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

Our Castlewood relatives kept us with them till the commencement of the new year, and after a fortnight's absence (which seemed like an age to the absurd and infatuated young man) he returned to the side of his charmer. Madame de Bernstein was not sorry to leave the home of her father. She began to talk more freely as we got away from the place. What passed during that interview in which the battle-royal between her and her niece occurred, she never revealed. But the old lady talked no more of forming cette petite, and, indeed, when she alluded to her, spoke in a nervous, laughing way, but without any hostility towards the young Countess. Her nephew Eugene, she said, was doomed to be henpecked for the rest of his days that she saw clearly. A little order brought into the house would do it all the good possible. The little old vulgar American gentleman seemed to be a shrewd person, and would act advantageously as a steward. The Countess's mother was a convict, she had heard, sent out from England, where no doubt she had beaten hemp in most of the gaols; but this news need not be carried to the town-crier; and, after all, in respect to certain kind of people, what mattered what their birth was? The young woman would be honest for her own sake now: was shrewd enough, and would learn English presently; and the name to which she had a right was great enough to get her into any society. A grocer, a smuggler, a slave-dealer, what mattered Mr. Van den Bosch's pursuit or previous profession? The Countess of Castlewood could afford to be anybody's daughter, and as soon as my nephew produced her, says the old lady, it is our duty to stand by her.

The ties of relationship binding Madame de Bernstein strongly to her nephew, Mr. Warrington hoped that she would be disposed to be equally affectionate to her niece; and spoke of his visit to Mr. Hagan and his wife, for whom he entreated her aunt's favour. But the old lady was obdurate regarding Lady Maria; begged that her name might never be mentioned, and immediately went on for two hours talking about no one else. She related a series of anecdotes regarding her niece, which, as this book lies open virginibus puerisque, to all the young people of the family, I shall not choose to record. But this I will say of the kind creature, that if she sinned, she was not the only sinner of the family, and if she repented, that others will do well to follow her example. Hagan, 'tis known, after he left the stage, led an exemplary life, and was remarkable for elegance and eloquence in the pulpit. His lady adopted extreme views, but was greatly respected in the sect which she joined; and when I saw her last, talked to me of possessing a peculiar spiritual illumination, which I strongly suspected at the time to be occasioned by the too free use of liquor: but I remember when she and her husband were good to me and mine, at a period when sympathy was needful, and many a Pharisee turned away.

I have told how easy it was to rise and fall in my fickle aunt's favour, and how each of us brothers, by turns, was embraced and neglected. My turn of glory had been after the success of my play. I was introduced to the town-wits; held my place in their company tolerably well; was pronounced to be pretty well bred by the macaronis and people of fashion, and might have run a career amongst them had my purse been long enough; had I chose to follow that life; had I not loved at that time a pair of kind eyes better than the brightest orbs of the Gunnings or Chudleighs, or all the painted beauties of the Ranelagh ring. Because I was fond of your mother, will it be believed, children, that my tastes were said to be low, and deplored by my genteel family? So it was, and I know that my godly Lady Warrington and my worldly Madame Bernstein both laid their elderly heads together and lamented my way of life. “Why, with his name, he might marry anybody,” says meek Religion, who had ever one eye on Heaven and one on the main chance. “I meddle with no man's affairs, and admire genius,” says uncle, “but it is a pity you consort with those poets and authors, and that sort of people, and that, when you might have had a lovely creature, with a hundred thousand pounds, you let her slip and make up to a country girl without a penny-piece.”

“But if I had promised her, uncle?” says I.

“Promise, promise! these things are matters of arrangement and prudence, and demand a careful look-out. When you first committed yourself with little Miss Lambert, you had not seen the lovely American lady whom your mother wished you to marry, as a good mother naturally would. And your duty to your mother, nephew,—your duty to the Fifth Commandment, would have warranted your breaking with Miss L., and fulfilling your excellent mother's intentions regarding Miss—What was the Countess's Dutch name? Never mind. A name is nothing; but a plumb, Master George, is something to look at! Why, I have my dear little Miley at a dancing-school with Miss Barwell, Nabob Barwell's daughter, and I don't disguise my wish that the children may contract an attachment which may endure through their lives! I tell the Nabob so. We went from the House of Commons one dancing-day and saw them. 'Twas beautiful to see the young things walking a minuet together! It brought tears into my eyes, for I have a feeling heart, George, and I love my boy!”

“But if I prefer Miss Lambert, uncle, with twopence to her fortune, to the Countess, with her hundred thousand pounds?”

“Why then, sir, you have a singular taste, that's all,” says the old gentleman, turning on his heel and leaving me. And I could perfectly understand his vexation at my not being able to see the world as he viewed it.

Nor did my Aunt Bernstein much like the engagement which I had made, or the family with which I passed so much of my time. Their simple ways wearied, and perhaps annoyed, the old woman of the world, and she no more relished their company than a certain person (who is not so black as he is painted) likes holy water. The old lady chafed at my for ever dangling at my sweetheart's lap. Having risen mightily in her favour, I began to fall again: and once more Harry was the favourite, and his brother, Heaven knows, not jealous.

He was now our family hero. He wrote us brief letters from the seat of war where he was engaged; Madame Bernstein caring little at first about the letters or the writer, for they were simple, and the facts he narrated not over interesting. We had early learned in London the news of the action on the glorious first of August at Minden, where Wolfe's old regiment was one of