Book 2 — THE TWO ISABELS;

OR COQUETISH SEVENTEEN.

[with a steel plate.]

———

BY MRS. S. C. HALL.

———

Oh love, love, love, love!—love is like a dizziness,

It will not let a poor man go about his business.

Old Song.

And are those follies going,

And is my proud heart growing

Too cold, or wise, for woman’s eyes

Again to set it glowing?

Moore.

The General put on his spectacles, and looked steadfastly at Isabel for at least two minutes. “Turn your head,” he said, at last—“there, to the left.”

Isabel Montford, although an acknowledged beauty, was as amiable as she was admired; she had also a keen appreciation of character; and, though somewhat piqued, was amused by the oddity of her aunt’s old lover. The General was a fine example of the well-preserved person and manners of the past century; beauty always recognizes beauty as a distinguished relative; and Isabel turned her head, to render it as attractive as it could be.

The General smiled, and after gazing for another minute with evident pleasure, he said—“Do me the favor to keep that attitude, and walk across the room.”

Isabella did so with much dignity; she certainly was exceedingly handsome;—her step light, but firm; her figure, admirably poised; her head, well and gracefully placed; her features, finely formed; her eyes and smile, bright and confiding. She would have been more captivating had her dress been less studied; her taste was evidently Parisien rather than classic. The gentleman muttered something, in which the words, “charming,” and “to be regretted,” only met her ear; then he spoke distinctly:

“You solicited my candor, young lady—you challenged comparison between you and your compeers, and the passing belles whom I have seen. Now, be so kind as to walk out of the room, re-enter, and curtsey.”

Had Isabel Montford been an uneducated young lady, she might have flounced out of the salon, in obedience to her displeasure, which was very decided; but as it was, she drew herself to her full height, and swept through the folding-doors. The General took a very large pinch of snuff. “That is so perfectly a copy of her poor aunt!” he murmured;—“just so would she pass onward, like a ruffled swan; she went after that exact fashion into the ante-room, when she refused me, for the fourth time, thirty-five years ago.”

The young Isabel re-entered, and curtseyed. The gentleman seated himself, leaned his clasped hands upon the head of his beautiful inlaid cane—which he carried rather for show than use—and said, “Young lady, you look a divinity! Your tourneure is perfection; but your curtsey is frightful! A dip, a bob, a bend, a shuffle, a slide, a canter—neither dignified, graceful, nor self-possessed! A curtsey is in grace what an adagio is in music;—only masters of the art can execute either the one or the other. Why, the beauty of the Duchess of Devonshire could not have saved her reputation as a graceful woman, if she had dared such a curtsey as that.”

“I assure you, sir,” remonstrated the offended Isabel, “that Madame Micheau——”

“What do I care for the woman!” exclaimed the General, indignantly. “Have I not memory?”

“Can you not teach me?” said Isabel, amused and interested by his earnestness.

“I teach you!—I! No; the curtseys which captivated thousands in my youth were more an inspiration than an art. The very queen of ballet, in the present day, cannot curtsey.”

“Could my aunt?” inquired Isabel, a little saucily.

“Your aunt, Miss Montford, was grace itself. Ah! there are no such women now a-days!”

And, after the not very flattering observation, the General moved to the piano. Isabel’s brows contracted and her cheeks flushed; however, she glanced at the looking-glass, was comforted, and smiled. He raised the cover, placed the seat with the grave gallantry of an old courtier, and invited the young lady to play. She obeyed, to do her justice, with prompt politeness; she was not without hope that there, at least, the old gentleman would confess she was triumphant. Her white hands, gemmed with jewels, flew over the keys like winged seraphs; they bewildered the eye by the rapidity of their movements. The instrument thundered, but the thunder was so continuous that there was no echo! “The contrast will come by-and-by,” thought the disciple of the old school—“there must be some shadow to throw up the lights.”

Thunder—crash—thunder—crash—drum—rattle—a confused, though eloquent, running backward and forward of sounds, the rings flashing like lightning! Another crash—louder—a great deal of crossing hands—violent strides from one end of the instrument to the other—prodigious displays of strength on the part of the fair performer—a terrific shake! “What desperate exertion!” thought the General; “and all to produce a soulless noise.” Then followed a fearful banditti of octaves—another crash, louder and more prolonged than the rest; and she looked up with a triumphant smile—a smile conveying the same idea as the pause of an opera-dancer after a most wonderful pirouette.

“Do you keep a tuner in the house, my dear young lady?” inquired the General.

If a look could have annihilated, he would have crumbled into ashes; but he only returned it with admiration, thinking, “How astonishingly like her aunt, when she refused me the second time!”

“And that is fashionable music, Miss Montford? I have lived so long out of England, only hearing the music of Beethoven, and Mozart, and Mendelssohn, I was not aware that noise was substituted for power, and that execution had banished expression. Dear me!—why, the piano is vibrating at this moment! Poor thing! How long does a piano last you, Miss Montford?”

