We were talking of a young lady of the name of Miss Caroline Vernon, who by herself and her more partial friends was considered to have pretty nigh finished her education, who consequently was leaving retirement and on the point of taking her station somewhere in some circle of some order of highly fashionable society. It was in July when affairs reached this climax. It is now November, nearly December,105 and consequently a period of about four months has lapsed in the interim. We are not to suppose that matters have all this while remained in statu quo, that Miss Caroline has been standing for upwards of a quarter of a year with her foot on the carriage-step, her hand on the lackey’s arm, her eyes pathetically and sentimentally fixed on the windows and chimneys of the convent-like place she is about to leave for good, all in a cataleptic condition of romantic immutability. No, be assured, the young person sighed over Hawkscliffe but once, wept two tears on parting with a groom and a pony she had been on friendly terms with, wondered thrice what her dear mamma would do without anybody to scold, for four minutes had a childish feeling of pity that she should be left behind, sat a quarter of an hour after the start in a fit of speechless thought she did not account for, and all the rest of the way was as merry as a grig.106
One or two instances did, indeed, occur on their route through Angria which puzzled her a little. In the first place, she wondered to hear her noble father give orders, whenever they approached a town, that the carriage should be taken through all sorts of odd, narrow bye-ways, so as to avoid the streets; and when she asked the reason of this, he told her with a queer sort of smile that the people of Angria were so fond of him he was afraid that a recognition of the arms on his carriage might be attended with even a troublesome demonstration of their affection. When, towards evening, they entered the city of Zamorna, which they were necessitated to pass through because it lay directly in their way, Miss Caroline was surprised to hear all sorts of groans and yells uttered by grimy-looking persons in paper caps, who seemed to gather about the lamp-posts107 and by the shop windows as they passed along. She was almost confounded when, as the carriage stopped a moment at a large hotel, an odd kind of howl broke from a crowd of persons who had quickly collected by the door, and at the same instant the window of plate-glass on her right hand shivered with a crash and an ordinary-sized brick-bat leapt through it and settled on her lap, spoiling a pretty silk frock which she had on, and breaking a locket which was a keepsake and which she very much valued.
It will now be a natural question in the reader’s mind, what has Miss Vernon been about during the last four months? Has she seen the world? Has she had any adventures? Is she just the same as she was? Is there any change where has she been? Where is she now? How does the globe stand in relation to her, and she in relation to the globe? During the last four months, reader, Miss Vernon has been at Paris.108 Her father had a crotchety, undefined notion that it was necessary she should go there to acquire a perfect finish. And in fact, he was right in that notion, for Paris was the only place to give her what he wished her to have – the ton, the air, the elegance of those who were highest on the summit of fashion. She changed fast in the atmosphere of Paris. She saw quickly into many things that were dark to her before. She learnt life, and unlearnt much fiction. The illusions of retirement were laid aside with a smile, and she wondered at her own rawness when she discovered the difference between the world’s reality and her childhood’s romance. She had a way of thinking to herself, and of comparing what she saw with what she had imagined. By dint of shrewd observation, she made discoveries concerning men and things which sometimes astounded her. She got hold of books which helped her in the pursuit of knowledge. She lost her simplicity by this means, and she grew knowing and, in a sense, reflective. However, she had talent enough to draw from her theories a safe practice, and there was something in her mind or heart or imagination which, after all, filled her with wholesome contempt for the goings on of the bright refined world around her. People who have been brought up in retirement don’t soon get hackneyed to society. They often retain a notion that they are better than those about, that they are not of their sort, and that it would be a letting down to them to give the slightest glimpse of their real natures and genuine feelings to the chance associates of a ball-room.
Of course, Miss Caroline did not forget that there was such a thing in the world as love. She heard a great deal of talk about that article amongst the gallant monsieurs and no less gallant madames around her. Neither did she omit to notice whether she had the power of inspiring that superfine passion. Caroline soon learnt that she was a very attractive being, and that she had that power in a very high degree. She was told that her eyes were beautiful, that her voice was sweet, that her complexion was clear and fine, that her form was a model; she was told all this without mystery, without reserve. The assurance flattered her highly and made her face burn with pleasure, and when, by degrees, she ascertained that few even of the prettiest women in Paris were her equals, she began to feel a certain consciousness of power, a certain security of pleasing more delicious and satisfactory than words can describe.
