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

little tradesmen and humble folks round about us treated her with as much respect as the richest of our neighbours. “I think, my dear,” says good-natured Mrs. Foker, when they rode out in the latter's chariot, “you look like the mistress of the carriage, and I only as your maid.” Our landladies adored her; the tradesfolk executed her little orders as eagerly as if a duchess gave them, or they were to make a fortune by waiting on her. I have thought often of the lady in Comus, and how, through all the rout and rabble, she moves, entirely serene and pure.

Several times, as often as we chose indeed, the good-natured parents of my young bear lent us their chariot to drive abroad or to call on the few friends we had. If I must tell the truth, we drove once to the Protestant Hero and had a syllabub in the garden there: and the hostess would insist upon calling my wife her ladyship during the whole afternoon. We also visited Mr. Johnson, and took tea with him (the ingenious Mr. Goldsmith was of the company); the Doctor waited upon my wife to her coach. But our most frequent visits were to Aunt Bernstein, and I promise you I was not at all jealous because my aunt presently professed to have a wonderful liking for Theo.

This liking grew so that she would have her most days in the week, or to stay altogether with her, and thought that Theo's child and husband were only plagues to be sure, and hated us in the most amusing way for keeping her favourite from her. Not that my wife was unworthy of anybody's favour; but her many forced absences, and the constant difficulty of intercourse with her, raised my aunt's liking for a while to a sort of passion. She poured in notes like love-letters; and her people were ever about our kitchen. If my wife did not go to her, she wrote heartrending appeals, and scolded me severely when I saw her; and, the child being ill once (it hath pleased Fate to spare our Captain to be a prodigious trouble to us, and a wholesome trial for our tempers), Madame Bernstein came three days running to Lambeth; vowed there was nothing the matter with the baby;—nothing at all;—and that we only pretended his illness, in order to vex her.

The reigning Countess of Castlewood was just as easy and affable with her old aunt, as with other folks great and small. “What air you all about, scraping and bowing to that old woman, I can't tell, noways!” her ladyship would say. “She a fine lady! Nonsense! She ain't no more fine than any other lady: and I guess I'm as good as any of 'em with their high heels and their grand airs! She a beauty once! Take away her wig, and her rouge, and her teeth; and what becomes of your beauty, I'd like to know? Guess you'd put it all in a bandbox, and there would be nothing left but a shrivelled old woman!” And indeed the little homilist only spoke too truly. All beauty must at last come to this complexion; and decay, either underground or on the tree. Here was old age, I fear, without reverence. Here were grey hairs, that were hidden or painted. The world was still here, and she tottering on it, and clinging to it with her crutch. For fourscore years she had moved on it, and eaten of the tree, forbidden and permitted. She had had beauty, pleasure, flattery: but what secret rages, disappointments, defeats, humiliations! what thorns under the roses! what stinging bees in the fruit! “You are not a beauty, my dear,” she would say to my wife: “and may thank your stars that you are not.” (If she contradicted herself in her talk, I suppose the rest of us occasionally do the like.) “Don't tell me that your husband is pleased with your face, and you want no one else's admiration! We all do. Every woman would rather be beautiful than be anything else in the world—ever so rich, or ever so good, or have all the gifts of the fairies! Look at that picture, though I know 'tis but a bad one, and that stupid vapouring Kneller could not paint my eyes, nor my hair, nor my complexion. What a shape I had then—and look at me now, and this wrinkled old neck! Why have we such a short time of our beauty? I remember Mademoiselle de l'Enclos at a much greater age than mine, quite fresh and well-conserved. We can't hide our ages. They are wrote in Mr. Collins's books for us. I was born in the last year of King James's reign. I am not old yet. I am but seventy-six. But what a wreck, my dear: and isn't it cruel that our time should be so short?”

Here my wife has to state the incontrovertible proposition, that the time of all of us is short here below.

“Ha!” cries the Baroness. “Did not Adam live near a thousand years, and was not Eve beautiful all the time? I used to perplex Mr. Tusher with that—poor creature! What have we done since, that our lives are so much lessened, I say?”

“Has your life been so happy that you would prolong it ever so much more?” asks the Baroness's auditor. “Have you, who love wit, never read Dean Swift's famous description of the deathless people in Gulliver? My papa and my husband say 'tis one of the finest and most awful sermons ever wrote. It were better not to live at all, than to live without love; and I'm sure,” says my wife, putting her handkerchief to her eyes, “should anything happen to my dearest George, I would wish to go to Heaven that moment.”

“Who loves me in Heaven? I am quite alone, child—that is why I had rather stay here,” says the Baroness, in a frightened and rather piteous tone. “You are kind to me, God bless your sweet face! Though I scold, and have a frightful temper, my servants will do anything to make me comfortable, and get up at any hour of the night, and never say a cross word in answer. I like my cards still. Indeed, life would be a blank without 'em. Almost everything is gone except that. I can't eat my dinner now, since I lost those last two teeth. Everything goes away from us in old age. But I still have my cards—thank Heaven, I still have my cards!” And here she would begin to doze: waking up, however, if my wife stirred or rose, and imagining that Theo was about to leave her. “Don't go away, I can't bear to be alone. I don't want you to talk. But I like to see your face, my dear! It is much pleasanter than that horrid old Brett's, that I have had scowling about my bedroom these ever so long years.”

“Well, Baroness! still at your cribbage?” (We may fancy a noble Countess interrupting a game at cards between Theo and Aunt Bernstein.) “Me and my Lord Esmond have come to see you! Go and shake hands with grandaunt, Esmond! and tell her ladyship that your lordship's a good boy!”

“My lordship's a good boy,” says the child. (Madam Theo used to act these scenes for me in a very lively way.)

“And if he is, I guess he don't take after his father,” shrieks out Lady Castlewood. She chose to fancy that Aunt Bernstein was deaf, and always bawled at the old lady.

“Your ladyship chose my nephew for better or for worse,” says Aunt Bernstein, who was now always very much flurried in the presence of the young Countess.

“But he is a precious deal worse than ever I thought he was. I am speaking of your Pa, Ezzy. If it wasn't for your mother, my son, Lord knows what would become of you! We are a-going to see his little Royal Highness. Sorry to see your ladyship not looking quite so well to-day. We can't