Delphi Complete Works of the Brontes Charlotte, Emily, Anne Brontë (Illustrated) (261 page)

CHAPTER 8

Sir William Percy describes Zamorna’s anger at the city leaders

It was afternoon, and the hotel was somewhat quieter. I had gone out to get a little cool air in the garden, whose bushy shrubs in some measure screened the sun. Two or three gentlemen were walking there, and in an arbour I found Sir William Percy.

“Well, Colonel, where did you put yourself this morning while that dust was kicking up?”

“O, I got the snuggest possible corner in the court-house. I witnessed the whole spectacle quite at my ease. Very good sport for winter; rather too active for these dog-days. How the canaille did run! What will your brother say when he hears of their rout?”

“Bah — swear himself to the bottomless pit and then call for a drop of brandy to cool his tongue! But Townshend, don’t I look very languid? quite stived up [deprived of fresh air], to use a classical phrase?”

“Can’t say but you do. The heat seems to have overpowered you.”

“Well it may. Ever since noon, I’ve been in the presence of the Great Mogul.”

“What, of Zamorna?”

“No other. He sent for a whole lot of us into the great dining room; and then, when I and Stuartville and Thornton and Sydenham and Walker and a dozen more went in, he was striding up and down from the fire-place to the window with a face ten times blacker than the smoke from Edward’s tobacco-pipe. He just stood and put his hand on the long table when we came in, each man doffing his castor and bowing at the door. He never asked us to sit down, but let us stand at the lower end, like four and twenty honey-pots all of a row. He began by asking Lord Stuartville if the troops were gone back to their quarters. Stuartville stept forward a pace and made answer that they were, with the exception of a small detatchment which had been left to keep order in a part of the town which as yet seemed scarcely settled. ‘Then,’ his grace continued, as coldly as you please, ‘I must say, my lord, I have been a good deal surprised at the state of dissatisfaction in which I have found the province under your lieutenancy.’ And without softening this pretty sentence by another word he stopped for an answer.

“Stuartville said very plainly, ‘he believed there was a strong feeling in the minds of the people against the Earl of Northangerland.’ ‘Allow me to put your meaning in other words,’ said his grace. ‘There seems to me to be a strong feeling in the minds of the people that they have a right to dictate how, when, where, to whom and on what subject they will. Let it be your business, and that of the gentlemen behind you, to subdue this feeling; to shew those who entertain it the fallacy and danger of acting upon it.’ General Thornton remarked that they had done their best, he thought, that morning. The answer he received proved to him that this idea was all a delusion. ‘I have not seen your conduct in that light,’ said the Mogul. ‘Ordinary vigilance on the part of the city authorities would have prevented the assemblage of such a mass of scum. Ordinary decison would have broken into firewood the staff of that banner which in your town was this day insolently hoisted over my head.’ He made another of his frozen pauses, and then asked if the Mayor of Zamorna was present. Mr Maude bowed and came forward. ‘Your police is lax,’ began his grace without a word of civility. ‘Your Corporation is indolent, and ought to be overhauled. Every thing indicates disorder, negligence and misrule. If I do not find a speedy change for the better, I shall consider it my duty to set on foot measures for depriving your city of its corporate privileges.’

“There fell another pause, in the course of which Mr Sydenham said ‘he believed his grace judged the town too hardly. It was his opinion that the feeling manifested that day was no proof of disloyalty, but the contrary.’ At this speech the Duke scowled like a Saracen. Fixing his eyes on Sydenham he said, ‘Favour me by keeping that opinion to yourself while you remain in this room. I never yet admitted the value of the loyalty which would dictate the choice of my private friends, or control the course of my private actions. It was not on that condition I accepted the crown of Angria — and how long will it take you to learn that when I became a monarch I did not cease to be a man? Your country put into my hands the splendour and power of royalty, but I did not offer in exchange the freedom and independence of private life.’ Nobody answered him and, after another of his pauses, he began dictating again. ‘Lord Stuartville, Zamorna has not done well under your Lieutenancy. In this capacity you have disappointed my expectations. I must supersede you if you do not act with greater vigour.’ Stuartville coloured high and said, much moved, ‘Your Grace shall be anticipated. From this moment I resign my office. Had I been aware before — .’ And, would you believe it, Townshend, here he broke off with a gulp as if he had been choked. Thornton went red too and said he thought all this was far too bad. Our Czar went on: ‘Your magistracy have disgraced themselves; one was absent; another was perfectly inactive; and the remaining four shewed neither foresight, resolution, nor energy. Gentlemen, you may go.’ And so he turned his back on us, walked up to the window, and we made our exit. Thornton’s gone back to Girnington as surly as a bull; Stuartville flung himself on his break-neck horse and set off at a gallop, which must have brought him to the D-l long since; Sydenham and Walker both mounted the Edwardston stage and are doubtless now drinking d-tion to the sovereign in a bumper of Edward’s best; as for me, I came here to take the air and get an appetite for some fricandeau [“a slice of veal or other meat ... served with sauce”
OED
] I’ve just ordered.”