Isabel was losing her temper, when fortunately her aunt—still Miss Vere—came to the rescue. The lovers of thirty years past, would have met any where else as strangers. The once rounded and queen-like form of the elder Isabel was shorn of its grace and beauty; of all her attributes, of all her attractions, dignity only remained; and it was that high-bred, innate dignity which can never be acquired, and is never forgotten. She had not lost the eighth of an inch of her height, and her gray hair was braided in full folds over her fair but wrinkled brow. Isabel Montford looked so exactly what Isabel Vere had been, that General Gordon was sorely perplexed; Isabel Vere, if truth must be told, had taken extra pains with her dress; her niece had met the General the night before, and her likeness to her aunt had so recalled the past, that his promised visit to his old sweetheart (as he still called her) had fluttered and agitated her more than she thought it possible an interview with any man could do; she quarreled with her beautiful gray hair, she cast off her black velvet dress disdainfully, and put on a blue Moire antique. (She remembered how much the Captain—no, the General, once admired blue.) She was not a coquette; even gray hair at fifty-five does not cure coquetry where it has existed in all its strength; but, for the sake of her dear niece, she wished to look as well as possible. She wondered why she had so often refused “poor Gordon.” She had been all her life of too delicate a mind to be a husband-hunter, too well satisfied with her position to calculate how it could be improved, and yet, she did not hesitate to confess to herself that now, in the commencement of old age, however verdant it might be, she would have been happier, of more consequence, of more value, as a married woman. She had too much good sense, and good taste, to belong to the class of discontented females, consisting of husbandless and childless women, who seek to establish laws at war with the laws of the Almighty; so, if her heart did beat a little stiffly, and sundry passages passed through her brain in connection with her old adorer, and what the future might be—she may be forgiven, and will be, by those not strong-minded women who understand enough of the waywardness of human nature to know that, if young heads and old hearts are sometimes found together, so are young hearts and old heads. The young laugh to scorn the idea of Cupid and a crutch, but Cupid has strange vagaries, and at any moment can barb his crutch with the point of an arrow.

“The old people,” as Isabel Montford irreverently called them that evening, did not get on well together; they were in a great degree disappointed one with the other. They stood up to dance the minuet de la cour, and Isabel Vere languished and swam as she had never done before; but the General only wondered how stiff she had grown, and hoped that he was not as ill used by time as Mistress Isabel Vere had been. At first, Isabel Montford thought it “good fun” to see the antiquities bowing and curtseying, but she became interested in the lingering courtliness of the little scene, trembled lest her aunt should appear ridiculous, and then wondered how she could have refused such a man as General Gordon must have been.

Days and weeks flew fast; the General became a constant visitor in the square, and the heart of Isabel Vere had never beaten so loudly at twenty as it did at fifty-and-five; nothing, she thought, could be more natural than that the General should recall the days of his youth, and seek the friendship and companionship of her who had never married, while he—faithless man!—had been guilty of two wives during his “services in India.” It was impossible to tell which of the ladies he treated with the most attention. Isabel Montford took an especial delight in tormenting him, and he was cynical enough towards her at times. Although he frankly abused her piano-forte-playing, yet he evidently preferred it to the music Miss Vere practised so indefatigably to please him, or to the songs she sang, in a voice which from a high “soprano,” had been crushed by time into what might be considered a very singular “mezzo.” He somehow forgot how to find fault with Miss Montford’s dancing, and more than once became her partner in a quadrille. It was evident, that while the General was growing young, Miss Vere remained—“as she was!” Isabel Montford amused herself at his expense, but he did not—quick-sighted and man-of-the-world though he was—perceive it. At first he was remarkably fond of recalling and dating events, and dwelling upon the grace, and beauty, and interest, and advantage, of whatever was past and gone—much to the occasional pain of Isabel Vere, who, gentle-hearted as she was, would have consigned dates to the bottomless pit; latterly, however, he talked a good deal more of the present than of the past, and, greatly to the annoyance of younger men, fell into the duties of escort to both ladies,—accompanying them to places of public promenade and amusement.

On such occasions, Miss Isabel Vere looked either earnest or bashful—yes, positively bashful; and Miss Isabel Montford, brimful of as much mischief as a lady could delight in. At times, the General laid aside his cynical observations, together with his cane, which was not even replaced by an umbrella; to confess the truth, he had experienced several symptoms of heart disease, which, though they made him restless and uncomfortable, brought hopes and aspirations of life, rather than fears of death.

One morning, Isabel Montford and the General were alone in the salon where this little scene first opened:

“Our difference has never been settled yet,” she exclaimed, gaily; “you have never proved to me the superiority of the Old school over the New.”

“Simply because of your superiority to both,” he replied.

