The Cock and Anchor

"Beauty," exclaimed the nobleman, as he walked with an air of romantic gallantry by her side, and glancing as he spoke at the flowers which adorned the border of the path – "beauty is nowhere seen to greater advantage than in spots like this; where nature has amassed whatever is most beautiful in the inanimate creation, only to prove how unutterably more exquisite are the charms of living loveliness: these walks, but this moment to me a wilderness, are now so many paths of magic pleasure – how can I enough thank the kind enchantress to whom I owe the transformation?" Here the little gentleman looked unutterable things, and a silence of some minutes ensued, during which he effected some dozen very wheezy sighs. Emboldened by Miss Ashwoode's silence, which he interpreted as a very unequivocal proof of conscious tenderness, he resolved to put an end to the skirmishing with which he had opened his attack, and to commence the action in downright earnestness. "This place breathes an atmosphere of romance; it is a spot consecrated to the worship of love; it is – it is the shrine of passion, and I —I am a votary – a worshipper."

Miss Ashwoode paused in mingled surprise and displeasure, for his vehemence had become so excessive as, in conjunction with his asthma, to threaten to choke his lordship outright. When Mary Ashwoode stopped short, Lord Aspenly took it for granted that the crisis had arrived, and that the moment for the decisive onset was now come; he therefore ejaculated with a rapturous croak, —

"And you —you are my divinity!" and at the same moment he descended stiffly upon his two knees, caught her hand in his, and began to mumble it with unmistakable devotion.

"My lord – Lord Aspenly! – surely your lordship cannot mean – have done, my lord," exclaimed the astonished girl, withdrawing her hand indignantly from his grasp. "Rise, my lord; you cannot mean otherwise than to mock me by such extravagance. My lord – my lord, you surprise and shock me beyond expression."

"Angel of beauty! most exquisite – most perfect of your sex," gasped his lordship, "I love you – yes, to distraction. Answer me, if you would not have me expire at your feet – ugh – ugh – tell me that I may hope – ugh – that I am not indifferent to you – ugh, ugh, ugh, – that – that you can love me?" Here his lordship was seized with so violent a fit of coughing, that Miss Ashwoode began to fear that he would expire at her feet in downright earnest. During the paroxysm, in which, with one hand pressed upon his side, he supported himself by leaning with the other upon the ground, Mary had ample time to collect her thoughts, so that when at length he had recovered his breath, she addressed him with composure and decision.

"My lord," she said, "I am grateful for your preference of me; although, when I consider the shortness of my acquaintance with you, and how few have been your opportunities of knowing me, I cannot but wonder very much at its vehemence. For me, your lordship cannot feel more than an idle fancy, which will, no doubt, pass away just as lightly as it came; and as for my feelings, I have only to say, that it is wholly impossible for you ever to establish in them any interest of the kind you look for. Indeed, indeed, my lord, I hope I have not given you pain – nothing can be further from my wish than to do so; but it is my duty to tell you plainly and at once my real feelings. I should otherwise but trifle with your kindness, for which, although I cannot return it as you desire, I shall ever be grateful."

Having thus spoken, she turned from her noble suitor, and began to retrace her steps rapidly towards the house.

"Stay, Miss Ashwoode – remain here for a moment – you must hear me!" exclaimed Lord Aspenly, in a tone so altered, that she involuntarily paused, while his lordship, with some difficulty, raised himself again to his feet, and with a flushed and haggard face, in which still lingered the ghastly phantom of his habitual smile, he hobbled to her side. "Miss Ashwoode," he exclaimed, in a tone tremulous with emotions very different from love, "I – I – I am not used to be treated cavalierly – I – I will not brook it: I am not to be trifled with – jilted – madam, jilted, and taken in. You have accepted and encouraged my attentions – attentions which you cannot have mistaken; and now, madam, when I make you an offer – such as your ambition, your most presumptuous ambition, dared not have anticipated – the offer of my hand – and – and a coronet, you coolly tell me you never cared for me. Why, what on earth do you look for or expect? – a foreign prince or potentate, an emperor, ha – ha – he – he – ugh – ugh – ugh! I tell you plainly, Miss Ashwoode, that my feelings must be considered. I have long made my passion known to you; it has been encouraged; and I have obtained Sir Richard's – your father's – sanction and approval. You had better reconsider what you have said. I shall give you an hour; at the end of that time, unless you see the propriety of avowing feelings which, you must pardon me when I say it, your encouragement of my advances has long virtually acknowledged, I must lay the whole case, including all the painful details of my own ill-usage, before Sir Richard Ashwoode, and trust to his powers of persuasion to induce you to act reasonably, and, I will add, honourably."