The circumstance of her high parentage gave her éclat. Northangerland is a kind of king in Paris, and his youthful daughter received from her father’s followers the homage of a princess. In the French fashion, they hailed her as a rising and guiding star of their faction. The Dupins, the Barrases and the Bernadottes109 called her a new planet in the republican heaven. They knew what an ornament to their dark revolutionary coteries a lady so young and intelligent must be, and it will be no matter of wonder to the reader when I say that Miss Vernon received their homage, imbibed their sentiments, and gave heart and soul to the politics of the faction that called her father its leader.
Her career at Paris soon assumed the aspect of a triumph.110 After she had made one or two eloquent and enthusiastic declarations of her adoration for republics and her scorn of monarchies, she began to be claimed by the jeunes gens of Paris as their queen and goddess. She had not yet experience enough to know what sort of a circle she had gathered round her, though she guessed that some of those sons of young France who thronged about her sofa in the saloon and crowded her box at the theatre were little better than regular mauvais sujets. Very different, indeed, were these from the polite, grimacing men-monkeys111 of the old regime. There was a touch of the unvarnished blackguard about most of them, infinitely more gross and unequivocal than is to be met with in any other capital of civilized Europe. Miss Vernon, who was tolerably independent in her movements, because her father restrained her very little and seemed to trust with a kind of blind confidence to I know not what conservative principle in his daughter’s mind, Miss Vernon, I say, often at concerts and nightly soirées met and mingled with troops of these men. She also met with a single individual who was as bad as the worst of the jeunes gens. He was not a Frenchman, however, but a countryman of her father’s, and a friend of his first youth. I allude to Hector Montmorency Esqre.112
She had seen Mr Montmorency first at an evening party at Sir John Denard’s hotel, in a grand reunion of the Northangerland faction. As usual, her seat was surrounded by the youngest and handsomest men in the room, and as usual, she was engaged in passionate and declamatory conversation on the desperate politics of her party, and whenever she turned her head, she noticed a man of middle age, of strong form, and peculiar, sinister, sardonic aspect, standing with his arms folded, gazing hard at her. She heard him ask Sir John Denard, in the French language, ‘who the De—l cette jolie petite fille à cheveux noirs113 could possibly be?’ She did not hear Sir John’s reply; it was whispered; but directly afterwards, she was aware of some one leaning over her chair-back. She looked up. Mr Montmorency’s face was bending over her.
‘My young lady,’ said he. ‘I have been looking at you for a good while, and I wondered what on earth it could possibly be in your face that reminded me so of old times. I see how it is now, as I’ve learnt your name. You’re Northangerland’s and Louisa’s child, I understand. Hum, you’re like to do them credit! I admire this; it’s a bit in Augusta’s way. I daresay your father’ll admire it too. You’re in a good line; nice young men you have about you. Could you find in your heart to leave them a minute, and take my arm for a little promenade down the room?’
Mr Montmorency offered his arm with the manner and look of a gentleman of the west.114 It was accepted, for, strange to say, Miss Vernon rather liked him. There was an off-hand gallantry in his mien which took her fancy at once. When the honourable Hector had got her to himself, he began to talk to her in a half-free, half-confidential strain. He bantered her on her numerous train of admirers, he said one or two warm words about her beauty, he tried to sound the depth of her moral principles and, when his experienced eye and ear soon discovered that she was no Frenchwoman and no callous and hackneyed and well-skilled flirt, that his hints did not take and his innuendos were not understood, he changed the conversation and began to inquire about her education – where she had been reared and how she had got along in the world.
