Lady Davenant

“ Lady Davenant is not coming to Cecilhurst. Lord Davenant is to be sent ambassador to Petersburgh, and Lady Davenant will go along with him!—Oh! there is an end of everything, I shall never see her again!—Stay—she is to be first with Lady Cecilia at Clarendon Park, wherever that is, for some time—she does not know how long—she hopes to see me there—oh! ”

“ Berrington's parlour.
Lady Davenant always had a head-dress of a peculiar style, original and appropriate—a sort of white veil or cape which came in a point to the place on her forehead where her smooth hair began to show and then covered her shoulders. It was always exquisitely fresh and was partly the reason why she struck the girl rather as a fine portrait than as a living person. And yet she was full of life, old as she was, and had been made finer, sharper and more delicate, by nearly eighty years of it. ”

“ Cecilia might wish most sincerely that I should live with her, and I am convinced she does; but her husband must be considered.”
“True,” said Lady Davenant—“true; a husband is certainly a thing to be cared for—in Scottish phrase, and General Clarendon is no doubt a person to be considered,—but it seems that I am not a person to be considered in your arrangements.”
Even the altered, dry, and almost acrid tone in which Lady Davenant spoke, and the expression of disappointment in her countenance—were, as marks of strong affection, deeply gratifying to Helen. Lady Davenant went on. ”

“ As he pronounced the word “mother,” either his own heart or Helen’s eyes made him pause with a look of respectful tenderness. It was cruel of a son to blame the fond indulgence of a mother; but the fact was, she brought him too forward early as a clever child, fed him too much with that sweet dangerous fostering dew of praise. The child—the man—must suffer for it afterwards.
“True, very true,” said Lady Davenant; “I quite agree with you.”
“I could do nothing without flattery,” continued he, pursuing the line of confession which he saw had fixed Lady Davenant’s attention favourably. ”

“ And it is the same in all the others, while the centre of Helen is the girl herself. Yet the other characters are no less admirably drawn, with the old delicacy and firmness of touch, the occasional quaint gleams of humour. In its way Miss Edgeworth never limned a finer portrait than that of Lady Davenant, the large-brained, large-hearted woman of the world, endowed with strong principle, keen sense and real vigour of character, mingled with prejudice, impulsive likes and dislikes, an imperfect adherence in practice to her own theories of right and wrong, and a stern power of self- judgment. ”

“ Lionel is as idiotic as a comic song, but you have cleverness for two.'
'And you have it for fifty, dear Lady Davenant. Never, never—I shall never marry a man I can't respect!' Laura Wing exclaimed.
She had come a little nearer her old friend and taken her hand; her companion held her a moment and with the other hand pushed aside one of the flaps of the waterproof. 'And what is it your clothing costs you?' asked Lady Davenant, looking at the dress underneath and not giving any heed to this declaration. ”

“ Lady Davenant paused and looked earnestly at Helen, whose eyes said, “I am glad,” and yet she was not quite certain she knew to what she alluded.
“Cecilia righted herself, and won my good opinion, by the openness with which she treated me from the very commencement of her attachment to General Clarendon.” Lady Davenant again paused to reflect, and played for some moments with the tablets in her hand.
“Some one says that we are apt to flatter ourselves that we leave our faults when our faults leave us, from change of situation, age, and so forth ”

“ All noble-minded people believe in fidelity, and never doubt of gratitude; they throw their own souls into those they oblige, and think and feel for them, as they, in their situation, would think and feel. Lady Davenant considered it an injustice to doubt the attachment of this boy, and a cruelty she deemed it to suspect him causelessly of being the most base of human creatures—he, a young defenceless orphan. Helen had more than once offended, by attempting to stop Lady Davenant from speaking imprudently before Carlos ”

“ Beauclerc suddenly opened his eyes wide, and saw it all at once: how it had happened that they had never seen it before, notwithstanding all that the general on one side, and Lady Davenant on the other, had done to force them open, was incomprehensible; but, as Lady Davenant observed, “A sort of cataract comes over the best eyes for a time, and the patient will not suffer himself to be couched; and if you struggle to perform the operation that is to do him good against his will, it is odds but you blind him for life.” ”