Here his lordship took several extraordinarily copious pinches of snuff, after which he bowed very low, conjured up an unusually hideous smile, in which spite, fury, and triumph were eagerly mingled, and hobbled away before the astonished girl had time to muster her spirits sufficiently to answer him.

CHAPTER XXI

WHO APPEARED TO MARY ASHWOODE AS SHE SATE UNDER THE TREES – THE CHAMPION

With flashing eyes and a swelling heart, struck dumb with unutterable indignation, the beautiful girl stood fixed in the attitude in which his last words had reached her, while the enraged and unmanly old fop hobbled away, with the ease and grace with which a crippled ape might move over a hot griddle. He had disappeared for some minutes before she had recovered herself sufficiently to think or speak.

"If he were by my side," she said, "this noble lord dared not have used me thus. Edmond would have died a thousand deaths first. But oh! God look upon me, for his love is gone from me, and I am now a poor, grieved, desolate creature, with none to help me."

Thus saying, she sate herself down upon the grass bank, beneath the tall and antique trees, and wept with all the bitter and devoted abandonment of hopeless sorrow. From this unrestrained transport of grief she was at length aroused by the pressure of a hand, gently and kindly laid upon her shoulder.

"What vexes you, Mary, my little girl?" inquired Major O'Leary, for he it was that stood by her. "Come, darling, don't fret, but tell your old uncle the whole business, and twenty to one, he has wit enough in his old noddle yet to set matters to rights. So, so, my darling, dry your pretty eyes – wipe the tears away; why should they wet your young cheeks, my poor little doat, that you always were. It is too early yet for sorrow to come on you. Wouldn't I throw myself between my little pet and all grief and danger? Then trust to me, darling; wipe away the tears, or by – I'll begin to cry myself. Dry your eyes, and see if I can't help you one way or another."

The mellow brogue of the old major had never fallen before with such a tender pathos upon the ear of his beautiful niece, as now that its rich current bore full upon her heart the unlooked-for words of kindness and comfort.

"Were not you always my pet," continued he, with the same tenderness and pity in his tone, "from the time I first took you upon my knee, my poor little Mary? And were not you fond of your old rascally uncle O'Leary? Usedn't I always to take your part, right or wrong; and do you think I'll desert you now? Then tell it all to me – ain't I your poor old uncle, the same as ever? Come, then, dry the tears – there's a darling – wipe them away."

While thus speaking, the warm-hearted old man took her hand, with a touching mixture of gallantry, pity, and affection, and kissed it again and again, with a thousand accompanying expressions of endearment, such as in the days of her childhood he had been wont to lavish upon his little favourite. The poor girl, touched by the kindness of her early friend, whose good-natured sympathy was not to be mistaken, gradually recovered her composure, and yielding to the urgencies of the major, who clearly perceived that something extraordinarily distressing must have occurred to account for her extreme agitation, she at length told him the immediate cause of her grief and excitement. The major listened to the narrative with growing indignation, and when it had ended, he inquired, in a tone, about whose unnatural calmness there was something infinitely more formidable than in the noisiest clamour of fury, —

"Which way, darling, did his lordship go when he left you?"

The girl looked in his face, and saw his deadly purpose there.

"Uncle, my own dear uncle," she cried distractedly, "for God's sake do not follow him – for God's sake – I conjure you, I implore – " She would have cast herself at his feet, but the major caught her in his arms.

"Well, well, my darling." he exclaimed, "I'll not kill him, well as he deserves it – I'll not: you have saved his life. I pledge you my honour, as a gentleman and a soldier, I'll not harm him for what he has said or done this day – are you satisfied?"

"I am, I am! Thank God, thank God!" exclaimed the poor girl, eagerly.

