Belinda. Maria Edgeworth

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СКАЧАТЬ obstinate face, as all the world who can read the human countenance may see. My dear, I laugh; but even in the midst of laughter there is sadness. But you don’t know what it is—I hope you never may—to have an obstinate fool for a bosom friend.

      “I at first flattered myself that my lord’s was not an inveterate, incurable malady: but from his obvious weakness, I might have seen that there was no hope; for cases of obstinacy are always dangerous in proportion to the weakness of the patient. My lord’s case was desperate. Kill or cure was my humane or prudent maxim. I determined to try the poison of jealousy, by way of an alterative. I had long kept it in petto as my ultimate remedy. I fixed upon a proper subject—a man with whom I thought that I could coquette to all eternity, without any danger to myself—a certain Colonel Lawless, as empty a coxcomb as you would wish to see. The world, said I to myself, can never be so absurd as to suspect Lady Delacour with such a man as this, though her lord may, and will; for nothing is too absurd for him to believe. Half my theory proved just; that is saying a great deal for any theory. My lord swallowed the remedy that I had prepared for him with an avidity and a bonhommie which it did me good to behold; my remedy operated beyond my most sanguine expectations. The poor man was cured of his obstinacy, and became stark mad with jealousy. Then indeed I had some hopes of him; for a madman can be managed, a fool cannot. In a month’s time I made him quite docile. With a face longer than the weeping philosopher’s, he came to me one morning, and assured me, ‘he would do every thing I pleased, provided I would consult my own honour and his, and give up Colonel Lawless.’

      “‘Give up!’—I could hardly forbear laughing at the expression. I replied, ‘that as long as my lord treated me with becoming respect, I had never in thought or deed given him just cause of complaint; but that I was not a woman to be insulted, or to be kept, as I had hitherto been, in leading-strings by a husband.’ My lord, flattered as I meant he should be with the idea that it was possible he should be suspected of keeping a wife in leading-strings, fell to making protestations—‘He hoped his future conduct would prove,’ &c. Upon this hint, I gave the reins to my imagination, and full drive I went into a fresh career of extravagance: if I were checked, it was an insult, and I began directly to talk of leading-strings. This ridiculous game I played successfully enough for some time, till at length, though naturally rather slow at calculation, he actually discovered, that if we lived at the rate of twenty thousand a-year, and had only ten thousand a-year to spend, we should in due time have nothing left. This notable discovery he communicated to me one morning, after a long preamble. When he had finished prosing, I agreed that it was demonstrably just that he should retrench his expenses; but that it was equally unjust and impossible that I could make any reformation in my civil list: that economy was a word which I had never heard of in my life till I married his lordship; that, upon second recollection, it was true I had heard of such a thing as national economy, and that it would be a very pretty, though rather hackneyed topic of declamation for a maiden speech in the House of Lords. I therefore advised him to reserve all he had to say upon the subject for the noble lord upon the woolsack; nay, I very graciously added, that upon this condition I would go to the house myself to give his arguments and eloquence a fair hearing, and that I would do my best to keep myself awake. This was all mighty playful and witty; but it happened that my Lord Delacour, who never had any great taste for wit, could not this unlucky morning at all relish it. Of course I grew angry, and reminded him, with an indelicacy which his want of generosity justified, that an heiress, who had brought a hundred thousand pounds into his family, had some right to amuse herself, and that it was not my fault if elegant amusements were more expensive than others.

      “Then came a long criminating and recriminating chapter. It was, ‘My lord, your Newmarket blunders’—‘My lady, your cursed theatricals’—‘My lord, I have surely a right’—and, ‘My lady, I have surely as good a right.’

      “But, my dear Belinda, however we might pay one another, we could not pay all the world with words. In short, after running through thousands and tens of thousands, we were actually in distress for money. Then came selling of lands, and I don’t know what devices for raising money, according to the modes of lawyers and attorneys. It was quite indifferent to me how they got money, provided they did get it. By what art these gentlemen raised money, I never troubled myself to inquire; it might have been the black art, for any thing I know to the contrary. I know nothing of business. So I signed all the papers they brought to me; and I was mighty well pleased to find, that by so easy an expedient as writing ‘T. C. H. Delacour,’ I could command money at will. I signed, and signed, till at last I was with all due civility informed that my signature was no longer worth a farthing; and when I came to inquire into the cause of this phenomenon, I could nowise understand what my Lord Delacour’s lawyer said to me: he was a prig, and I had not patience either to listen to him or to look at him. I sent for an old uncle of mine, who used to manage all my money matters before I was married: I put the uncle and the lawyer into a room, together with their parchments, to fight the matter out, or to come to a right understanding if they could. The last, it seems, was quite impossible. In the course of half an hour, out comes my uncle in such a rage! I never shall forget his face—all the bile in his body had gotten into it; he had literally no whites to his eyes. ‘My dear uncle,’ said I, ‘what is the matter? Why, you are absolutely gold stick in waiting.’

      “‘No matter what I am, child,’ said the uncle; ‘I’ll tell you what you are, with all your wit—a dupe: ‘tis a shame for a woman of your sense to be such a fool, and to know nothing of business; and if you knew nothing yourself, could not you send for me?’

      “‘I was too ignorant to know that I know nothing,’ said I. But I will not trouble you with all the said I’s and said he’s. I was made to understand, that if Lord Delacour were to die the next day, I should live a beggar. Upon this I grew serious, as you may imagine. My uncle assured me that I had been grossly imposed upon by my lord and his lawyer; and that I had been swindled out of my senses, and out of my dower. I repeated all that my uncle said, very faithfully, to Lord Delacour; and all that either he or his lawyer could furnish out by way of answer was, that ‘Necessity had no law.’ Necessity, it must be allowed, though it might be the mother of law, was never with my lord the mother of invention. Having now found out that I had a good right to complain, I indulged myself in it most gloriously; in short, my dear, we had a comfortable family quarrel. Love quarrels are easily made up, but of money quarrels there is no end. From the moment these money quarrels commenced, I began to hate Lord Delacour; before, I had only despised him. You can have no notion to what meanness extravagance reduces men. I have known Lord Delacour shirk, and look so shabby, and tell so many lies to people about a hundred guineas—a hundred guineas!—what do I say?—about twenty, ten, five! O, my dear, I cannot bear the thoughts of it!

      “But I was going on to tell you, that my good uncle and all my relations quarrelled with me for having ruined myself, as they said; but I said they quarrelled with me for fear I should ask them for some of their ‘vile trash.’ Accordingly, I abused and ridiculed them, one and all; and for my pains, all my acquaintance said, that ‘Lady Delacour was a woman of a vast deal of spirit.’

      “We were relieved from our money embarrassments by the timely death of a rich nobleman, to whose large estate my Lord Delacour was heir-at-law. I was intoxicated with the idle compliments of all my acquaintance, and I endeavoured to console myself for misery at home by gaiety abroad. Ambitious of pleasing universally, I became the worst of slaves—-a slave to the world. Not a moment of my time was at my own disposal—not one of my actions; I may say, not one of my thoughts was my own; I was obliged to find things ‘charming’ every hour, which tired me to death; and every day it was the same dull round of hypocrisy and dissipation. You wonder to hear me speak in this manner, Belinda—but one must speak the truth sometimes; and this is what I have been saying to Harriot Freke continually, for these ten years past. Then why persist in the same kind of life? you say. Why, my dear, because I could not stop: I was fit for this kind of life and for no other: I could not be happy at home; for what sort of a companion could I have made of Lord Delacour? By this time he was tired of his horse Potatoe, and his horse Highflyer, and his horse СКАЧАТЬ