“ Davenant, I count upon you.”
“But—but I cannot go out, Lady Earlsley—I am in mourning.”
Lady Bell sighed impatiently.
“I am so sorry! I have never set my heart upon anything so much in my life,” she said. “Something tells me that we shall be great friends! Are you fond of jewels, lace, books?—what are you specially fond of?” And she seemed to dazzle Una with her smile. “You shall see them all—everything. Yes, let her come, and I will take such care of her as if she were something too precious to be touched; she shall not leave my side all the evening. Let her come, Mrs. Davenant!” ”

“ But what particularly pleases me, Helen, is the perfect simplicity of your dress. In the few minutes that I was in the ball-room to-night, I was struck with that over-dressed duchess: her figure has been before my eyes ever since, hung round with jewellery, and with that auréole a foot and a-half high on her head: like the Russian bride’s headgear, which Heber so well called ‘the most costly deformity he ever beheld.’ Really, this passion for baubles,” continued Lady Davenant, “is the universal passion of our sex. ”

“ But so it is; though, after all, I am afraid they will be invisible to you, Lady Davenant.”
“I will try with a magnifying-glass,” said she; “lend me that of your imagination, Granville—a high power, and do not look so very miserable, or Miss Stanley will laugh at you.”
“Miss Stanley is too good to laugh.”
“That is being too good indeed,” said Lady Davenant. “Well, now to the point.”
“You were very unjust to me, Lady Davenant, yesterday, and unkind.”
“Unkind is a woman’s word; but go on.”
“Surely man may mark ‘unkindness’ altered eye’ as well as woman,” said Beauclerc ”

“ Davenant stammered, and fidgeted speechlessly.
“Ah!” said Lady Bell, quickly, in the same low tone. “You think I’m rude and ill-bred. They all do when I ask a simple question, or show the slightest interest in anything.” She glanced at Una lingeringly: “I mustn’t ask, I suppose?”
“I—I—she is new to London,” said Mrs. Davenant. “It is her first day——”
“Her first day!” echoed Lady Bell, her eyes twinkling. “Do you mean that she was never in London before? How I envy her; I who am sick and weary of it! Yes, the glamour is on her; I can see it in her eyes—on her face. ”

“ My dear girl, you positively beam with happiness.”
Mrs. Davenant and Una exchanged glances—glances that were not lost upon Lady Bell’s acuteness.
“Is there a secret?” she said, quickly. “Have you come into a fortune? But, no, that can’t be it, for I know that I’ve never been thoroughly happy since I came into mine.”
“You always look happy, Lady Bell,” said Mrs. Davenant.
“My dear, don’t judge by appearances,” said Lady Bell, in her quick way. “I am not always happy; most of my time I am bored to death; I am always worried and hurried. ”

“ And now there are three or four people coming to dinner, Mr. and Mrs. Davenant, Jack—I mean Mr. Newcombe—and that strange girl, Una. What a lovely creature she is! Do you know I rather think she will become Mrs. Stephen Davenant.”
“She is a very nice girl,” said Mrs. Fellowes. “She ought to make a good match.”
“Ay de me,” said Lady Bell, with a sigh. “I’m sick of that word. Men and women don’t ‘marry’ now, they make ‘good matches.’ My dear, I hate your worldly way of looking at matrimony. If I were a poor girl, I’d marry the man of my heart, if he hadn’t a penny. ”

“ In the first place they do not begin with falsehood. If they have no hearts, they cannot pretend to give any to the husband, and that is better than having given them to somebody else. Husband and wife, in this case, clearly understand the terms of agreement, expect, imagine no more than they have, and jog-trot they go on together to the end of life very comfortably.”
“Comfortably!” exclaimed Helen, “it must be most miserable.”
“Not most miserable, Helen,” said Lady Davenant, “keep your pity for others ”

“ Davenant wanted to get away. He was going after pearls—he said. He knew of an atoll where there were pearls, a virgin bed. He could not afford to stand around on his toes waiting for the A. B. A. to scratch off all the fresh paint in order to find O. P. Jones. He wanted to get away, and he had run across Douglas Moore.
Douglas Moore had more than one name. And he had almost everything else that went to make a man hard to catch and harder to hold. He knew all about Davenant's troubles over the Lady Betty and the dispute as to her sex. ”