“Well,” said I. “There’s a pretty go! And pray, what has become of the Duchess? Do you know whether she’s frightened to death?”

“Almost, I daresay. She did look white when the rush began; I heard she turned sick as soon as they got her into Stancliffe’s.”

“Then you’ve not seen her?”

“Yes, for a minute; going up the staircase leaning on Richton’s arm.”

“Did you speak?”

“No. Indeed, she was all but dead then, and neither noticed me nor anybody else. The man is coming to say my fricandeau is ready. Townshend, will you walk in and take a snack?”

CHAPTER 9

Zamorna and his wife Mary at Stancliffe’s Hotel

Evening drew on at length. Oh, how cool, how balmy its first breeze came sighing, to call away the beams of day-light. Sunset was over; the streets were still and dim; an early moon gazed from heaven on the towers of Zamorna’s minster, which fairly lifted its white front and shafted oriel to meet that gaze. The breeze which ushers in evening fluttered the blinds of a large upper saloon at Stancliffe’s. Every window was shaded, as if to shut out light and noise and all that could chase repose from that couch in the recess. Sunk among a pile of cushions, a lady lies asleep — pale, with her hair loose, and her figure shewing in its attitude the relaxation of extreme fatigue.

Is that person about to awake her, who is leaning over the couch? Pity there is not another living soul in the room to bid him stand away, and let her sleep! What is the individual smiling at? He seems to find matter for amusement in the exhaustion of that slender form and marble face, and the saintly folding of those little fairy hands. Villain, don’t touch her! But with his long fore-finger he is parting the loose hair farther from her forehead, and then he smiles again at what any other person would worship — the open brow, gleaming fair and serene like that of a sculptured Virgin Mary. He takes his unhallowed hands from her for a moment, and puts them in his pocket. Man, you look no fit guardian for that shrine! You break the harmony of the scene. Why don’t you go away? All round is so still and dim, and she is so fair, one might think her a saint and this room a consecrated chapel. But while you stand there I defy anybody to soothe their mind with so pious a delusion: a fellow with whiskers and something like moustaches, and so much hair — almost black it looks in this light — that you hardly know whether he has any forehead or not, until all at once he pushes the pile away and then there’s an expanse underneath, whose smoothness tells you he’s not old enough to be a priest.

Fresh from the stern interview with his Lord Lieutenant and the Corporation, from scenes of an equally iron nature which had followed and occupied him all the afternoon, Zamorna had now sought, in the cool of evening, the apartment to which his Duchess had retired. It was an undefined mixture of feelings that brought him there. Half, he wished to know how she had borne the scene of the morning — a scene so unfitted to her nature. Half, he felt an inclination to repose on her softness faculties worried with the bitter and angry contest of the day. Then, in metaphysical indistinctness, existed, scarce known to himself, the consciousness that it was her connection with him which had thus embroiled him with his people; and he was come now partly to please himself with her beauty, partly to dream away an hour in amiable meditations on the sorcery of female charms and the peril of doting on them too fondly, being guided by them too implicitly.

He drew aside the crimson curtain and let the evening sun shine upon her. He walked softly to and fro in the saloon, and every time he passed her couch turned on her his ardent gaze. That man has now loved Mary Percy longer than he ever loved any woman before, and I daresay her face has by this time become to him a familiar and household face. It may be told, by the way in which his eye seeks the delicate and pallid features and rests on their lines, that he finds settled pleasure in the contemplation. In all moods, at all times, he likes them. Her temper is changeful; she is not continual sunshine; she weeps sometimes, and frets and teazes him not unfrequently with womanish jealousies. I don’t think another woman lives on earth in whom he would bear these changes for a moment. From her, they almost please him. He finds an amusement in playing with her fears — piquing or soothing them as caprice directs.

She slept still, but now he stoops to wake her. He separated her clasped hands and took one in his own. Disturbed by the movement, she drew that hand hastily and petulantly away, and turned on her couch with a murmur. He laughed, and the laugh woke her. Rising, she looked at him and smiled. Still she seemed weary, and when he placed himself beside her she dropped her head on his shoulder and would have slept again. But the Duke would not permit this: he was come for his evening’s amusement, and his evening’s amusement he would have, whether she was fit to yield it or not. In answer to his prohibitory and disturbing movements she said, “Adrian, I am tired.”

“Too tired to talk to me?” he asked.

“No, Adrian, but let me lean against you.”

Still he held her off.

“Come,” said he. “Open your eyes and fasten your hair up; it is hanging on your neck like a mermaid’s.” The Duchess raised her hand to her hair; it was indeed all loose and dishevelled over her shoulders. She got up to arrange it, and the occupation roused her. Having smoothed the auburn braids before a mirror, and touched and retouched her loosened dress till it resumed its usual aspect of fastidious neatness, she walked to the window.

