Fanny Burney - The Wanderer; or, Female Difficulties (Volume 1 of 5)

The landlord, coming forward, enquired whether there were any disturbance; and, upon the complaint and application of Mrs Maple, would have opened the door of the closed apartment; but the Admiral and Harleigh, each taking him by an arm, declared the person in that room to be under their protection.

'Well, upon my word,' cried Mrs Maple, 'this is more than I could have expected! We are in fine hands, indeed, for a sea officer, and an Admiral, that ought to be our safe-guard, to take part with our native enemy, that, I make no doubt, is sent amongst us as a spy for our destruction!'

'A lady, Madam,' said the Admiral, looking down rather contemptuously, 'must have liberty to say whatever she pleases, a man's tongue being as much tied as his hands, not to annoy the weaker vessel; so that, let her come out with what she will, she is amenable to no punishment; unless she take some account of a man's inward opinion; in which case she can't be said to escape quite so free as she may seem to do. This, Madam, is all the remark that I think fit to make to you. But as for you, Mr Landlord, when the gentlewoman in this room has occasion to consult you, she speaks English, and can call you herself.'

He would then have led the way to a general retreat, but Mrs Maple angrily desired the landlord to take notice, that a foreigner, of a suspicious character, had come over with them by force, whom he ought to keep in custody, unless she would tell her name and business.

The door of the apartment was now abruptly opened by the stranger, who called out 'O no! no! no! – Ladies! – Gentlemen! – I claim your protection!'

'It is your's, Madam!' cried Harleigh, with emotion.

'Be sure of it, Gentlewoman!' cried the old officer; 'We did not bring you from one bad shore to another. We'll take care of you. Be sure of it!'

The stranger wept. 'I thought not,' she cried, 'to have shed a tear in England; but my heart can find no other vent.'

'Very pretty! very pretty, indeed, Gentlemen!' said Mrs Maple; 'If you can answer all this to yourselves, well and good; but as I have not quite so easy a conscience, I think it no more than my duty to inform the magistrates myself, of my opinion of this foreigner.'

She was moving off; but the stranger rushed forth, and with an expression of agonized affright, exclaimed, 'Stay! Madam, stay! hear but one word! I am no foreigner, – I am English!' —

Equal astonishment now seized every one; but while they stared from her to each other, the Admiral said: 'I am cordially glad to hear it! cordially! though why you should have kept secret a point that makes as much for your honour as for your safety, I am not deep enough to determine. However, I won't decide against you, while I am in the dark of your reasons; though I own I have rather a taste myself for things more above board. But for all that, Ma'am, if I can be of any use to you, make no scruple to call upon me.'

He walked back to the parlour, where all now, except Harleigh, assembled to a general breakfast, of which, during this scene, Riley, for want of an associate, had been doing the honors to himself. The sick lady, Mrs Ireton, was not yet sufficiently recovered to take any refreshment; and the young man, her son, had commanded a repast on a separate table.

Harleigh repeated to the stranger, as she returned, in trembling, to her room, his offer of services.

'If any lady of this party,' she answered, 'would permit me to say a few words to her not quite in public, I should thankfully acknowledge such a condescension. And if you, Sir, to whom already I owe an escape that calls for my eternal gratitude, if you, Sir, could procure me such an audience – '

'What depends upon me shall surely not be left undone,' he replied; and, returning to the parlour, 'Ladies,' he said, 'this person whom we have brought over, begs to speak with one of you alone.'

'Alone!' repeated Mrs Maple, 'How shocking! Who can tell what may be her designs?'

'She means that we should go out to hold a conference with her in the passage, I suppose?' said Mrs Ireton, the sick lady, to whom the displeasure raised by this idea seemed to restore strength and speech; 'or, perhaps, she would be so good as to receive us in the kitchen? Her condescension is really edifying! I am quite at a loss how I shall shew my sense of such affability.'

'What, is that black insect buzzing about us still?' cried her son, 'Why what the deuce can one make of such a grim thing?'

'O, it's my friend the demoiselle, is it?' said Riley; 'Faith, I had almost forgotten her. I was so confoundedly numbed and gnawn, between cold and hunger, that I don't think I could have remembered my father, I don't, faith! before I had recruited. But where's poor demoiselle? What's become of her? She wants a little bleaching, to be sure; but she has not bad eyes; nor a bad nose, neither.'

'I am no great friend to the mystical,' said the Admiral, 'but I promised her my help while she stood in need of my protection, and I have no tide to withdraw it, now that I presume she is only in need of my purse. If any of the ladies, therefore, mean to go to her, I beg to trouble them to carry this.' He put a guinea upon the table.

'Now that she is so ready to tell her story,' said Elinor, 'I am confident that there is none to tell. While she was enveloped in the mystical, as the Admiral phrases it, I was dying with curiosity to make some discovery.'

'O the poor demoiselle!' cried Riley, 'why you can't think of leaving her in the lurch, at last, ladies, after bringing her so far? Come, lend me one of your bonnets and your fardingales, or what is it you call your things? And twirl me a belt round my waist, and something proper about my neck, and I'll go to her myself, as one of your waiting maids: I will, faith!'

'I am glad, at least, niece Elinor, that this once,' said Mrs Maple, 'you are reasonable enough to act a little like me and other people. If you had really been so wild as to sustain so glaring an impostor – '

'If, aunt? – don't you see how I am scalding my throat all this time to run to her?' replied Elinor, giving her hand to Harleigh.

As they re-entered the passage, the stranger, rushing from her room with a look the most scared and altered, exclaimed, that she had lost her purse.

'This is complete!' cried Elinor, laughing; 'and will this, too, Harleigh, move your knight-errantry? If it does – look to your heart! for I won't lose a moment in becoming black, patched, and pennyless!'

She flew with this anecdote to the breakfast parlour; while the stranger, yet more rapidly, flew from the inn to the sea-side, where she carefully retraced the ground that she had passed; but all examination was vain, and she returned with an appearance of increased dismay.

Meeting Harleigh at the door, his expression of concern somewhat calmed her distress, and she conjured him to plead with one of the ladies, to have the charity to convey her to London, and thence to help her on to Brighthelmstone. 'I have no means,' she cried, 'now, to proceed unaided; my purse, I imagine, dropt into the sea, when, so unguardedly! in the dark, I cast there – ' She stopt, looked confused, and bent her eyes upon the ground.

'To Brighthelmstone?' repeated Harleigh; 'some of these ladies reside not nine miles from that town. I will see what can be done.'

She merely entreated, she said, to be allowed to travel in their suite, in any way, any capacity, as the lowest of attendants. She was so utterly reduced by this dreadful loss, that she must else beg her way on foot.

Harleigh hastened to execute this commission; but the moment he named it, Elinor called out, 'Do, pray, Mr Harleigh, tell me where you have been secreting your common sense? – Not that I mean to look for it! – 'twould despoil me of all the dear freaks and vagaries that give zest to life!'