“I do not perceive the point of the answer,” said the young lady. “What has my superiority over both to do with the question?”

The General arose and shut the door. “Do you think you could listen to me seriously for five minutes?” he said.

“Listening is always serious work,” she answered. He took her hand within his; she felt it was the hand of age; the bones and sinews pressed on her soft palm with an earnest pressure.

“Isabel Montford—could you love an old man?”

She raised her eyes to his, and wondered at the light which filled them:—

“Yes,” she answered, “I could love an old man dearly; I could confide to him the dearest secret of my heart.”

“And your heart, your heart itself? Such things have been, sweet Isabel.” His hand was very hard, but she did not withdraw hers.

“No, not that, because—because I have not my heart to give.” She spoke rapidly, and with emotion. “I have it not to give, and I have so longed to tell you my secret! You have such influence with my aunt, you have been so affectionate, so like a father to me, that if you would only intercede with her, for HIM and me, I know she could not refuse. I have often——often thought of entreating this, and now it was so kind of you to ask, if I could love an old man, giving me the opportunity of showing that I do, by confiding in you, and asking your intercession.”

The room became misty to the General’s eyes, and the rattle of a battle-field sounded in his ears, and beat upon his heart.

“And pray, Miss Montford,” he said, after a pause, “who may him be?”

“Ah, you do not know him!—my aunt forbade the continuance of our acquaintance the day before I had the happiness to meet you. It was most fortunate I wooed you to call upon her, thinking—” (she looked up at his fine face, whose very wrinkles were aristocratic, and smiled her most bewitching smile) “thinking the presence of the only man she ever loved would soften her, and hoping that I should one day be privileged to address you as my friend, my uncle!” And she kissed his hand.—It really was hard to bear. “I have heard her say,” persisted the young lady, “that when prompted by evil counsel, she refused you, she loved you, and since your return she only lives in your presence.” The General wondered if this was true, and thought he would not give the young beauty a triumph. He was recovering his self-possession. “I remembered your admiration of passing belles, and felt how kindly you tolerated me, for my aunt’s sake; and surely you will aid me in a matter upon which my happiness, and the happiness of that poor dear fellow depends?” She bent her beautiful eyes on the ground.

“And who is the poor dear fellow?” inquired the General, in a singularly husky voice.

“Henry Mandeville,” half-whispered Isabel. “Oh, is it not a beautiful name? the initials on those lovely handkerchiefs you gave me will still do; I shall still be I. M.”

“A son of old Admiral Mandeville’s?”

“The youngest son,” she sighed, “that is my aunt’s objection; were he the eldest, she would have been too happy. Oh, sir, he is such a fine fellow—such a hero!—lost a leg at Cabool, and received I don’t know how many stabs from those horrid Affgauns.”

“Lost a leg!” repeated the General, with an approving glance at his own; “why he can never dance with you.”

“No, but he can admire my dancing, and does not think my curtsey a dip, a shuffle, a bend, a bob, a slide, a canter! Ah! dear General, I was always perfection in his eyes.”

“By the immortal duke,” thought the General, “the young divinity is laughing at me.”

“My aunt only objects to his want of money; now I have abundance for both; and your recommendation, dear sir, at the Horse Guards, would at once place him in some position of honor and of profit; and even if it were abroad, I could leave my dear aunt with the consciousness that her happiness is secured by you, dear, guardian angel that you are. Ah! sir, at your time of life you can have no idea of our feelings.”

“Oh yes, I have!” sighed the General.

“Bless you!” she exclaimed enthusiastically; “I thought you would recall the days of your youth and feel for us; and when you see my dear Harry”—

“With a cork leg”—

“Ay, or with two cork legs—you will I know be convinced that my happiness is as secure as your own.”

“Women are riddles, one and all!” said the General, “and I should have known that before.”

“Oh! do not say such cruel things and disappoint me, depending as I have been on your kindness and affection. Hark!” she continued, “I hear my aunt’s footstep: now dear, dear General, reason coolly with her—my very existence depends on it. If you only knew him! Promise, do promise, that you will use your influence, all-powerful as it is, to save my life.”

She raised her beautiful eyes, swimming in unshed tears, to his; she called him her uncle, her dear noble-hearted friend; she rested her snowy hand lovingly, imploringly on his shoulder, and even murmured a hope that, her aunt’s consent once gained, it might not be impossible to have the two weddings on the same day.

The General may have dreaded the banter of sundry members of the “Senior United Service Club,” who had already jested much at his devotion to the two Isabels; he may have felt a generous desire to make two young people happy, and his good sense doubtless suggested that sixty-five and seventeen bear a strong affinity to January and May; he certainly did himself honor, by adopting the interests of a brave young officer as his own, and avoided the banter of “the club,” by pledging his thrice-told vows to his “old love,” the same bright morning that his “new love” gave her heart and hand to Henry Mandeville.