crutch, and grinning round to the company.”

“I mayn't like her,” said Theo, turning very red. “But there is no reason why I should call Harry's aunt names before Harry's face.”

“You provoking thing; you are always right!” cries Hetty, “and that's what makes me so angry. Indeed, Harry, it was very wrong of me to make rude remarks about any of your relations.”

“I don't care about the others, Hetty; but it seems hard that this one should turn upon me. I had got to be very fond of her; and you see, it makes me mad, somehow, when people I'm very fond of turn away from me, or act unkind to me.”

“Suppose George were to do so?” asks Hetty. You see, it was George and Hetty, and Theo and Harry, amongst them now.

“You are very clever and very lively, and you may suppose a number of things; but not that, Hetty, if you please,” cried Harry, standing up and looking very resolute and angry. “You don't know my brother as I know him—or you wouldn't take—such a—liberty as to suppose—my brother George could do anything unkind or unworthy!” Mr. Harry was quite in a flush as he spoke.

Hetty turned very white. Then she looked up at Harry, and then she did not say a single word.

Then Harry said, in his simple way, before taking leave, “I'm very sorry, and I beg your pardon, Hetty, if I said anything rough, or that seemed unkind; but I always fight up if anybody says anything against George.”

Hetty did not answer a word out of her pale lips, but gave him her hand, and dropped a prim little curtsey.

When she and Theo were together at night, making curl-paper confidences, “Oh!” said Hetty, “I thought it would be so happy to see him every day, and was so glad when papa said we were to stay in London! And now I do see him, you see, I go on offending him. I can't help offending him; and I know he is not clever, Theo. But oh! isn't he good, and kind, and brave? Didn't he look handsome when he was angry?”

“You silly little thing, you are always trying to make him look handsome,” Theo replied.

It was Theo and Hetty, and Harry and George, among these young people, then; and I dare say the reason why General Lambert chose to apply the monosyllable “Bo” to the mother of his daughters, was as a rebuke to that good woman for the inveterate love of sentiment and propensity to match-making which belonged to her (and every other woman in the world whose heart is worth a fig); and as a hint that Madam Lambert was a goose if she fancied the two Virginian lads were going to fall in love with the young women of the Lambert house. Little Het might have her fancy; little girls will; but they get it over: “and you know, Molly” (which dear, soft-hearted Mrs. Lambert could not deny), “you fancied somebody else before you fancied me,” says the General; but Harry had evidently not been smitten by Hetty; and now he was superseded, as it were, by having an elder brother over him, and could not even call the coat upon his back his own, Master Harry was no great catch.

“Oh yes: now he is poor we will show him the door, as all the rest of the world does, I suppose,” says Mrs. Lambert.

“That is what I always do, isn't it, Molly? turn my back on my friends in distress?” asks the General.

“No, my dear! I am a goose, now, and that I own, Martin!” says the wife, having recourse to the usual pocket-handkerchief.

“Let the poor boy come to us and welcome: ours is almost the only house in this selfish place where so much can be said for him. He is unhappy, and to be with us puts him at ease; in God's name let him be with us!” says the kind-hearted officer. Accordingly, whenever poor crestfallen Hal wanted a dinner, or an evening's entertainment, Mr. Lambert's table had a corner for him. So was George welcome, too. He went among the Lamberts, not at first with the cordiality which Harry felt for these people, and inspired among them: for George was colder in his manner, and more mistrustful of himself and others than his twin-brother: but there was a goodness and friendliness about the family which touched almost all people who came into frequent contact with them; and George soon learned to love them for their own sake, as well as for their constant regard and kindness to his brother. He could not but see and own how sad Harry was, and pity his brother's depression. In his sarcastic way, George would often take himself to task before his brother for coming to life again, and say, “Dear Harry, I am George the Unlucky, though you have ceased to be Harry the Fortunate. Florac would have done much better not to pass his sword through that Indian's body, and to have left my scalp as an ornament for