The Loves of the Lady Arabella

by Molly Elliot Seawell

The discussion between them concerning me grew hotter, and I grew as hot as the discussion, in thinking what a figure I was making before that divinely beautiful Lady Arabella. I had clean forgotten Daphne. Lady Hawkshaw lugged in a great variety of extraneous matter, reminding Sir Peter of certain awful predictions concerning his future which had been made by the last chaplain who sailed with him. Sir Peter denounced the chaplain as a sniveling dog. Lady Hawkshaw indulged in some French, at which Lady Arabella laughed behind her hand.

The battle royal lasted some time longer, but Lady Hawkshaw’s metal was plainly heavier than Sir Peter’s; and it ended by Sir Peter’s saying to me angrily:

“Very well, sir, to oblige my lady I will give you the remaining midshipman’s berth on the Ajax, seventy-four. You may go home now, but show yourself aboard the Ajax at Portsmouth, before twelve o’clock on this day week, and be very careful to mind your eye.”

I had nerved myself to hear with coolness the refusal of this fiery admiral; but his real kindness, disguised under so much of choler, overcame me. I stammered something and stopped,—that hound of a footman was grinning at me, because my eyes were full of tears, and also, perhaps, because my coat was of cheap make, and my shoes needed attention. But at that moment little Daphne, with the greatest artlessness, came up and slipped her little hand into mine, saying:

“He means he is very much obliged to you, uncle, and to you, dear aunt.”

I do not know how I got out of the house, but the next thing I knew I was standing on the street outside. I had been told to go home. I had no home now unless the Bull-in-the-Bush tavern be one. But I did not return to the Bull-in-the-Bush, whose tawdry splendors revolted me now, after I had seen Sir Peter Hawkshaw’s imposing house, as much as they had before attracted me. I was tingling with the sense of beauty newly developed in me. I could not forget that exquisite vision of Lady Arabella Stormont, who seemed to my boyish mind more like a white rose-bush in full flower than anything I could call to memory. I made my way instead to the plain, though clean lodgings, where I had spent the years since my parents’ death, with good Betty Green, the widow of Corporal Green, late of my father’s regiment.

These two excellent but humble creatures had brought me, an orphan, home from my birthplace, America, consigned to Sir Peter and Lady Hawkshaw. This woman, Betty Green, had been my mother’s devoted servant, as her husband had been my father’s, and it was thought perfectly safe to send me home with them. But there was a danger which no one foresaw. Betty was one of those strange women who love like a lioness. This lioness’ love she felt for me; and for that reason, I believe, she deliberately planned to prevent my family from ever getting hold of me. It is true, on landing in England, her husband’s regiment being ordered to Winchester, she went to see Sir Peter Hawkshaw and, I suspect, purposely made him so angry that, Lady Hawkshaw being absent, he almost kicked Betty Green out of the house. That is what I fancy my lady meant when she reproached Sir Peter with cruelty to me. I well remember the air of triumph with which Betty returned and told the corporal of her ill success; then, clasping me in her arms, she burst out with a cry that no admiral nor ladies nor lords neither should take her darling boy away from her. Green, her husband, being a steady, cool-headed fellow, waited until the paroxysm was over, when he told her plainly that she must carry out my parents’ instructions, and he himself would go to see Sir Peter as soon as he could. But Fate disposed of this plan by cutting short the corporal’s life the next week, most unexpectedly. Then this woman, Betty Green,—illiterate, a stranger in England, and supporting us both by her daily labor,—managed to foil all of the efforts of Admiral Sir Peter Hawkshaw to find me; for he had done all he could to discover the whereabouts of his nephew’s orphan. ’Tis not for me to say one word against Betty Green, for she slaved for me as only a woman can slave, and, besides, brought me up in the habits and manners of a gentleman, albeit she did little for my education, and to this day I am prone to be embarrassed when I have a pen in my hand. I can not say that I was happy in the devoted, though savage love she lavished upon me. She would not allow me to play with the boys of her own class, and those of my class I never saw. All my clamorings to know something about my family on either side were met by her declaring that she had forgotten where my mother’s people lived; and as for Sir Peter, she gave me such a horrifying account of him that I never dreamed it possible to receive any kindness from him. At last, though, on her death-bed, she acknowledged a part of the deception her desperate affection had impelled her to play upon me. The poor soul had actually forgotten about my mother’s family, and had destroyed everything relating to them, but directed me to go to Sir Peter; and thus it was that, on the day after I saw Betty Green, my only friend on earth, laid in a pauper’s grave, I went to the house of my father’s uncle, with the result narrated. When I got back to the humble lodgings where I had lived before Betty’s death, I looked up a small box of trinkets of little value which had belonged to my mother, and from the sale of them I got enough to live upon for a week, and to make my way to Portsmouth at the end of it. Either Sir Peter had forgotten to tell me anything about my outfit, or else I had slipped out so quickly—galled by the fear of weeping before that rascally footman—that he had no chance. At all events, I arrived at Portsmouth by the mail-coach, with all of my belongings in one shabby portmanteau.

I shall not describe my feelings during that journey toward the new life that awaited me. In fact, I scarcely recall them coherently; all was a maze, a jumble, and an uproar in my mind.

We got down in the inn yard,—a coach full of passengers,—I the only one who seemed adrift and alone among them. I stood looking about me—at a pert chambermaid who impudently ogled the hostlers and got a kiss in return; at the pretentious entrance to the inn; at all of the bustle and confusion of the arrival of the coach. Presently I saw a young gentleman somewhat older than myself, and wearing the uniform of his Majesty’s sea-service, come out of the inn door. He had a very elegant figure, but his face was rather plain. Within five minutes of my first meeting with Giles Vernon, I had an example of what was one of his most striking traits—every woman in sight immediately fixed her attention on him and smiled at him. One was the chambermaid, who left off ogling the hostlers and gaped at this young officer with her coarse, handsome face all aflame; another was the landlady, who followed him to the door, smirking and fanning herself; and the third was a venerable Quakeress, who was about entering the inn, and who beamed benevolently on him as he bowed gallantly in passing. I know not why this should have made such an impression on me; but being young and a fool, I thought beauty was as highly prized by women as by men, and it surprised me that a fellow with a mouth so wide and with something dangerously near a squint should be such a lady-killer. It was common enough for young gentlemen holding midshipmen’s warrants to come down by the coach, and as soon as he saw me this young officer called out:

“Halloo, my hearty! Is it a ship of the line or a frigate you are booked for? Or is it one of those damned gun-brigs which are unfit for a gentleman to serve in?”