Love and Life: An Old Story in Eighteenth Century Costume
stair, knocked at the father’s door, and entered one by one, each
dropping her curtsey, and, though the eldest was five-and-twenty,
neither speaking nor sitting till they were greeted with a hearty,
“Come, my young maids, sit you down and tell your old father your gay
doings.”
The eldest took the only unoccupied chair, while the other two placed
themselves on the window-seat, all bolt upright, with both little high
heels on the floor, in none of the easy attitudes of damsels of later
date, talking over a party. All three were complete gentlewomen in air
and manners, though Betty had high cheek-bones, a large nose, rough
complexion, and red hair, and her countenance was more loveable and
trustworthy than symmetrical. The dainty decorations of youth looked
grotesque upon her, and she was so well aware of the fact as to put on
no more than was absolutely essential to a lady of birth and breeding.
Harriet (pronounced Hawyot), the next in age, had a small well-set head,
a pretty neck, and fine dark eyes, but the small-pox had made havoc
of her bloom, and left its traces on cheek and brow. The wreck of her
beauty had given her a discontented, fretful expression, which rendered
her far less pleasing than honest, homely Betty, though she employed
all the devices of the toilette to conceal the ravages of the malady and
enhance her remaining advantages of shape and carriage.
There was an air of vexation about her as her father asked, “Well, how
many conquests has my little Aurelia made?” She could not but recollect
how triumphantly she had listened to the same inquiry after her own
first appearance, scarcely three short years ago. Yet she grudged
nothing to Aurelia, her junior by five years, who was for the first
time arrayed as a full-grown belle, in a pale blue, tight-sleeved,
long-waisted silk, open and looped up over a primrose skirt, embroidered
by her own hands with tiny blue butterflies hovering over harebells.
There were blue silk shoes, likewise home-made, with silver buckles, and
the long mittens and deep lace ruffles were of Betty’s fabrication.
Even the dress itself had been cut by Harriet from old wedding hoards
of their mother’s, and made up after the last mode imported by Madam
Churchill at the Deanery.
The only part of the equipment not of domestic handiwork was the
structure on the head. The Carminster hairdresser had been making his
rounds since daylight, taking his most distinguished customers last; and
as the Misses Delavie were not high on the roll, Harriet and Aurelia had
been under his hands at nine A.M. From that time till three, when the
coach called for them, they had sat captive on low stools under a tent
of table-cloth over tall chair-backs to keep the dust out of the frosted
edifice constructed out of their rich dark hair, of the peculiar tint
then called mouse-colour. Betty had refused to submit to this durance.
“What sort of dinner would be on my father’s table-cloth if I were to
sit under one all day?” said she in answer to Harriet’s representation
of the fitness of things. “La, my dear, what matters it what an old
scarecrow like me puts on?”
Old maidenhood set in much earlier in those days than at present; the
sisters acquiesced, and Betty had run about as usual all the morning in
her mob-cap, and chintz gown tucked through her pocket-holes, and only
at the last submitted her head to the manipulations of Corporal Palmer,
who daily powdered his master’s wig.
Strange and unnatural as was the whitening of the hair, it was effective
in enhancing the beauty of Aurelia’s dark arched brows, the soft
brilliance of her large velvety brown eyes, and the exquisite carnation
and white of her colouring. Her features were delicately chiselled, and
her face had that peculiar fresh, innocent, soft, untouched bloom and
undisturbed repose which form the special charm and glory of the first
dawn of womanhood. Her little head was well poised on a slender neck,
just now curving a little to one side with the fatigue of the hours
during which it had sustained her headgear. This consisted of a
tiny flat hat, fastened on by long pins, and adorned by a cluster of
campanulas like those on her dress, with a similar blue butterfly on an
invisible wire above them, the dainty handiwork of Harriet.
The inquiry about conquests was a matter of course after a young lady’s
first party, but Aurelia looked too childish for it, and Betty made
haste to reply.
“Aurelia was a very good girl. No one could have curtsied or bridled
more prettily when we paid our respects to my Lady Herries and Mrs.
Churchill, and the Dean highly commended her dancing.”
“You danced? Fine doings! I thought you were merely invited to look on
at the game at bowls. Who had the best of the match?”
“The first game was won by Canon Boltby, the second by the Dean,” said
Betty; “but when they would have played the conqueror, Lady Herries
interfered and said the gentlemen had kept the field long enough, and
now it was our turn. So a cow was driven on the bowling-green, with a
bell round her neck and pink ribbons on her horns.”
“A cow! What will they have next?”
“They say ‘tis all the mode in London,” interposed Harriet.
“Pray was the cow to instruct you in dancing?” continued the Major.
“No, sir,” said Aurelia, whom he had addressed; “she was to be milked
into the bowl of syllabub.”
This was received with a great “Ho! ho!” and a demand who was to act as
milker.
“That was the best of it,” said Aurelia. “Soon came Miss Herries in
a straw hat, and the prettiest green petticoat under a white gown and
apron, as a dairy-maid, but the cow would not stand still, for all the
man who led her kept scolding her and saying ‘Coop! coop!’ No sooner had
Miss Herries seated herself on the stool than Moolly swerved away, and
it was a mercy that the fine china bowl escaped. Every one was laughing,
and poor Miss Herries was ready to cry, when forth steps my sister,
coaxes the cow, bids the man lend his apron, sits down on the stool, and
has the bowl frothing in a moment.”
