Essential Novelists - Maria Edgeworth - Maria Edgeworth Essential Novelists

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voice suddenly altered from the tone of grief to that of anger —“my husband hates me — no matter — I despise him. His relations hate me — no matter — I despise them. My own relations hate me — no matter, I never wish to see them more — never shall they see my sorrow — never shall they hear a complaint, a sigh from me. There is no torture which I could not more easily endure than their insulting pity. I will die, as I have lived, the envy and admiration of the world. When I am gone, let them find out their mistake; and moralize, if they will, over my grave.” She paused. Belinda had no power to speak.

      “Promise, swear to me,” resumed Lady Delacour vehemently, seizing Belinda’s hand, “that you will never reveal to any mortal what you have seen and heard this night. No living creature suspects that Lady Delacour is dying by inches, except Marriott and that woman whom but a few hours ago I thought my real friend, to whom I trusted every secret of my life, every thought of my heart. Fool! idiot! dupe that I was to trust to the friendship of a woman whom I knew to be without principle: but I thought she had honour; I thought she could never betray me — O Harriot! Harriot! you to desert me! — Any thing else I could have borne — but you, who I thought would have supported me in the tortures of mind and body which I am to go through — you that I thought would receive my last breath — you to desert me! — Now I am alone in the world — left to the mercy of an insolent waiting-woman.”

      Lady Delacour hid her face in Belinda’s lap, and almost stifled by the violence of contending emotions, she at last gave vent to them, and sobbed aloud.

      “Trust to one,” said Belinda, pressing her hand, with all the tenderness which humanity could dictate, “who will never leave you at the mercy of an insolent waiting-woman — trust to me.”

      “Trust to you!” said Lady Delacour, looking up eagerly in Belinda’s face; “yes — I think — I may trust to you; for though a niece of Mrs. Stanhope’s, I have seen this day, and have seen with surprise, symptoms of artless feeling about you. This was what tempted me to open my mind to you when I found that I had lost the only friend — but I will think no more of that — if you have a heart, you must feel for me. — Leave me now — tomorrow you shall hear my whole history — now I am quite exhausted — ring for Marriott.” Marriott appeared with a face of constrained civility and latent rage. “Put me to bed, Marriott,” said Lady Delacour, with a subdued voice; “but first light Miss Portman to her room — she need not — yet — see the horrid business of my toilette.”

      Belinda, when she was left alone, immediately opened her shutters, and threw up the sash, to refresh herself with the morning air. She felt excessively fatigued, and in the hurry of her mind she could not think of any thing distinctly. She took off her masquerade dress, and went to bed in hopes of forgetting, for a few hours, what she felt indelibly impressed upon her imagination. But it was in vain that she endeavoured to compose herself to sleep; her ideas were in too great and painful confusion. For some time, whenever she closed her eyes, the face and form of Lady Delacour, such as she had just beheld them, seemed to haunt her; afterwards, the idea of Clarence Hervey, and the painful recollection of the conversation she had overheard, recurred to her: the words, “Do you think I don’t know that Belinda Portman is a composition of art and affectation?” fixed in her memory. She recollected with the utmost minuteness every look of contempt which she had seen in the faces of the young men whilst they spoke of Mrs. Stanhope, the match-maker. Belinda’s mind, however, was not yet sufficiently calm to reflect; she seemed only to live over again the preceding night. At last, the strange motley figures which she had seen at the masquerade flitted before her eyes, and she sunk into an uneasy slumber.

      Chapter 3. — Lady Delacour’s History.

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      MISS PORTMAN WAS AWAKENED by the ringing of Lady Delacour’s bedchamber bell. She opened her eyes with the confused idea that something disagreeable had happened; and before she had distinctly recollected herself, Marriott came to her bedside, with a note from Lady Delacour: it was written with a pencil.

      “DELACOUR—my lord!!!! is to have to-day what Garrick used to call a gander feast— will you dine with me tête-à-tête, and I’ll write an excuse, alias a lie, to Lady Singleton, in the form of a charming note — I pique myself sur l’éloquence du billet— then we shall have the evening to ourselves. I have much to say, as people usually have when they begin to talk of themselves.

      “I have taken a double dose of opium, and am not so horribly out of spirits as I was last night; so you need not be afraid of another scene.

      “Let me see you in my dressing-room, dear Belinda, as soon as you have adored

      ‘With head uncover’d the cosmetic powers.’

      “But you don’t paint — no matter — you will — you must — every body must, sooner or later. In the mean time, whenever you want to send a note that shall not be opened by the bearer, put your trust neither in wafer nor wax, but twist it as I twist mine. You see I wish to put you in possession of some valuable secrets before I leave this world — this, by-the-bye, I don’t, upon second thoughts, which are always best, mean to do yet. There certainly were such people as Amazons — I hope you admire them — for who could live without the admiration of Belinda Portman? — not Clarence Hervey assuredly — nor yet

      “T. C. H. DELACOUR.”

      Belinda obeyed the summons to her ladyship’s dressing-room: she found Lady Delacour with her face completely repaired with paint, and her spirits with opium. She was in high consultation with Marriott and Mrs. Franks, the milliner, about the crape petticoat of her birthnight dress, which was extended over a large hoop in full state. Mrs. Franks descanted long and learnedly upon festoons and loops, knots and fringes, submitting all the time every thing to her ladyship’s better judgment.

      Marriott was sulky and silent. She opened her lips but once upon the question of laburnum or no laburnum flowers.

      Against them she quoted the memoirs and authority of the celebrated Mrs. Bellamy, who has a case in point to prove that “straw colour must ever look like dirty white by candlelight.” Mrs. Franks, to compromise the matter, proposed gold laburnums, “because nothing can look better by candlelight, or any light, than gold;” and Lady Delacour, who was afraid that the milliner’s imagination, now that it had once touched upon gold, might be led to the vulgar idea of ready money, suddenly broke up the conference, by exclaiming,

      “We shall be late at Phillips’s exhibition of French china. Mrs. Franks must let us see her again to-morrow, to take into consideration your court dress, my dear Belinda —‘Miss Portman presented by Lady Delacour’— Mrs. Franks, let her dress, for heaven’s sake, be something that will make a fine paragraph:— I give you four-and-twenty hours to think of it. I have done a horrid act this day,” continued she, after Mrs. Franks had left the room —“absolutely written a twisted note to Clarence Hervey, my dear — but why did I tell you that? Now your head will run upon the twisted note all day, instead of upon ‘The Life and Opinions of a Lady of Quality, related by herself.’”

      After dinner Lady Delacour having made Belinda protest and blush, and blush and protest, that her head was not running upon the twisted note, began the history of her life and opinions in the following manner:—

      “I do nothing by halves, my dear. I shall not tell you my adventures as Gil Blas told his to the Count d’Olivarez — skipping over the usefulpassages. I am no hypocrite, and have nothing worse than folly to conceal: that’s bad enough — for a woman who is known to play the fool is always suspected of playing the devil. But I begin where I ought to end — with my moral, which I dare say you are not impatient to anticipate. I never read or listened to a moral at the end of a story in my life:— manners for me, and morals for those that like them. My dear, you will be woefully disappointed if in my story you expect any thing like a novel. I once heard a general say, that nothing was less like a review than a battle; and I can tell you that nothing is more unlike

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