"But, Mary, I must see him," rejoined the major; "he has threatened to set Sir Richard upon you – I must see him; you don't object to that, under the promise I have made? I want to – to reason with him. He shall not get you into trouble with the baronet; for though Richard and I came of the same mother, we are not of the same marriage, nor of the same mould – I would not for a cool hundred that he told his story to your father."

"Indeed, indeed, dear uncle," replied the girl, "I fear me there is little hope of escape or ease for me. My father must know what has passed; he will learn it inevitably, and then it needs no colouring or misrepresentation to call down upon me his heaviest displeasure; his anger I must endure as best I may. God help me. But neither threats nor violence shall make me retract the answer I have given to Lord Aspenly, nor ever yield consent to marry him– nor any other now."

"Well, well, little Mary," rejoined the major, "I like your spirit. Stand to that, and you'll never be sorry for it. In the meantime, I'll venture to exercise his lordship's conversational powers in a brief conference of a few minutes, and if I find him as reasonable as I expect, you'll have no cause to regret my interposition. Don't look so frightened – haven't I promised, on the honour of a gentleman, that I will not pink him for anything said or done in his conference with you? To send a small sword through a bolster or a bailiff," he continued, meditatively, "is an indifferent action; but to spit such a poisonous, crawling toad as the respectable old gentleman in question, would be nothing short of meritorious– it is an act that 'ud tickle the fancy of every saint in heaven, and, if there's justice on earth, would canonize myself. But never mind, I'll let it alone – the little thing shall escape, since you wish it – Major O'Leary has said it, so let no doubt disturb you. Good-bye, my little darling, dry your eyes, and let me see you, before an hour, as merry as in the merriest days that are gone."

So saying, Major O'Leary patted her cheek, and taking her hand affectionately in both his, he added, —

"Sure I am, that there is more in all this than you care to tell me, my little pet. I am sorely afraid there is something beyond my power to remedy, to change your light-hearted nature so mournfully. What it is, I will not inquire, but remember, darling, whenever you want a friend, you'll find a sure one in me."

Thus having spoken, he turned from her, and strode rapidly down the walk, until the thick, formal hedges concealed his retreating form behind their impenetrable screens of darksome verdure.

Odd as were the manner and style of the major's professions, there was something tender, something of heartiness, in his speech, which assured her that she had indeed found a friend in him – rash, volatile, and violent it might be, but still one on whose truth and energy she might calculate. That there was one being who felt with her and for her, was a discovery which touched her heart and moved her generous spirit, and she now regarded the old major, whose spoiled favourite in childhood she had been, but whom, before, she had never known capable of a serious feeling, with emotions of affection and gratitude, stronger and more ardent than he had ever earned from any other being. Agitated, grieved, and excited, she hurriedly left the scene of this interview, and sought relief for her overcharged feelings in the quiet and seclusion of her chamber.

CHAPTER XXII

THE SPINET

In no very pleasant frame of mind did Lord Aspenly retrace his steps toward the old house. His lordship had, all his life, been firmly persuaded that the whole female creation had been sighing and pining for the possession of his heart and equipage. He knew that among those with whom his chief experience lay, his fortune and his coronet were considerations not to be resisted; and he as firmly believed, that even without such recommendations, few women, certainly none of any taste or discrimination, could be found with hearts so steeled against the archery of Cupid, as to resist the fascinations of his manner and conversation, supported and directed, as both were, by the tact and experience drawn from a practice of more years than his lordship cared to count, even to himself. He had, however, smiled, danced, and chatted, in impregnable celibacy, through more than half a century of gaiety and frivolity – breaking, as he thought, hearts innumerable, and, at all events, disappointing very many calculations – until, at length, his lordship had arrived at that precise period of existence at which old gentlemen, not unfrequently, become all at once romantic, disinterested, and indiscreet – nobody exactly knows why – unless it be for variety, or to spite an heir presumptive, or else that, as a preliminary to second childhood, nature has ordained a second boyhood too. Certain, however, it is, that Lord Aspenly was seized, on a sudden, with a matrimonial frenzy; and, tired of the hackneyed schemers, in the centre of whose manœuvres he had stood and smiled so long in contemptuous security, he resolved that his choice should honour some simple, unsophisticated beauty, who had never plotted his matrimony.