“I would not have done so for worlds,” said Harriet; “I dreaded every
moment to be asked where Miss Delavie learnt to be a milk-maid.”
“You were welcome to reply, in her own yard,” said Betty. “You may thank
me for your syllabub.”
“Which, after all, you forbade poor Aura to taste!”
“Assuredly. I was not going to have her turn sick on my hands. She may
think herself beholden to me for her dance with that fine young beau.
Who was he, Aura?”
“How now!” said the Major, in a tone of banter, while Harriet indulged
in a suppressed giggle. “You let Aura dance with a stranger! Where was
your circumspection, Mrs. Betty?” Aurelia coloured to the roots of her
hair and faltered, “It was Lady Herries who presented him.”
“Yes, the child is not to blame,” said Betty; “I left her in charge
of Mrs. Churchill while I went to wash my hands after milking the cow,
which these fine folk seemed to suppose could be done without soiling a
finger.”
“That’s the way with Chloe and Phyllida in Arcadia,” said her father.
“But not here,” said Betty. “In the house, I was detained a little
while, for the housekeeper wanted me to explain my recipe for taking out
the grease spots.”
“A little while, sister?” said Harriet. “It was through the dancing of
three minuets, and the country dance had long been begun.”
“I was too busy to heed the time,” said Betty, “for I obtained the
recipe for those delicious almond-cakes, and showed Mrs. Waldron the
Vienna mode of clearing coffee. When I came back the fiddles were
playing, and Aurelia going down the middle with a young gentleman in a
scarlet coat. Poor little Robert Rowe was too bashful to find a partner,
though he longed to dance; so I made another couple with him, and thus
missed further speech, save that as we took our leave, both Sir George
and the Dean complimented me, and said what there is no occasion to
repeat just now, sir, when I ought to be fetching your supper.”
“Ha! Is it too flattering for little Aura?” asked her father. “Come,
never spare. She will hear worse than that in her day, I’ll warrant.”
“It was merely,” said Betty, reluctantly, “that the Dean called her the
star of the evening, and declared that her dancing equalled her face.”
“Well said of his reverence! And his honour the baronet, what said he?”
“He said, sir, that so comely and debonnaire a couple had not been seen
in these parts since you came home from Flanders and led off the assize
ball with Mistress Urania Delavie.”
“There, Aura, ‘tis my turn to blush!” cried the Major, comically hiding
his face behind Betty’s fan. “But all this time you have never told me
who was this young spark.”
“That I cannot tell, sir,” returned Betty. “We were sent home in
the coach with Mistress Duckworth and her daughters, who talked so
incessantly that we could not open our lips. Who was he, Aura?”
“My Lady Herries only presented him as Sir Amyas, sister,” replied
Aurelia.
“Sir Amyas!” cried her auditors, all together.
“Nothing more,” said Aurelia. “Indeed she made as though he and I must
be acquainted, and I suppose that she took me for Harriet, but I knew
not how to explain.”
“No doubt,” said Harriet. “I was sick of the music and folly, and had
retired to the summerhouse with Peggy Duckworth, who had brought a sweet
sonnet of Mr. Ambrose Phillips, ‘Defying Cupid.’”
Her father burst into a chuckling laugh, much to her mortification,
though she would not seem to understand it, and Betty took up the moral.
“Sir Amyas! Are you positive that you caught the name, child?”
“I thought so, sister,” said Aurelia, with the insecurity produced by
such cross-questioning; “but I may have been mistaken, since, of course,
the true Sir Amyas Belamour would never be here without my father’s
knowledge.”
“Nor is there any other of the name,” said her father, “except that
melancholic uncle of his who never leaves his dark chamber.”
“Depend upon it,” said Harriet, “Lady Herries said Sir Ambrose. No doubt
it was Sir Ambrose Watford.”
“Nay, Harriet, I demur to that,” said her father drolly. “I flatter
myself I was a more personable youth than to be likened to Watford with
his swollen nose. What like was your cavalier, Aura?”
“Indeed, sir, I cannot describe him. I was so much terrified lest he
should speak to me that I had much ado to mind my steps. I know he had
white gloves and diamond shoe-buckles, and that his feet moved by no
means like those of Sir Ambrose.”
“Aura is a modest child, and does credit to her breeding,” said Betty.
“Thus much I saw, that the young gentleman was tall and personable
enough to bear comparison even to you, sir, not more than nineteen or
twenty years of age, in a laced scarlet uniform, as I think, of the
Dragoon Guards, and with a little powder, but not enough to disguise
that his hair was entire gold.”
“That all points to his being indeed young Belamour,” said her father;
“age, military appearance, and all--I wonder what this portends!”
“What a disaster!” exclaimed Harriet, “that my sister and I should have
been out of the way, and only a chit like Aura be there to be presented
to him.”
“If young ladies _will_ defy Cupid,” began her father;--but at that
moment Corporal Palmer knocked at the door, bringing a basin of soup for
his master, and announcing “Supper is served, young ladies.”
Each of the three bent her knee to receive her father’s blessing and
kiss, then curtseying at the door, departed, Betty lingering behind her
two juniors to see her father taste his soup and to make sure that he
relished it.
CHAPTER II. THE HOUSE OF DELAVIE.
All his Paphian mother fear;
Empress! all thy sway revere!
EURIPEDES (Anstice).