“Suspected to have strayed, or eloped, from her friends or relations, a young lady, seemingly not more than sixteen years of age, dressed in white, with a straw hat: blue eyes, light hair.”
Angelina coloured so deeply whilst this was reading, and the description so exactly suited with her appearance, that the farmer’s wife stopped short; the farmer fixed his eyes upon her; and Mr. Evans cleared his throat several times with much significance.—A general silence ensued; at last the three heads nodded to one another across the round table; the farmer whistled and walked out of the room; his wife fidgeted at a buffet, in which she began to arrange some cups and saucers; and, after a few minutes, she followed her husband. Angelina took up the newspaper, to read the remainder of the advertisement. She could not doubt that it was meant for her, when she saw that it was dated the very day of her arrival at the inn at Cardiffe, and signed by the landlady of the inn, Mrs. Hoel. Mr. Evans swallowed the remainder of his ale, and then addressed Angelina in these words:—
“Young lady, it is plain to see you know when the cap fits: now, if you’ll take my advice, you’ll not make the match you have in your eye; for, though a lord’s son, he is a great gambler. I dined with one that has dined with him not long ago. My son, who has a living near Bristol, knows a great deal—more about you than you’d think; and ‘tis my advice to you, which I wouldn’t be at the trouble of giving, if you were not as pretty as you are, to go back to your relations; for he’ll never marry you, and marriage to be sure is your object. I have no more to say, but only this—I shall think it my duty, as a magistrate, to let your friends know as soon as possible where you are, coming under my cognizance as you do; for a vagabond, in the eye of the law, is a person—”
Angelina had not patience to listen to any more of this speech; she interrupted Mr. Evans with a look of indignation, assured him that he was perfectly unintelligible to her, and walked out of the room with great dignity. Her dignity made no impression upon the farmer or his wife, who now repented having offered her a night’s lodging in their house: in the morning they were as eager to get rid of her as she was impatient to depart. Mr. Evans insisted upon seeing her safe home, evidently for the purpose of discovering precisely where she lived. Angelina saw that she could no longer remain undisturbed in her retreat, and determined to set out immediately in quest of her unknown friend at Bristol.—Betty Williams, who had a strong desire to have a jaunt to Bristol, a town which she had never seen but once in her life, offered to attend Miss Warwick, assuring her that she perfectly well knew the house where Miss Hodges always lodged. Her offer was accepted; and what adventures our heroine met with in Bristol, and what difficulties she encountered before she discovered her Araminta, will be seen in the next chapter.
CHAPTER III.
Angelina went by water from Cardiffe to Bristol; the water was rather rough, and, as she was unused to the motion of a vessel, she was both frightened and sick. She spent some hours very disagreeably, and without even the sense of acting like a heroine, to support her spirits. It was late in the evening before she arrived at the end of her voyage: she was landed on the quay at Bristol. No hackney-coach was to be had, and she was obliged to walk to the Bush. To find herself in the midst of a bustling, vulgar crowd, by whom she was unknown, but not unnoticed, was new to Miss Warwick. Whilst she was with Lady Diana Chillingworth, she had always been used to see crowds make way for her; she was now surprised to feel herself jostled in the streets by passengers, who were all full of their own affairs, hurrying different ways, in pursuit of objects which probably seemed to them as important as the search for an unknown friend appeared to Angelina.
Betty Williams’s friend’s friend, the careful lad, who was to deliver the letter to Miss Hodges, was a waiter at the Bush. Upon inquiry, it was found that he had totally forgotten his promise: Angelina’s letter was, after much search, found in a bottle-drainer, so much stained with port wine, that it was illegible. The man answered with the most provoking nonchalance, when Angelina reproached him for his carelessness—“That, indeed, no such person as Miss Hodges was to be found: that nobody he could meet with had ever heard the name.” They who are extremely enthusiastic suffer continually from the total indifference of others to their feelings; and young people can scarcely conceive the extent of this indifference until they have seen something of the world. Seeing the world does not always mean seeing a certain set of company in London.
Angelina, the morning after her arrival at the Bush, took a hackney-coach, and left the care of directing the coachman to Betty Williams, who professed to have a perfect knowledge of Bristol. Betty desired the man to drive to the drawbridge; and, at the sound of the word drawbridge, various associations of ideas with the drawbridges of ancient times were called up in Miss Warwick’s imagination. How different was the reality from her castles in the air! She was roused from her reverie by the voices of Betty Williams and the coachman.
“Where will I drive ye to, I ask you?” said the coachman, who was an Irishman: “Will I stand all day upon the drawbridge stopping the passage?”