Miss Vernon was as communicative as possible. She chattered away with great glee about her mother and her masters, about Angria and Hawkscliffe, but she made no reference to her guardian. Mr Montmorency inquired whether she was at all acquainted with the Duke of Zamorna. She said she was, a little. Mr Montmorency then said he supposed the Duke wrote to her sometimes. She said, ‘No, never.’ Mr Montmorency said he wondered at that, and meantime he looked into Miss Vernon’s face as narrowly as if her features had been the Lord’s Prayer written within the compass of a sixpence.115 There was nothing particular to be seen, except a smooth, brunette complexion and dark eyes looking at the carpet. Mr Montmorency remarked in a random, careless way, ‘that the Duke was a sad hand in some things.’ Miss Vernon asked,
‘In what?’
‘About women,’ replied Montmorency, bluntly and coarsely. After a momentary pause, she said, ‘Indeed!’, and that was all she did say. But she felt such a sensation of astonishment, such an electrical, stunning surprise that she hardly knew for a minute where [she] was. It was the oddest, the most novel thing in the world for her to hear her guardian’s character freely canvassed. To hear such an opinion expressed concerning him as that Mr Montmorency had so nonchalantly uttered was strange to a degree. It gave a shock to her ordinary way of thinking. It revolutionized her ideas. She walked on through the room, but she forgot for a moment who was round her or what she was doing.
‘Did you never hear that before?’ asked Mr Montmorency, after a considerable interval, which he had spent in humming a tune which a lady was singing to a harp.
‘No.’
‘Did you never guess it? Has not his Grace a rakish, impudent air with him?’
‘No, quite different.’
‘What, he sports the Simon Pure,116 does he?’
‘He’s generally rather grave and strict.’
‘Did you like him?’
‘No – yes – no – not much –’
‘That’s queer. Several young ladies have liked him a good deal too well. I daresay you’ve seen Miss Laury, now, as you lived at Hawkscliffe?’
‘Yes.’
‘She’s his mistress.’
‘Indeed!’ repeated Miss Vernon, after the same interregnum of appalled surprise.
‘The Duchess has not particularly easy times of it,’ continued Montmorency. ‘She’s your half-sister, you know.’
‘Yes.’
‘But she knew what she had to expect before she married him, for when he was Marquis of Douro he was the most consumed blackguard in Verdopolis.’
Miss Caroline in silence heard, and in spite of the dismay she felt, wished to hear more. There is a wild interest in thus suddenly seeing the light rush in on the character of one well known to our eyes but, as we discover, utterly unknown to our minds. The young lady’s feelings were not exactly painful. They were strange, new and startling. She was getting to the bottom of an unsounded sea, and lighting on rocks she had not guessed at. Mr Montmorency said no more in that conversation, and he left Miss Vernon to muse over what he had communicated.
What his exact aim was in thus speaking of the Duke of Zamorna it would be difficult to say. He added no violent abuse of him, nor did he attempt to debase his character as he might easily have done. He left the subject there. Whether his words lingered in the mind of the listener, I can hardly say. I believe they did, for though she never broached the matter to any one else, or again applied to him for farther information, yet she looked into magazines and into newspapers, she read every passage and every scrap she could find that referred to Zamorna and Douro, she weighed and balanced and thought over every thing, and in a little while, though removed five hundred miles from the individual whose character she studied, she had learnt all that other people know of him and saw him in his real light, no longer as a philosopher and apostle, but as – I need not tell my readers what they know, or at least can guess. Thus did Zamorna cease to be an abstract principle in her mind; thus did she discover that he was a man, vicious like other men – perhaps I should say more than other men – with passions that sometimes controlled him, with propensities that were often stronger than his reason, with feelings that could be reached by beauty, with a corruption that could be roused by opposition. She thought of him no longer as ‘the stoic of the woods, the man without a tear’,117 but as – don’t let us bother ourselves with considering as what.