“The sun is gone,” said she. “I am too late to see it set.” And she pensively smiled as her eye lingered on the soft glory which the sun, just departed, had left in its track. “That is the West!” she exclaimed; and, turning to Zamorna, added quickly, “What if you had been born a great imaginative Angrian?”

“Well, I should have played the fool as I have done by marrying a little imaginative Senegambian.”

“And,” she continued, talking half to herself and half to him, “I should have had a very different feeling towards you then to what I have now. I should have fancied you cared nothing about my country so far off, with its wide wild woodlands. I should have thought all your heart was wrapt in this land, so fair and rich, teeming with energy and life, but still, Adrian, not with the romance of the West.”

“And what do you think now, my Sappho?”

“That you are not a grand awful foreigner absorbed in your kingdom as the grandest land of the earth, looking at me as an exotic, listening to my patriotic rhapsodies as sentimental dreams, but a son of Senegambia as I am a daughter — a thousand times more glorious to me, because you are the most glorious thing my own land ever flung from her fire-fertilized soil! I looked at you when those Angrians were howling round you today, and remembered that you were my countryman, not theirs — and all at once their alien senses, their foreign hearts, seemed to have discerned something uncongenial in you, the great stranger, and they rose under your control, yelling rebelliously.”

“Mary!” exclaimed the Duke, laughingly approaching her. “Mary, what ails you this evening? Let me look — is it the same quiet little winsome face I am accustomed to see?” He raised her face and gazed but she turned with a quick movement away.

“Don’t, Adrian. I have been dreaming about Percy Hall. When will you let me go there?”

“Any time. Set off to-night if you please.”

“That is nonsense, and I am serious. I must go sometime — but you never let do anything I wish.”

“Indeed! You dared not say so, if you were not far too much indulged.”

“Let me go, and come with me in about a month when you have settled matters at Adrianapolis — promise, Adrian.”

“I’ll let you go willingly enough,” returned Zamorna, sitting down and beginning to look vexatious. “But as for asking me to leave Angria again for at least a year and a day — none but an over-fondled wife would think of preferring an unreasonable request.”

“It is not unreasonable, and I suppose you want me to leave you? I’d never allow you to go fifteen hundred miles if I could help it.”

“No,” returned his grace. “Nor fifteen hundred yards either. You’d keep me like a china ornament in your drawing-room. Come, dismiss that pet39! What is it all about?”

“Adrian, you look so scornful.”

He took up a book which lay in the window-seat, and began to read. The Duchess stood a while looking at him, and knitting her arched and even brows. He turned over page after page, and by the composure of his brow expressed interest in what he was reading and an intention to proceed. Her Grace is by no means the victim of caprice, though now and then she seems daringly to play with weapons few besides would venture to handle. On this occasion her tact, so nice as to be infallible, informed her that the pet was carried far enough. She sat down, then, by Zamorna’s side; leant over and looked at the book; it was poetry — a volume of Byron. Her attention, likewise, was arrested; and she continued to read, turning the page with her slender, after looking into the Duke’s face at the conclusion of each leaf to see if he was ready to proceed. She was so quiet, her hair so softly fanned his cheek as she leaned her head towards him, the contact of her gentle hand now and then touching his, of her smooth and silken dress, was so endearing, that it quickly appeased the incipient ire her whim of perverseness had raised; and when, in about half an hour, she ventured to close the obnoxious volume and take it from his hand, the action met with no resistance — nothing but a shake of the head, half-reproving, half-indulgent.

Little more was said by either Duke or Duchess, or at least their further conversation was audible to no mortal ear. The shades of dusk were gathering in the room; the very latest beam of sunset was passing from its gilded walls. They sat in the deep recess of the window side by side, a cloudless moon looking down from the sky upon them and lighting their faces with her smile. Mary leant her happy head on a breast she thought she might trust — happy in that belief, even though it were a delusion. Zamorna had been kind, even fond, and, for aught she knew, faithful, ever since their last blissful meeting at Adrianapolis, and she had learnt how to rest in his arms with a feeling of security, not trembling lest when she most needed the support it might all at once be torn away. During their late visit to Northangerland he had shewn her marked attention, conscious that tenderness bestowed on her was the surest method of soothing her father’s heart, and words could not express half the rapture of her feelings when, more than once, seated between the Earl and Duke on such an evening as this, she had perceived that both regarded her as the light and hope of their lives. Language had not revealed this to her. Her father is a man of few words on sentimental matters; her husband, of none at all, though very vigorous in his actions; but Northangerland cheered in her presence, and Zamorna watched her from morning till night, following all her movements with a keen and searching glance.

Is that Hannah Rowley tapping at the door? She says tea is, and Mr Surena impatient to get into the shop again.