COLONEL GOLDSWORTHY’S BREACH OF ETIQUETTE.
Mrs. Schwellenberg has become both colder and fiercer. I cannot now even meet her eyes-they are almost terrifying. Nothing upon earth having passed between us, nor the most remote subject of offence having occurred, I have only one thing on which to rest my conjectures, for the cause of this newly-awakened evil spirit, and this is from the gentlemen. They had all of late been so wearied that they could not submit even for a quarter of an hour to her society: they had swallowed a dish of tea and quitted the room all in five minutes, and Colonel Goldsworthy in particular, when without any companion in his waiting, had actually always fallen asleep, even during that short interval, or at least shut his eyes, to save himself the toil of speaking.
This she brooked very ill, but I was esteemed innocent, and therefore made, occasionally, the confidant of her complaints. But lately, that she has been ill, and kept upstairs every night, she has always desired me to come to her as soon as tea was over, which, she observed, “need not keep me five minutes.” On the contrary, however, the tea is now at least an hour, and often more.
I have been constantly received with reproaches for not coming sooner, and compelled to declare I had not been sooner at liberty. This has occasioned a deep and visible resentment, all against them, yet vented upon me, not in acknowledged displeasure—pride there interfered—but in constant ill-humour, ill-breeding, and ill-will.
At length, however, she has broken out into one inquiry, which, if favourably answered, might have appeased all; but truth was too strongly in the way. A few evenings after her confinement she very gravely said, “Colonel Goldsworthy always sleeps with me! sleeps he with you the same?”
In the midst of all my irksome discomfort, it was with difficulty I could keep my countenance at this question, which I was forced to negative.
The next evening she repeated it. “Vell, sleeps he yet with you—Colonel Goldsworthy?”
“Not yet, ma’am,” I hesitatingly answered.
“O! ver vell! he will sleep with nobody but me! O, i von’t come down.”
And a little after she added, “I believe he vill marry you.”
“I believe not, ma’am,” I answered.
And then, very gravely, she proposed him to me, saying he only wanted a little encouragement, for he was always declaring he wished for a wife, and yet wanted no fortune—“so for what won’t you not have him?”
I assured her we were both perfectly well satisfied apart, and equally free from any thoughts of each other.
“Then for what,” she cried, “won’t you have Dr. Shepherd?” She Is now in the utmost haste to dispose of me! And then she added she had been told that Dr. Shepherd would marry me!
She is an amazing woman! Alas, I might have told her I knew too well what it was to be tied to a companion ill-assorted and unbeloved, where I could not help myself, to make any such experiment as a volunteer!
If she asks me any more about Colonel Goldsworthy and his sleeping, I think I will answer I am too near-sighted to be sure if he is awake or not!
However, I cannot but take this stroke concerning the table extremely ill; for though amongst things of the very least consequence in itself, it is more openly designed as an affront than any step that has been taken with me yet.
I have given the colonel a hint, however,-that he may keep awake in future....