When Miss Vernon had been about a quarter of a year in Paris, she seemed to grow tired of the society there. She begged her father to let her go home, as she called it, meaning to Verdopolis. Strange to say, the Earl appeared disquieted at this request. At first, he would not listen to it. She refused to attend the soirées and frequent the opera; she said she had had enough of the French people; she spent the evenings with her father, and played and sung to him. Northangerland grew very fond of her and, as she continued her entreaties to be allowed to go home, often soliciting him with tears in her eyes, he slowly gave way, and at length yielded a hard-wrung and tardy assent. But though his reluctance was overruled, it was evidently not removed. He would not hear her talk of Verdopolis; he evidently hated the thoughts of her return thither; he seemed disturbed when she secluded herself from society and declined invitations. All this, to an ordinary observer, would seem to partake of a tincture of insanity, for well did his Lordship know the character of those circles in which his daughter moved, the corrupt morality, the cold, systematic dissoluteness universal there. Yet he never hinted a word of advice or warning to her. He let her go seemingly unwatched and unguarded. He shewed no anxiety about her till the moment when she wished to withdraw from the vitiated atmosphere, and then he demurred and frowned, as though she had asked to enter into some scene of temptation instead of to retire from it. In spite of this seeming paradox, however, the probability is that Northangerland knew what he was about. He was well acquainted with the materials he had to work upon and, as he said himself, he deemed that Caroline was safer as the prima donna of a Parisian saloon than as the recluse of a remote lodge in Angria.
But Northangerland is not proof to a soft, imploring voice and a mournful look. Miss Vernon loathed Paris and pined after Verdopolis, and she got her way. One evening, as she kissed her father good-night, he said she might give what orders she pleased on the subject of departure. A very few days after, a packet freighted with the Earl and his household were steaming across the channel.
Northangerland was puzzled and uncomfortable when he got his daughter to Verdopolis. He evidently did not like her to remain there. He never looked settled or easy. There was no present impediment to her residing at Ellrington House, because the Countess happened to be then staying in Angria, but when Zenobia came home, Caroline must quit. Other considerations also disturbed the calm of the Earl’s soul; by him untold, by his daughter unsuspected.
Mr Percy has his own peculiar way of expressing his dissatisfaction. Rarely does a word drop from his lips which bears the tone of expostulation, of reproof, or even command. He does it all by looks and movements, which the initiated only can understand. Miss Vernon discerned a difference in him, but could not dive to the origin thereof. When she came to him with her bonnet on, dressed to go out and looking, as her mirror had told her, very pretty and elegant, he did not express even his usual modicum of quiet pleasure. He would insinuate that the day was wet or cold or windy, or in some way unfit for an excursion. When she came to his drawing-room after tea and said she had nowhere to go, and was come to spend the evening with him, he gave her no welcome, hardly smiled, only sat passive. Now, his daughter Mary would have keenly felt such coldness, and would have met it with silent pride and a bitter regret, but Caroline had no such acute sensitiveness, no such subtle perception. Instead of taking the matter home to herself, and ascribing this change to something she had done or left undone, she attributed it to her father’s being ill, or in low spirits, or annoyed with business. She could not at all conceive that he was angry with her, and accordingly, in her caressing way, she would put her arms round his neck and kiss him. And though the Earl received the kiss more like a piece of sculpture than anything living, Caroline, instead of retiring in silence, would begin some prattle to amuse him and, when that failed of its effect, she would try music, and when he asked her to give up playing, she would laugh and tell him he was as capricious as Mamma, and when nothing at all would do, she would take a book, sit down at his feet and read to herself. She was so engaged one evening when Mr Percy said after a long, long lapse of silence,
‘Are you not tired of Verdopolis, Caroline?’
‘No’ was the answer.
‘I think you had better leave it,’ continued the Earl.
‘Leave it, Papa, when winter is just coming on!’
‘Yes.’
‘I have not been here three weeks,’ said Miss Vernon.
‘You will be as well in the country,’ replied her father.
‘Parliament is going to meet and the season is beginning,’ pursued she.
‘Are you turned a monarchist?’ asked the Earl. ‘Are you going to attend the debates, and take interest in the divisions?’
‘No, but town will be full.’
‘I thought you had had enough of fashion and gaiety at Paris?’
‘Yes, but I want to see Verdopolitan gaiety.’
‘Eden Cottage is ready,’ remarked Northangerland.
