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

“Eh, ma fille!” whispers the lady. “Thou wouldst ask me what I said? I said 'Yes!'—behold all I said.” And so 'tis my wife has peached, and not I; and this was the sum of our conversation, as the carriage, all too swiftly as I thought, galloped towards Hampstead, and flew back again. Theo had not agreed to fly in the face of her honoured parents—no such thing. But we would marry no other person; no, not if we lived to be as old as Methuselah; no, not the Prince of Wales himself would she take. Her heart she had given away with her papa's consent—nay, order—it was not hers to resume. So kind a father must relent one of these days; and, if George would keep his promise—were it now, or were it in twenty years, or were it in another world, she knew she should never break hers.

Hetty's face beamed with delight when, my little interview over, she saw Theo's countenance wearing a sweet tranquillity. All the doctor's medicine has not done her so much good, the fond sister said. The girls went home after their act of disobedience. I gave up the place which I had held during a brief period of happiness by my dear invalid's side. Hetty skipped back into her seat, and Charley on to his box. He told me in after days, that it was a very dull, stupid sermon he had heard. The little chap was too orthodox to love dissenting preachers' sermons.

Hetty was not the only one of the family who remarked her sister's altered countenance and improved spirits. I am told that on the girls' return home their mother embraced both of them, especially the invalid, with more than common ardour of affection. “There was nothing like a country ride,” Aunt Lambert said, “for doing her dear Theo good. She had been on the road to Hampstead, had she? She must have another ride to-morrow. Heaven be blessed, my Lord Wrotham's horses were at their orders three or four times a week, and the sweet child might have the advantage of them!” As for the idea that Mr. Warrington might have happened to meet the children on their drive, Aunt Lambert never once entertained it,—at least spoke of it. I leave anybody who is interested in the matter to guess whether Mrs. Lambert could by any possibility have supposed that her daughter and her sweetheart could ever have come together again. Do women help each other in love perplexities? Do women scheme, intrigue, make little plans, tell little fibs, provide little amorous opportunities, hang up the rope-ladder, coax, wheedle, mystify the guardian or Abigail, and turn their attention away while Strephon and Chloe are billing and cooing in the twilight, or whisking off in the postchaise to Gretna Green? My dear young folks, some people there are of this nature; and some kind souls who have loved tenderly and truly in their own time, continue ever after to be kindly and tenderly disposed towards their young successors, when they begin to play the same pretty game.

Miss Prim doesn't. If she hears of two young persons attached to each other, it is to snarl at them for fools, or to imagine of them all conceivable evil. Because she has a hump-back herself, she is for biting everybody else's. I believe if she saw a pair of turtles cooing in a wood, she would turn her eyes down, or fling a stone to frighten them; but I am speaking, you see, young ladies, of your grandmother, Aunt Lambert, who was one great syllabub of human kindness; and, besides, about the affair at present under discussion, how am I ever to tell whether she knew anything regarding it or not?

So, all she says to Theo on her return home is, “My child, the country air has done you all the good in the world, and I hope you will take another drive to-morrow, and another, and another, and so on.”

“Don't you think, papa, the ride has done the child most wonderful good, and must not she be made to go out in the air?” Aunt Lambert asks of the General, when he comes in for supper.

“Yes, sure, if a coach-and-six will do his little Theo good, she shall have it,” Lambert says, “or he will drag the landau up Hampstead Hill himself, if there are no horses;” and so the good man would have spent, freely, his guineas, or his breath, or his blood, to give his child pleasure. He was charmed at his girl's altered countenance; she picked a bit of chicken with appetite: she drank a little negus, which he made for her: indeed it did seem to be better than the kind doctor's best medicine, which hitherto, God wot, had been of little benefit. Mamma was gracious and happy. Hetty was radiant and rident. It was quite like an evening at home at Oakhurst. Never for months past, never since that fatal, cruel day, that no one spoke of, had they spent an evening so delightful.

But, if the other women chose to coax and cajole the good, simple father, Theo herself was too honest to continue for long even that sweet and fond delusion. When, for the third or fourth time, he comes back to the delightful theme of his daughter's improved health, and asks, “What has done it? Is it the country air? is it the Jesuit's bark? is it the new medicine?”

“Can't you think, dear, what it is?” she says, laying a hand upon her father's, with a tremor in her voice, perhaps, but eyes that are quite open and bright.

“And what is it, my child?” asks the General.

“It is because I have seen him again, papa!” she says.

The other two women turned pale, and Theo's heart too begins to palpitate, and her cheek to whiten, as she continues to look in her father's scared face.

“It was not wrong to see him,” she continues, more quickly; “it would have been wrong not to tell you.”

“Great God!” groans the father, drawing his hand back, and with such a dreadful grief in his countenance, that Hetty runs to her almost swooning sister, clasps her to her heart, and cries out, rapidly, “Theo knew nothing of it, sir! It was my doing—it was all my doing!”

Theo lies on her sister's neck, and kisses it twenty, fifty times.

“Women, women! are you playing with my honour?” cries the father, bursting out with a fierce exclamation.

Aunt Lambert sobs, wildly, “Martin! Martin! Don't say a word to her!” again calls out Hetty, and falls back herself staggering towards the wall, for Theo has fainted on her shoulder.

I was taking my breakfast next morning, with what appetite I might, when my door opens, and my faithful black announces, “General Lambert.” At once I saw, by the General's face, that the yesterday's transaction was known to him. “Your accomplices did not confess,” the General said, as soon as my servant had left us, “but sided with you against their father—a proof how desirable clandestine meetings are. It was from Theo herself I heard that she had seen you.”

“Accomplices, sir!” I said (perhaps not unwilling to turn the conversation from the real point at issue). “You know how fondly and dutifully your young people regard their father. If they side against you in this instance, it must be because justice is against you. A man like you is not going to set up sic volo sic jubeo as the sole law in his family!”

“Psha, George!” cries the General. “For though we are parted, God forbid I should desire that we