The Wanderer; or, Female Difficulties (Volume 4 of 5)Burney, Fanny
History
The Wanderer; or, Female Difficulties (Volume 4 of 5)
Burney, Fanny
France -- History -- Revolution, 1789-1799 -- Refugees -- Fiction; Historical fiction; Refugees -- Fiction; War stories
The sight, however, of the Salisbury stage, gave her a desire to travel
instantly further from London; and she asked whether there were a vacant
place. She was immediately accommodated; and her journey thither, though
long, and passed in dreadful apprehension, was without accident or
event.
Arrived at Salisbury, she quitted the machine, and her fellow
travellers, with whom she had scarcely exchanged a word; and, hoping
that she was now out of the way of pursuit, she put her plan into
execution, by writing a tranquillizing line to Gabriella, from a
stationer's shop; and then, set forth in search of a dwelling.
This was by no means easy to find. A solitary stranger, bearing her own
small baggage, after travelling all night, was not very likely to be
seen but with eyes of scrutiny and suspicion. Yet her air, her manner,
and her language made her application always best received by the upper
class of trades-people, who were most able to discern, that such
belonged not to any vulgar or ordinary person: but, when they found that
she enquired for a lodging, without giving any name, or any reference,
they held back, alike, from granting her admission, or forwarding her
wish by any recommendation.
The evident caution with which she hid as much as possible of her face,
made the beauty of what was still necessarily visible, create as much
ill opinion as admiration; though the perfect modesty of her deportment
rescued her from receiving any offence.
In the smaller shops, and by the meaner and poorer sort of people, her
carrying her parcel herself, levelled her, instantly, to their own rank;
while her demand of assistance, her loneliness and even her loveliness,
sunk her far beneath it, in their opinion; and, almost with one accord,
they bluntly told her that she might find a lodging at an inn.
Helpless, distressed, she wandered some time in this fruitless research;
too much self-occupied to remark the buildings, the neatness, the
antiquities, or the singularities of the city which she was patrolling;
till her eyes were caught by the little rivulets which, in most of the
streets, separate the foot-path from the high-road, by perceiving two
ruddy-cheeked, smiling little cherubs, attempting to paddle over one of
them, and playing so incautiously, that they seemed every moment in
danger of falling into the water.
She hastened towards them, to point out a bridge, somewhat higher up, by
which they might more safely pass; but the elder child, a rosy boy,
careless and sportive, heeded her not; till, finding the stream deeper
than he expected, his little feet slipt, and he would inevitably have
been under water, had not Juliet, with dextrous speed, caught him by the
coat.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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