Fired with this benevolent resolution, he almost instantly selected Mary Ashwoode as the happy companion of his second childhood, acquainted Sir Richard with his purpose, of course received his consent and blessing, and forthwith opened his entrenchments with the same certainty of success with which the great Duke of Marlborough might have invested a Flanders village. The inexperience of a girl who had mixed, comparatively, so little in gay society, her consequent openness to flattery, and susceptibility of being fascinated by the elegance of his address, and the splendour of his fortune – all these considerations, accompanied by a clear consciousness of his own infinite condescension in thinking of her at all, had completely excluded from all his calculations the very possibility of her doing anything else than jump into his arms the moment he should open them to receive her. The result of the interview which had just taken place, had come upon him with the overwhelming suddenness of a thunderbolt. Rejected! – Lord Aspenly rejected! – a coronet, and a fortune, and a man whom all the male world might envy – each and all rejected! – and by whom? – a chit of a girl, who had no right to look higher than a half-pay captain with a wooden leg, or a fox-hunting boor, with a few inaccessible acres of bog and mountain – the daughter of a spendthrift baronet, who was, as everyone knew, on the high road to ruin. Death and fury! was it to be endured?

The little lover, absorbed in such tranquilizing reflections, arrived at the house, and entered the drawing-room. It was not unoccupied; seated by a spinet, and with a sheet of music-paper in her lap, and a pencil in her hand, was the fair Emily Copland. As he entered, she raised her eyes, started a little, became gracefully confused, and then, with her archest smile, exclaimed, —

"What shall I say, my lord? You have detected me. I have neither defence nor palliation to offer; you have fairly caught me. Here am I engaged in perhaps the most presumptuous task that ever silly maiden undertook – I am wedding your beautiful verses to most unworthy music of my own. After all, there is nothing like a simple ballad. Such exquisite lines as these inspire music of themselves. Would that Henry Purcell had had but a peep at them! To what might they not have prompted such a genius – to what, indeed?"

So sublime was the flight of fancy suggested by this interrogatory, that Miss Copland shook her head slowly in poetic rapture, and gazed fondly for some seconds upon the carpet, apparently unconscious of Lord Aspenly's presence.

"She is a fine creature," half murmured he, with an emphasis upon the identity which implied a contrast not very favourable to Mary – "and – and very pretty – nay, she looks almost beautiful, and so – so lively – so much vivacity. Never was poor poet so much flattered," continued his lordship, approaching, as he spoke, and raising his voice, but not above its most mellifluous pitch; "to have his verses read by such eyes, to have them chanted by such a minstrel, were honour too high for the noblest bards of the noblest days of poetry: for me it is a happiness almost too great; yet, if the request be not a presumptuous one, may I, in all humility, pray that you will favour me with the music to which you have coupled my most undeserving – my most favoured lines?"

The young lady looked modest, glanced coyly at the paper which lay in her lap, looked modest once more, and then arch again, and at length, with rather a fluttered air, she threw her hands over the keys of the instrument, and to a tune, of which we say enough when we state that it was in no way unworthy of the words, she sang, rather better than young ladies usually do, the following exquisite stanzas from his lordship's pen: —

"Tho' Chloe slight me when I woo,And scorn the love of poor Philander;The shepherd's heart she scorns is true,His heart is true, his passion tender."But poor Philander sighs in vain,In vain laments the poor Philander;Fair Chloe scorns with high disdain,His love so true and passion tender."And here Philander lays him down,Here will expire the poor Philander;The victim of fair Chloe's frown,Of love so true and passion tender."Ah, well-a-day! the shepherd's dead;Ay, dead and gone, the poor Philander;And Dryads crown with flowers his head,And Cupid mourns his love so tender."

During this performance, Lord Aspenly, who had now perfectly recovered his equanimity, marked the time with head and hand, standing the while beside the fair performer, and every note she sang found its way through the wide portals of his vanity, directly to his heart.

"Brava! brava! bravissima!" murmured his lordship, from time to time. "Beautiful, beautiful air – most appropriate – most simple; not a note that accords not with the word it carries – beautiful, indeed! A thousand thanks! I have become quite conceited of lines of which heretofore I was half ashamed. I am quite elated – at once overpowered by the characteristic vanity of the poet, and more than recompensed by the reality of his proudest aspiration – that of seeing his verses appreciated by a heart of sensibility, and of hearing them sung by the lips of beauty."

