that, through this tragical disguise, I have not found you out?”
The tragic muse, apparently absorbed in meditation, vouchsafed no reply.
“The devil a word can you get for your pains, Hervey,” said a gentleman of his acquaintance, who joined the party at this instant. “Why didn’t you stick to t’other muse, who, to do her justice, is as arrant a flirt as your heart could wish for?”
“There’s danger in flirting,” said Clarence, “with an arrant flirt of Mrs. Stanhope’s training. There’s a kind of electricity about that girl. I have a sort of cobweb feeling, an imaginary net coming all over me.”
“Fore-warned is fore-armed,” replied his companion: “a man must be a novice indeed that could be taken in at this time of day by a niece of Mrs. Stanhope’s.”
“That Mrs. Stanhope must be a good clever dame, faith,” said a third gentleman: “there’s no less than six of her nieces whom she has got off within these four winters — not one of ’em now that has not made a catch-match. — There’s the eldest of the set, Mrs. Tollemache, what had she, in the devil’s name, to set up with in the world but a pair of good eyes? — her aunt, to be sure, taught her the use of them early enough: they might have rolled to all eternity before they would have rolled me out of my senses; but you see they did Tollemache’s business. However, they are going to part now, I hear: Tollemache was tired of her before the honey-moon was over, as I foretold. Then there’s the musical girl. Joddrell, who has no more ear than a post, went and married her, because he had a mind to set up for a connoisseur in music; and Mrs. Stanhope flattered him that he was one.”
The gentlemen joined in the general laugh: the tragic muse sighed.
“Even were she at the School for Scandal, the tragic muse dare not laugh, except behind her mask,” said Clarence Hervey.
“Far be it from her to laugh at those follies which she must for ever deplore!” said Belinda, in a feigned voice. —“What miseries spring from these ill-suited marriages! The victims are sacrificed before they have sense enough to avoid their fate.”
Clarence Hervey imagined that this speech alluded to Lady Delacour’s own marriage.
“Damn me if I know any woman, young or old, that would avoid being married, if she could, though,” cried Sir Philip Baddely, a gentleman who always supplied “each vacuity of sense” with an oath: “but, Rochfort, didn’t Valleton marry one of these nieces?”
“Yes: she was a mighty fine dancer, and had good legs enough: Mrs. Stanhope got poor Valleton to fight a duel about her place in a country dance, and then he was so pleased with himself for his prowess, that he married the girl.”
Belinda made an effort to change her seat, but she was encompassed so that she could not retreat.
“As to Jenny Mason, the fifth of the nieces,” continued the witty gentleman, “she was as brown as mahogany, and had neither eyes, nose, mouth, nor legs: what Mrs. Stanhope could do with her I often wondered; but she took courage, rouged her up, set her a going as a dasher, and she dashed herself into Tom Levit’s curricle, and Tom couldn’t get her out again till she was the honourable Mrs. Levit: she then took the reins into her own hands, and I hear she’s driving him and herself the road to ruin as fast as they can gallop. As for this Belinda Portman, ’twas a good hit to send her to Lady Delacour’s; but, I take it she hangs upon hand; for last winter, when I was at Bath, she was hawked about every where, and the aunt was puffing her with might and main. You heard of nothing, wherever you went, but of Belinda Portman, and Belinda Portman’s accomplishments: Belinda Portman, and her accomplishments, I’ll swear, were as well advertised as Packwood’s razor strops.”
“Mrs. Stanhope overdid the business, I think,” resumed the gentleman who began the conversation: “girls brought to the hammer this way don’t go off well. It’s true, Christie himself is no match for dame Stanhope. Many of my acquaintance were tempted to go and look at the premises, but not one, you may be sure, had a thought of becoming a tenant for life.”
“That’s an honour reserved for you, Clarence Hervey,” said another, tapping him upon the shoulder. —“Give ye joy, Hervey; give ye joy!”
“Me!” said Clarence, starting.
“I’ll be hanged if he didn’t change colour,” said his facetious companion; and all the young men again joined in a laugh.
“Laugh on, my merry men all!” cried Clarence; “but the devil’s in it if I don’t know my own mind better than any of you. You don’t imagine I go to Lady Delacour’s to look for a wife?— Belinda Portman’s a good pretty girl, but what then? Do you think I’m an idiot? — do you think I could be taken in by one of the Stanhope school? Do you think I don’t see as plainly as any of you that Belinda Portman’s a composition of art and affectation?”
“Hush — not so loud, Clarence; here she comes,” said his companion. “The comic muse, is not she —?”
Lady Delacour, at this moment, came lightly tripping towards them, and addressing herself, in the character of the comic muse, to Hervey, exclaimed,
“Hervey! my Hervey! most favoured of my votaries, why do you forsake me?
‘Why mourns my friend, why weeps his downcast eye?
That eye where mirth and fancy used to shine.’
Though you have lost your serpent’s form, yet you may please any of the fair daughters of Eve in your own.”
Mr. Hervey bowed; all the gentlemen who stood near him smiled; the tragic muse gave an involuntary sigh.
“Could I borrow a sigh, or a tear, from my tragic sister,” pursued Lady Delacour, “however unbecoming to my character, I would, if only sighs or tears can win the heart of Clarence Hervey:— let me practise”— and her ladyship practised sighing with much comic effect.
“Persuasive words and more persuasive sighs,”
said Clarence Hervey.
“A good bold Stanhope cast of the net, faith,” whispered one of his companions. “Melpomene, hast thou forgot thyself to marble?” pursued Lady Delacour. “I am not very well,” whispered Miss Portman to her ladyship: “could we get away?”
“Get away from Clarence Hervey, do you mean?” replied her ladyship, in a whisper: “’tis not easy, but we’ll try what can be done, if it is necessary.”
Belinda had no power to reply to this raillery; indeed, she scarcely heard the words that were said to her; but she put her arm within Lady Delacour’s, who, to her great relief, had the good nature to leave the room with her immediately. Her ladyship, though she would sacrifice the feelings of others, without compunction, to her vanity, whenever the power of her wit was disputed, yet towards those by whom it was acknowledged she showed some mercy.
“What is the matter with the child?” said she, as she went down the staircase.
“Nothing, if I could have air,” said Belinda. There was a crowd of servants in the hall.
“Why does Lady Delacour avoid me so pertinaciously? What crime have I committed, that I was not favoured with one word?” said Clarence Hervey, who had followed them down stairs, and overtook them in the
