Almost every evening did Laura, with Mrs Dawkins or her daughter for an escort, direct her steps to the print-shop, and return from her fruitless walk with fainter and fainter hope.
CHAPTER X
Montague de Courcy had dined tête-à-tête with an old uncle from whom he had no expectations, and was returning home to sup quietly with his mother and sister, when his progress was arrested by a group occupying the whole breadth of the pavement, and he heard a female voice which, though unusually musical, had in it less of entreaty than of command, say, 'Pray, Sir, allow us to pass.' 'Not till I have seen the face that belongs to such a figure,' answered one of a party of young men who were rudely obstructing the passage of the lady who had spoken. With this condition, however, she seemed not to intend compliance, for she had doubled her veil, and pertinaciously resisted the attempts of her persecutors to raise it.
De Courcy had a rooted antipathy to all manner of violence and oppression, especially when exercised against the more defenceless part of the creation; and he no sooner ascertained these circumstances, than, with one thrust of his muscular arm, (which, to say the truth, was more than a match for half a dozen of the puny fry of sloth and intemperance), he opened a passage for the lady and her companion; steadily detained her tormentors till she made good her retreat; and then, leaving the gentlemen to answer, as they best could, to their own interrogatories of 'What do you mean?' and 'Who the d—l are you?' he followed the rescued damsel, with whose appearance, considering the place and the hour, he was extremely surprised.
Her height, which certainly rose about the beautiful, perhaps even exceeded the majestic; her figure, though slender, was admirably proportioned, and had all the appropriate roundness of the feminine form; her dress, though simple, and of matronly decency, was not unfashionable; while the dignity of her gait, and the composure of her motion, suited well with the majesty of her stature and mien.
While De Courcy was making these observations, he had offered the lady his arm, which she accepted, and his escort home, which she declined, saying, that she would take refuge in a shop, till a coach could be procured. Nor was he less attentive to her companion, although the latter was a little, elderly, vulgar-looking woman, imperfections which would have utterly disqualified her for the civility of many a polite gentleman.
This person had no sooner recovered the breath of which her supposed danger, and the speed of her rescue from it had deprived her, than she began, with extreme volubility, to comment on her adventure. 'Well,' she cried, 'if that was not the forwardest thing ever I seed. I am sure I have comed home afore now of an evening a matter of five hunder times, and never met with no such thing in my life. But its all along of my being so saving of your money; for I might have took a coach as you'd have had me: but its no longer ago nor last week, as I comed from my tea, at that very Mr Wilkins's, later nor this, and nobody so much as spoke to me; but catch me penny wise again. Howsoever, it's partlins your own doings; for if you hadn't staid so long a-looking at the pictures in the shop we shouldn't have met with them there men. Howsoever, Miss Montreville, you did right enough not to let that there jackanapes see your face, otherwise we mightn't have got off from them fellors tonight.'
The curiosity of De Courcy thus directed, overcame his habitual dislike to staring, and rivetted his eyes on a face, which, once seen, was destined never to be forgotten. Her luxuriant hair, (which De Courcy at first thought black, though he afterwards corrected this opinion), was carelessly divided on a forehead, whose spotless whiteness was varied only by the blue of a vein that shone through the transparent skin. As she raised her mild religious dark grey eyes, their silken lashes rested on the well-defined but delicate eye-brow; or, when her glance fell before the gaze of admiration, threw a long shade on a cheek of unequalled beauty, both for form and colour. The contour of her features, inclining to the Roman, might perhaps have been called masculine, had it not been softened to the sweetest model of maiden loveliness, by the delicacy of its size and colouring. The glowing scarlet of the lips, formed a contrast with a complexion constitutionally pale, but varying every moment; while round her easily but firmly closing mouth, lurked not a trace of the sensual or the vain, but all was calm benevolence, and saintly purity. In the contemplation of a countenance, the perfect symmetry of which was its meanest charm, De Courcy, who was a physiognomist, suffered the stream of time, as well as that of Mrs Dawkins's eloquence, to flow on without notice, and first became sensible that he had profited by neither, when the shop-boy announced that the carriage was at the door. While handing the ladies into the carriage, De Courcy again offered his attendance, which Laura, gracefully thanking him for his attentions, again declined; and they drove off just as he was about to inquire where they chose to be set down.
Now, whether it was that Laura was offended at De Courcy's inspection of her face, or whether she saw any thing disagreeable in his; whether it was that her pride disdained lodgings in Holborn, or that she desired not to be recognized by one who had met with her in such a situation, certain it is, that she chose the moment when that gentleman was placing her voluble companion in the coach, to give the coachman her directions, in sounds that escaped the ears of De Courcy. As he had no means of remedying this misfortune, he walked home, and philosophically endeavoured to forget it in a game at chess with his mother. The fidelity of a historian, however, obliges us to confess, that he this evening played in a manner that would have disgraced a school-boy. After mistaking his antagonist's men for his own, playing into check, throwing away his pieces, and making false moves, he answered his mother's question of 'Montague, what are you doing?', by pushing back his chair, and exclaiming, 'Mother, you never beheld such a woman.'