The Life and Legacy of Harriette Wilson. Harriette Wilson
honour of your sex, and to punish him for declaring, as he always does, that no woman who will not love him at once is worth his pursuit."
"I am sorry he is such a coxcomb," said I.
"What is that to you, you little fool?"
"True," I replied. And, at the moment, I made a sort of determination not to let the beautiful and voluptuous expression of Argyle's dark blue eyes take possession of my fancy.
"You are a neater figure than the Marquis of Lorne;" said I to Frederick, wishing to think so.
"Lorne is growing fat," answered Frederick Lamb; "but he is the most active creature possible, and appears lighter than any man of his weight I ever saw; and then he is, without any exception, the highest bred man in England."
"And you desire and permit me to walk about the country with him?"
"Yes; do trot him often up here. I want to have a laugh against Lorne."
"And you are not jealous?"
"Not at all," said Frederick Lamb, "for I am secure of your affections."
"I must not deceive this man," thought I, and the idea began to make me a little melancholy. "My only chance, or rather my only excuse, will be his leaving me without the means of existence." This appeared likely; for I was too shy, and too proud to ask for money: and Frederick Lamb encouraged me in this amiable forbearance!
The next morning, with my heart beating unusually high, I attended my appointment with Argyle. I hoped, nay almost expected, to find him there before me. I paraded near the turnpike five minutes, then grew angry; in five more, I became wretched; in five more, downright indignant; and, in five more, wretched again—and so I returned home.
"This," thought I, "shall be a lesson to me hereafter, never to meet a man: it is unnatural:" and yet I had felt it perfectly natural to return to the person whose society had made me so happy! "No matter," reasoned I, "we females must not suffer love or pleasure to glow in our eyes, until we are quite sure of a return. We must be dignified!"
Alas! I can only be and seem what I am. No doubt my sunny face of joy and happiness, which he talked to me about, was understood, and it has disgusted him. He thought me bold, and yet I am sure I never blushed so much in any man's society before.
I now began to consider myself with feelings of the most painful humility. Suddenly I flew to my writing-desk; "He shall not have the cut all on his side, neither," thought I, with the pride of a child, "I will soon convince him I am not accustomed to be slighted;" and then I wrote to his grace as follows:
"It was very wrong and very bold of me to have sought your acquaintance, in the way I did, my lord; and I entreat you to forgive and to forget my childish folly, as completely as I have forgotten the occasion of it."
"So far so good," thought I, pausing, "but then suppose he should, from this dry note, really believe me so cold and stupid as not to have felt his pleasing qualities. Suppose now it were possible he liked me after all!" Then hastily, and half ashamed of myself, I added these few lines:
"I have not quite deserved this contempt from you, and, in that consolatory reflection, I take my leave; not in anger my lord, but only with the steady determination so to profit by the humiliating lesson you have given me as never to expose myself to the like contempt again.
"Your most obedient servant,
"HARRIETTE WILSON."
Having put my letter into the post, I passed a restless night: and the next morning, heard the knock of the twopenny postman in extreme agitation. He brought me, as I suspected, an answer from Argyle, which is subjoined.
"You are not half vain enough, dear Harriette. You ought to have been quite certain that any man who had once met you could not fail in a second appointment but from unavoidable accident—and, if you were only half as pleased with Thursday morning, as I was, you will meet me to-morrow in the same place at four. Pray, pray,55 come.
"LORNE."
I kissed the letter and put it into my bosom, grateful for the weight it had taken off my heart. Not that I was so far gone in love as my readers may imagine; but I had suffered from wounded pride, and, in fact, I was very much tête monté.
The sensations which Argyle had inspired me with were the warmest, nay, the first, of the same nature, I had ever experienced. Nevertheless, I could not forgive him quite so easily as this neither. I recollect what Frederick Lamb had said about his vanity. "No doubt," thought I, "he thinks it was nothing to have paraded me up and down that stupid turnpike road, in the vain hope of seeing him. It shall now be his turn: and I gloried in the idea of revenge."
The hour of Argyle's appointment drew nigh, arrived, and passed away, without my leaving my house. To Frederick Lamb I related everything, presented him with Argyle's letter, and acquainted him with my determination not to meet his grace.
"How good!" said Frederick Lamb, quite delighted. "We dine together to-day at Lady Holland's, and I mean to ask him, before everybody at table, what he thinks of the air about the turnpike in Somerstown."
The next day I was surprised by a letter, not, as I anticipated, from Argyle, but from the late Tom Sheridan, only son of Richard Brinsley Sheridan. I had, by mere accident, become acquainted with that very interesting young man when quite a child, from the circumstance of his having paid great attention to one of my elder sisters.
He requested me to allow him to speak a few words to me, wherever I pleased. Frederick Lamb having gone to Brockett Hall in Hertfordshire, I desired him to call on me.
"I am come from my friend Lorne," said Tom Sheridan. "I would not have intruded on you; but that, poor fellow, he is really annoyed, and he has commissioned me to acquaint you with the accident which obliged him to break his appointment; because I can best vouch for the truth of it, having upon my honour, with my own ears, heard the Prince of Wales invite Lord Lorne to Carlton House at the very moment when he was about to meet you in Somerstown. Lorne," continued Tom Sheridan, "desires me to say, that he is not coxcomb enough to imagine you cared for him; but in justice, he wants to stand exactly where he did in your opinion, before he broke his appointment: he was so perfectly innocent on that subject. 'I would write to her,' said he, again and again, 'but that, in all probability, my letters would be shown to Frederick Lamb, and be laughed at by them both. I would call on her, in spite of the devil; but that I know not where she lives.'
"I asked Argyle," Tom Sheridan proceeded, "how he had addressed his last letters to you? 'To the post office in Somers-town,' was his answer, 'and thence they were forwarded to Harriette.'" (He had tried to bribe the old woman there, to obtain my address, but she abused him, and turned him out of her shop.) "'It is very hard,'" continued Tom, repeating the words of his noble friend, "'to lose the good-will of one of the nicest, cleverest girls I ever met with in my life, who was, I am certain, civilly if not kindly disposed towards me, by such a mere accident.' Therefore," continued Tom Sheridan, smiling, "you'll make it up with Lorne, won't you?"
"There is nothing to forgive," said I, "if no slight was meant. In short you are making too much of me, and spoiling me, by all this explanation; for, indeed, I had at first been less indignant, but that I fancied his grace neglected me because——" and I hesitated, while I could feel myself blush deeply.
"Because what?" asked Tom Sheridan.
"Nothing;" I replied, looking at my shoes.
"What a pretty girl you are," observed Sheridan, "particularly when you blush."
"Fiddlestick!" said I, laughing, "you know you always preferred my sister Fanny."
"Well," replied Tom, "there I plead guilty. Fanny is the sweetest creature on earth; but you are all a race of finished coquettes, who delight in making fools of people.
"Now can anything come up to your vanity in writing to Lorne, that you are the most beautiful creature on earth?"
"Never mind," said I, "you set all that to rights. I was never vain in your society, in my life."
"I would give the world for a kiss, at