Tales and Novels — Volume 01: Moral TalesEdgeworth, Maria
General
Tales and Novels — Volume 01: Moral Tales
Edgeworth, Maria
Fiction
Miss Warwick had an ungovernable propensity to make a display of
sensibility; a fine theatrical scene upon every occasion; a propensity
which she had acquired from novel-reading. It was never more unluckily
displayed than in the present instance; for her audience and spectators,
consisting of the landlady, a waiter, and a Welsh boy, who just entered
the room with a knife-tray in his hand, were all more inclined to burst
into rude laughter than to join in gentle sympathy. The chaise did not
come to the door one moment sooner than it would have done without this
pathetic wringing of the hands. As soon as Angelina drove from the door,
the landlady's curiosity broke forth--
"Pray tell me, Hugh Humphries," said Mrs. Hoel, turning to the
postilion, who drove Angelina from Newport, "pray, now, does not this
seem strange, that such a young lady as this should be travelling about
in such wonderful haste? I believe, by her flighty airs, she is upon no
good errand--and I would have her to know, at any rate, that she might
have done better than to sneer, in that way, at Mrs. Hoel of Cardiffe,
and her Tenby oysters, and her Welsh rabbit. Oh, I'll make her repent
her _pe_haviour to Mrs. Hoel, of Cardiffe. 'Not high-born Hoel,'
forsooth! How does she know that, I should be glad to hear? The Hoels
are as high born, I'll venture to say, as my young miss herself, I've a
notion! and would scorn, moreover, to have a runaway lady for a relation
of theirs. Oh, she shall learn to repent her disrespects to Mrs. Hoel,
of Cardiffe. I _pe_lieve she shall soon meet herself in the public
newspapers--her eyes, and her nose, and her hair, and her inches, and
her description at full length she shall see--and her friends shall
see it too--and maybe they shall thank, and maybe they shall reward
handsomely Mrs. Hoel, of Cardiffe."
Whilst the angry Welsh landlady was thus forming projects of revenge for
the contempt with which she imagined that her high birth and her Tenby
oysters had been treated, Angelina pursued her journey towards the
cottage of her unknown friend, forming charming pictures, in her
imagination, of the manner in which her amiable Araminta would start,
and weep, and faint, perhaps with joy and surprise, at the sight of her
Angelina. It was a fine moonlight night--an unlucky circumstance; for
the by-road which led to Angelina Bower was so narrow and bad, that
if the night had been dark, our heroine must infallibly have been
overturned, and this overturn would have been a delightful incident in
the history of her journey; but Fate ordered it otherwise. Miss Warwick
had nothing to lament, but that her delicious reveries were interrupted,
for several miles, by the Welsh postilion's expostulations with his
horses.
"Good Heavens!" exclaimed she, "cannot the man hold his tongue? His
uncouth vociferations distract me! So fine a scene, so placid the
moonlight--but there is always something that is not in perfect unison
with one's feelings."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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