"I am but too happy if I am forgiven," replied Emily Copland, slightly laughing, and with a heightened colour, while the momentary overflow of merriment was followed by a sigh, and her eyes sank pensively upon the ground.

This little by-play was not lost upon Lord Aspenly.

"Poor little thing," he inwardly remarked, "she is in a very bad way – desperate – quite desperate. What a devil of a rascal I am to be sure! Egad! it's almost a pity – she's a decidedly superior person; she has an elegant turn of mind – refinement – taste – egad! she is a fine creature – and so simple. She little knows I see it all; perhaps she hardly knows herself what ails her – poor, poor little thing!"

While these thoughts floated rapidly through his mind, he felt, along with his spite and anger towards Mary Ashwoode, a feeling of contempt, almost of disgust, engendered by her audacious non-appreciation of his merits – an impertinence which appeared the more monstrous by the contrast of Emily Copland's tenderness. She had made it plain enough, by all the artless signs which simple maidens know not how to hide, that his fascinations had done their fatal work upon her heart. He had seen, this for several days, but not with the overwhelming distinctness with which he now beheld it.

"Poor, poor little girl!" said his lordship to himself; "I am very, very sorry, but it cannot be helped; it is no fault of mine. I am really very, very, confoundedly sorry."

In saying so to himself, however, he told himself a lie; for, instead of being grieved, he was pleased beyond measure – a fact which he might have ascertained by a single glance at the reflection of his wreathed smiles in the ponderous mirror which hung forward from the pier between the windows, as if staring down in wondering curiosity upon the progress of the flirtation. Not caring to disturb a train of thought which his vanity told him were but riveting the subtle chains which bound another victim to his conquering chariot-wheels, the Earl of Aspenly turned, with careless ease, to a table, on which lay some specimens of that worsted tapestry-work, in which the fair maidens of a century and a half ago were wont to exercise their taste and skill.

"Your work is very, very beautiful," said he, after a considerable pause, and laying down the canvas, upon whose unfinished worsted task he had been for some time gazing.

"That is my cousin's work," said Emily, not sorry to turn the conversation to a subject upon which, for many reasons, she wished to dwell; "she used to work a great deal with me before she grew romantic – before she fell in love."

"In love! – with whom?" inquired Lord Aspenly, with remarkable quickness.

"Don't you know, my lord?" inquired Emily Copland, in simple wonder. "May be I ought not to have told you – I am sure I ought not. Do not ask me any more. I am the giddiest girl – the most thoughtless!"

"Nay, nay," said Lord Aspenly, "you need not be afraid to trust me– I never tell tales; and now that I know the fact that she is in love, there can be no harm in telling me the less important particulars. On my honour," continued his lordship, with real earnestness, and affected playfulness – "upon my sacred honour! I shall not breathe one syllable of it to mortal – I shall be as secret as the tomb. Who is the happy person in question?"

"Well, my lord, you'll promise not to betray me," replied she. "I know very well I ought not to have said a word about it; but as I have made the blunder, I see no harm in telling you all I know; but you will be secret?"

"On my honour – on my life and soul, I swear!" exclaimed his lordship, with unaffected eagerness.

"Well, then, the happy man is a Mr. Edmond O'Connor," replied she.

"O'Connor – O'Connor – I never saw nor heard of the man before," rejoined the earl, reflectively. "Is he wealthy?"

"Oh! no; a mere beggarman," replied Emily, "and a Papist to boot!"

"Ha, ha, ha – he, he, he! a Papist beggar," exclaimed his lordship, with an hysterical giggle, which was intended for a careless laugh. "Has he any conversation – any manner – any attraction of that kind?"

"Oh! none in the world! – both ignorant, and I think, vulgar," replied Emily. "In short, he is very nearly a stupid boor!"

"Excellent! Ha, ha – he, he, he! – ugh! ugh! – very capital – excellent! excellent!" exclaimed his lordship, although he might have found some difficulty in explaining in what, precisely the peculiar excellence of the announcement consisted. "Is he – is he – a – a —handsome?"