“You had better go and tell Lovel—have me turned out of the house. That’s the best thing that can be done,” cries Bedford again, fiercely, stamping his feet.
“It is always my custom to do as much mischief as I possibly can, Dick Bedford,” I say, with fine irony.
He seizes my hand. “No, you’re a trump—everybody knows that; beg pardon, sir; but you see I’m so—so—dash!—miserable, that I hardly know whether I’m walking on my head or my heels.”
“You haven’t succeeded in touching her heart, then, my poor Dick?” I said.
Dick shook his head. “She has no heart,” he said. “If she ever had any, that fellar in India took it away with him. She don’t care for anybody alive. She likes me as well as any one. I think she appreciates me, you see, sir; she can’t ’elp it—I’m blest if she can. She knows I am a better man than most of the chaps that come down here,—I am, if I wasn’t a servant. If I were only an apothecary—like that grinning jackass who comes here from Barnes in his gig, and wants to marry her—she’d have me. She keeps him on, and encourages him—she can do that cleverly enough. And the old dragon fancies she is fond of him. Psha! Why am I making a fool of myself?—I am only a servant. Mary’s good enough for me; she’ll have me fast enough. I beg your pardon, sir; I am making a fool of myself; I ain’t the first, sir. Good-night, sir; hope you’ll sleep well.” And Dick departs to his pantry and his private cares, and I think, “Here is another victim who is writhing under the merciless arrows of the universal torturer.”
“He is a very singular person,” Miss Prior remarked to me, as, next day, I happened to be walking on Putney Heath by her side, while her young charges trotted on and quarrelled in the distance. “I wonder where the world will stop next, dear Mr. Batchelor, and how far the march of intellect will proceed! Any one so free, and easy, and cool, as this Mr. Bedford I never saw. When we were abroad with poor Mrs. Lovel, he picked up French and Italian in quite a surprising way. He takes books down from the library now: the most abstruse works—works that I couldn’t pretend to read, I’m sure. Mr. Bonnington says he has taught himself history, and Horace in Latin, and algebra, and I don’t know what besides. He talked to the servants and tradespeople at Naples much better than I could, I assure you.” And Elizabeth tosses up her head heavenwards, as if she would ask of yonder skies how such a man could possibly be as good as herself.
She stepped along the Heath—slim, stately, healthy, tall—her firm, neat foot treading swiftly over the grass. She wore her blue spectacles, but I think she could have looked at the sun without the glasses and without wincing. That sun was playing with her tawny, wavy ringlets, and scattering gold-dust over them.
“It is wonderful,” said I, admiring her, “how these people give themselves airs, and try to imitate their betters!”
“Most extraordinary!” says Bessy. She had not one particle of humour in all her composition. I think Dick Bedford was right; and she had no heart. Well, she had famous lungs, health, appetite, and with these one may get through life not uncomfortably.
“You and Saint Cecilia got on pretty well, Bessy?” I ask.