“Listen to him,” exclaimed Jemima, aghast; “lor’ a mussy! I hope he ain’t a wandering, or took to the drink. Master Richard, will ye please to wake and talk like a Christian, and not go frightening a body out of their wits,” she continued in a tone of voice as of an agitated sea-mew.
“Eh, what? oh, is that you, Jemima? I was so sound asleep; go away and I’ll get up directly,” muttered Frere, becoming conscious of those usual colloquial antipodes, “his room and his company.” But Jemima had been flurried and rendered anxious on his account, first by his silence, next by his incoherent address, and now finding her alarm had been without foundation, her better feelings turned sour, and having her master at an advantage, seeing that he could not rise till she should please to convey herself away, she gave vent to her acidulated sentiments in the following harangue—
“Yes, it’s all very well to say ‘go away,’ as if you was speaking to a dog, after frightening people out of their wits by talking gibberish about shooting and fine roses; but I see how it is, you’re a taking to evil courses, a staying out here till one o’clock in the morning, for I heard ye a comin’ in, lying awake with the rhumatiz in the small o’ my back, drinking and smoking cigars, which spiles the teeth and hundermines the hintellects, and accounts for being non compo Mondays the next morning; but I’ve lived with you and yours thirty year and odd, and I ain’t a-going to see you rack-and-ruining of your constitution without a-speaking up to tell you of it, for all your looking black at the woman that nursed you when yer was an hinocent babby, all onconscious of sich goings on.”
“My good woman, don’t talk such rubbish, but go away and let me get my things on,” returned Frere in a species of apologetic growl.
“Rubbish indeed!” continued Jemima in a violent falsetto, her temper being thoroughly aroused by the contemptuous epithet applied to her unappreciated homily; “that’s all the thanks one gets for one’s good advice, is it? but I don’t care. I’ve lived with you, man and boy, nigh half my life, which, like the grass of the field, is three score years and ten come Michaelmas twelvemonth, and I’m not a-going to see you take to evil courses without lifting up my voice as a deacon set on a hill to warn you against ’em, which is what your blessed mother would have done only too gladly if she wasn’t an angel in the family vault, where we must all go when our time comes; smoking filthy cigars and stopping out till one o’clock in the morning, indeed!” and muttering these words over and over to herself, as a sort of refrain, Jemima hobbled out of the room with more stoutness and alacrity than could have been expected from her antiquated appearance. Relieved from the incubus of her presence, Frere rose and proceeded to dress himself; but the nightmare that had oppressed him, whether sleeping or waking, haunted him still.
In vain he tried to shave himself; the vision in white muslin came between his face and the looking-glass and occasioned him to cut his chin. At his frugal breakfast it was with him again, and strange to say, took away his appetite; it went out with him to his scientific institution, and weakened his perceptions, and absorbed his attention, and dulled his memory, till even the most positive resolved nebulæ swam in a mist before him, and the mountains of the moon, which had lately developed a new crater, might have been the bona fide productions of that planet instead of merely her African godchildren, for aught that he could have stated to the contrary. He got through his morning’s work somehow, and then the vision prompted him to call at Lady Lombard’s, and gave him no peace till he started for the goodly mansion of that hospitable widow, which he did in such an unusually agitated frame of mind, that for the first time in the memory of man he forgot his cotton umbrella; he hurried wildly through the streets, overthrowing little children and reversing apple-women, not to mention an insane attempt to constitute himself a member of the “happy family,” by dashing violently against the wires of their cage, which contains all kinds of strange animals except a Richard Frere, or a Podiccps Cornutus, till at last he reached the locality in which Lady Lombard’s house was situated.
And here a new and unaccountable crotchet took possession of his brain. Frere, who since he could run alone and express his sentiments intelligibly in his native tongue had never known what bashfulness meant, was seized with a sudden attack of that uncomfortable sensation, the extinguisher of so many would-be shining lights of humanity, who but for that “flooring” quality would have published such books and made such speeches that the hair of society at large, upraised with wonder and admiration, must have stood on end through all time, “like quills upon the fretful porcupine.” So violent was this attack of shyness that, after having hurried from his office as though life and death hung upon his speed, he could not make up his mind whether to pay the projected visit or not, and actually strolled up and down, passing and repassing the door some half-dozen times before he ventured to knock at it; nay, to such an extent had this mysterious “timor panico” seized upon him, that when the plush-clad “man mountain” appeared in answer to his summons he merely left his card, and inquiring meekly how the ladies were, posted off at, if anything, a more rapid pace than that at which he had walked on his way thither.
