Before Lovel enters, Bedford rapidly flits through the room. He looks as pale as a ghost. His face is awfully gloomy.
“Here’s the governor come,” Dick whispers to me. “It must all come hout now—out, I beg your pardon. So she’s caught you, has she? I thought she would.” And he grins a ghastly grin.
“What do you mean?” I ask, and I daresay turn rather red.
“I know all about it. I’ll speak to you to-night, sir. Confound her! confound her!” and he doubles his knuckles into his eyes, and rushes out of the room over Buttons, entering with the afternoon tea.
“What on earth’s the matter, and why are you knocking the things about?” Lovel asks at dinner of his butler, who, indeed, acted as one distraught. A savage gloom was depicted on Bedford’s usually melancholy countenance, and the blunders in his service were many. With his brother-in-law Lovel did not exchange many words. Clarence was not yet forgiven for his escapade two days previous. And when Lady Baker cried, “Mercy, child! what have you done to yourself?” and the captain replied, “Knocked my face against a dark door—made my nose bleed,” Lovel did not look up or express a word of sympathy. “If the fellow knocked his worthless head off, I should not be sorry,” the widower murmured to me. Indeed, the tone of the captain’s voice, his ton, and his manners in general, were specially odious to Mr. Lovel, who could put up with the tyranny of women, but revolted against the vulgarity and assumption of certain men.
As yet nothing had been said about the morning’s quarrel. Here we were all sitting with a sword hanging over our heads, smiling and chatting, and talking cookery, politics, the weather, and what not. Bessy was perfectly cool and dignified at tea. Danger or doubt did not seem to affect her. If she had been ordered for execution at the end of the evening she would have made the tea, played her Beethoven, answered questions in her usual voice, and glided about from one to another with her usual dignified calm, until the hour of decapitation came, when she would have made her curtsey, and gone out and had the amputation performed quite quietly and neatly. I admired her, I was frightened before her. The cold snake crept more than ever down my back as I meditated on her. I made such awful blunders at whist that even good Mrs. Bonnington lost her temper with her fourteen shillings. Miss Prior would have played her hand out, and never made a fault, you may be sure. She retired at her accustomed hour. Mrs. Bonnington had her glass of negus, and withdrew too. Lovel keeping his eyes sternly on the captain, that officer could only get a little sherry and seltzer, and went to bed sober. Lady Baker folded Lovel in her arms, a process to which my poor friend very humbly submitted. Everybody went to bed, and no tales were told of the morning’s doings. There was a respite, and no execution could take place till to-morrow at any rate. Put on thy night-cap, Damocles, and slumber for to-night, at least. Thy slumbers will not be cut short by the awful Chopper of Fate.
Perhaps you may ask what need had I to be alarmed? Nothing could happen to me. I was not going to lose a governess’s place. Well, if I must tell the truth, I had not acted with entire candour in the matter of Bessy’s appointment. In recommending her to Lovel, and the late Mrs. L., I had answered for her probity, and so forth, with all my might. I had described the respectability of her family, her father’s campaigns, her grandfather’s (old Dr. Sargent’s) celebrated sermons; and had enlarged with the utmost eloquence upon the learning and high character of her uncle, the Master of Boniface, and the deserved regard he bore his niece. But that part of Bessy’s biography which related to the Academy I own I had not touched upon. A quoi bon? Would every gentleman or lady like to have everything told about him or her? I had kept the Academy dark then; and so had brave Dick Bedford the butler; and should that miscreant captain reveal the secret, I knew there would be an awful commotion in the building. I should have to incur Lovel’s not unjust reproaches for suppressio veri, and the anger of those two viragines, the grandmothers of Lovel’s children. I was more afraid of the women than of him, though conscience whispered me that I had not acted quite rightly by my friend.
When, then, the bed-candles were lighted, and every one said good-night, “Oh! Captain Baker,” say I, gaily, and putting on a confoundedly hypocritical grin, “if you will come into my room, I will give you that book.”
“What book?” says Baker.
“The book we were talking of this morning.”