“ The Phœnix known in his time was probably nearly as select a house as the Blackfriars. The company had the title of Queen's Servants (James's Queen) , and the servants of the Lady Elizabeth (Queen of Bohemia) .
A few years before the Restoration, Davenant, supported by some of the less scrupulous authorities, ventured to smuggle back something like the old entertainments, under the pretence of accompanying them with music; a trick understood in our times where a license is to be encroached upon. ”

“ In course of time Mr and Mrs Davenant grew cold-hearted, calculating, and selfish; and as their fortunes flourished, more and more did they exult in their own wisdom, and condemn as foolish and Quixotic everything charitable and disinterested. To the best of their power they brought up their children in the same principles, and they succeeded to admiration with their eldest daughter, who was as shrewd and prudent as they could wish. Mrs Davenant would often express her maternal delight in her Selina: there never was a girl possessing such strong good sense—such wisdom. ”

“ They don't want any of us—not for ourselves. It's the sou!—the sou!—the everlasting sou! Noble or peasant—it makes no difference. But if my niece hadn't abandoned me—"
"Why shouldn't you come home, madame?" Davenant suggested, touched by so much that was tragic. "You wouldn't find any one after the sou there."
"They're all about me," she whispered—"the Melcourt. They're all over the house. They come and settle on me, and I can't shake them off. They suffocate me—waiting for the moment when—But I've made my will, and some'll be disappointed. Oh, I shall leave them Melcourt-le-Danois. ”

“ It was what a fastidious observer of life might call "low," but Davenant's judgments had no severity of that kind. He looked at the merry groups, composed for the most part of chance acquaintances, here to-day and gone to-morrow, swift and light of love, with a curious craving for fellowship. From the gatherings of friends he felt himself invariably the one shut out.
It was this sense of exclusion that finally sent him away from the cheerful quay to wander down the jetty which marks the line where the Harbor of Grace, with its intricate series of basins and docks, becomes the sea. ”

“ Davenant."
"Davenant? Is that his name? Yes, I believe your papa did tell me so—the boy Tom Davenant fished out of the slums."
With some indignation Olivia told the story of Davenant's birth and adoption. "So you see," she went on, "he has goodness in his blood. There's no reason why that shouldn't be inherited as much as—as insanity—or a taste for alcohol."
"Stuff, dear! The man or the boy, or whatever he is, calculated on getting something better than he gave. We must simply pay him off and get rid of him. Noblesse oblige."
"We may get rid of him, Aunt Vic, but we can never pay him off." ”

“ That other—he whose face was always with her, was going there!
“At Hurst Leigh,” repeated Mrs. Davenant. “Do you know it?”
Una shook her head silently. She longed to ask more, to ask if Mrs. Davenant knew the youth who had taken shelter in the cottage, but she simply could not. Love is a wondrous schoolmaster—he had already taught her frank, out-spoken nature the art of concealment.
“It is a grand place,” continued Mrs. Davenant. “A great, huge place,” and she shivered faintly, “and—and if Squire Davenant has left it to Stephen, he will live there.” ”

“ After all, which was the real Krishn Davenund, which the ideal? One was the older certainly; but change must come to all things.
They had reached the river steps by this time, and he paused--making Râm Nâth pause also--to look down on a scene which had not changed a hair-breadth in essentials for thousands of years. Yet Chris Davenant's eye noted one change of detail, in a moment, as a woman passed him on her way to fill her waterpot. ”

“ Davenant.
“She wants change; nothing but entire change of life and thought will do her good. Mother, if she remained here, if something were not done, she would”—he paused, and went on hoarsely, “she would die!”
Mrs. Davenant shuddered and her eyes filled. “My poor, poor Una!” she murmured.
Stephen moved impatiently. “She will not need your pity, mother. A few weeks hence and you will have no reason to pity her. I’ll stake my life that I bring her back here with the roses in her cheeks, with the smile in her eyes, as of old. Mother, you do not know what such love as mine can do!” ”