Then ere he had proceeded the length of a street came the reaction, under the influence of which he not unjustly stigmatised himself as an egregious fool, and but for very shame would fain have retraced his steps. He could not, however, make up any credible excuse for facing the noble footman a second time, so as the next best thing to seeing Rose, he found his way to Park Crescent and called upon Lewis, to whom he related how he felt so restless and fidgety that he was persuaded he must be about to develop a feverish cold, or some analogous abomination. Having engaged Lewis to accompany him on the following evening to a lecture at the Palaeontological on “The Relations of the Earlier Zoophytes,” whoever they might be, he was about to depart, when, as he reached the hall, a carriage, with a splendid pair of greys, dashed up to the door, and a pretty little brunette with sparkling black eyes, a brilliant complexion, and a bonnet the colour of raspberry ice, descended, and passing Frere with a glance half saucy, half contemptuous, ran upstairs as if she were an habituée of the house. This was Emily, Countess Portici, Loid Bellefield’s younger sister, who, having at nineteen run away with an Italian nobleman, for love of his black eyes and ivory complexion, had ere she was five-and-twenty grown heartily sick of them and of Italy, and discovered some good reason to quit that land of uncomfortable splendour to enjoy the gaieties of a London spring, leaving her picturesque husband to console himself as best he might during her absence. She possessed very high spirits without any vast amount of judgment to counterbalance them, and her present frame of mind was that of a school-girl rejoicing in a holiday, into which she was determined to cram as much pleasure, fun, and frolic as an unlimited capacity for enjoyment would enable her to undergo. On the strength of her position as a married woman, she constituted herself Annie’s chaperon on all occasions when the vigilance of Minerva Livingstone could be eluded; and as that Gorgon of the nineteenth century was not so young as she had been, and found late hours tend to reduce her stamina and degrade the dignity of ill temper to the ignominious level of mere peevishness, she unwillingly allowed the Countess Portici to act as her substitute and escort Annie to such evening entertainments as from their nature threatened to invade the hours dedicated by Minerva to repose. There was much similarity of feature and of manner between the Countess and her brother Charles Leicester, only that Charley’s languid drawl was in Emily replaced by a sparkling vivacity, which, together with a certain selfish good-nature that led her to promote the enjoyment of others on every occasion in which it did not come in contact with her own, was sufficient to render her a general favourite. Annie was no exception to this rule; and always delighted to escape from the petrifying influence of Minerva, eagerly seconded all her lively cousin’s schemes for her amusement.
The object of the Countess’s visit on the present occasion was to secure Annie for the following evening, when they were to dine together, and were afterwards to be escorted to the Opera by Lord Bellefield, where they were to hear a new soprano with a voice three notes higher than that of anybody else, which notes might by a mild and easy figure of speech be not inaptly termed bank-notes, seeing that by their exercise the fair cantatrice had realised the satisfactory sum of thirty thousand pounds.
The Countess’s scheme happening to fit in very nicely with the views of the elders, as the General dined out, and Minerva was nursing a cold, which must have reduced the temperature of her blood to some frightful figure below zero, the project met with no more opposition than, from the constitution of Miss Livingstone’s mind, was inevitable. And thus it came about that on the following day Emily called for Annie, and the two girls (for the matron was a very girlish specimen of five-and-twenty) drove round the park together, and then retired to Emily’s boudoir and “talked confidence” till it was time to dress. Annie’s revelations did not go much more than skin-deep, and related chiefly to anxieties concerning papa and difficulties with Aunt Martha, who was “so tiresome about things, and never would let anybody love her,” and then branched off to a retrospective sketch of the preliminary difficulties which had obstructed Charley Leicester’s wedding, ending by a detailed account of the ceremony itself, and Annie’s hopes and fears as to the ultimate result of the bridegroom’s good resolutions.