‘Eden Cottage, Papa?’
‘Yes, a place near Fidena.’
‘Do you wish to send me there, Papa?’
‘Yes.’
‘How soon?’
‘To-morrow or the day after if you like.’
Miss Vernon’s face assumed an expression which it would be scarcely correct to describe by softer epithets than dour and drumly. She said, with an emphatic slow enunciation,
‘I should not like to go to Eden Cottage.’
Northangerland made no remark.
‘I hate the north extremely,’ she pursued, ‘and have no partiality to the south.’
‘Selden House is ready too,’ said Mr Percy.
‘Selden House is more disagreeable to me still,’ replied his daughter.
‘You had better reconcile yourself either to Fidena or Rossland,’ suggested Mr Percy quickly.
‘I feel an invincible repugnance to both,’ was her reply, uttered with a self-sustained haughtiness of tone almost ludicrous from such lips.
Northangerland is long-suffering. ‘You shall choose your own retreat,’ said he. ‘But as it is arranged that you cannot long remain in Verdopolis, it will be well to decide soon.’
‘I would rather remain at Ellrington House,’ responded Mademoiselle Vernon.
‘I think I intimated that would not be convenient,’ answered her father.
‘I would remain another month,’ said she.
‘Caroline!’ said a warning voice. Percy’s light eye flickered.
‘Papa, you are not kind.’
No reply followed. ‘Will I be banished to Fidena?’ muttered the rebellious girl to herself.
Mr Percy’s visual organs began to play at cross-purposes. He did not like to be withstood in this way.
‘You may as well kill me, as send me to live by myself at the end of the world where I know nobody except Denard, an old grey badger.’118
‘It is optional whether you go to Fidena,’ returned Percy. ‘I said you might choose your station.’
‘Then I’ll go and live at Paquena in Angria. You have a house there, Papa.’
‘Out of the question,’ said the Earl.
‘I’ll go back to Hawkscliffe, then.’
‘Oh no, you can’t have the choice of that. You are not wanted there.’
‘I’ll live in Adrianopolis, then, at Northangerland House.’
‘No.’
‘You said I might have my choice, Papa, and you contradict me in everything.’
‘Eden Cottage is the place,’ murmured Percy.
‘Do – do let me stay in Verdopolis!’ exclaimed Miss Vernon, after a pause of swelling vexation. ‘Papa, do! Be kind, and forgive me if I’m cross.’ Starting up, she fell to the argument of kisses, and she also cried abundantly. None but Louisa Vernon, or Louisa Vernon’s daughter, would have thought of kissing Northangerland in his present mood.
‘Just tell me why you won’t let me stay, Papa,’ she continued. ‘What have I done to offend you? I only ask for another month, or another fortnight, just to see some of my friends when they come to Verdopolis.’
‘What friends, Caroline?’
‘I mean, some of the people I know.’
‘What people do you know?’
‘Well, only two or three, and I saw in the newspaper this morning that they were expected to arrive in town very soon.’
‘Who, Caroline?’
‘Well, some of the Angrians. Mr Warner and General Enara and Lord Castlereagh. I’ve seen them many a time, you know, Papa, and it would be only civil to stop and call on them.’
‘Won’t do, Caroline,’ returned the Earl.
‘Why won’t it do, Papa? It’s only natural to wish to be civil, is[n’t] it?’
‘You don’t wish to be civil, and we’d better say no more about it. I prefer your going to Fidena the day after to-morrow at the farthest.’
Caroline sat mute for a moment, then she said,
‘So, I am not to stay in Verdopolis, and I am to go to Eden Cottage.’
‘Thou hast said it,’ was the reply.
‘Very well,’ she rejoined quickly. She sat looking at the fire for another minute; then she got up, lit her candle, said good-night, and walked upstairs to bed. As she was leaving the room, she accidentally hit her forehead a good knock against the side of the door. A considerable organ119 rose in an instant. She said nothing, but walked on. When she got to her own room, the candle fell from its socket and was extinguished. She neither picked it up nor rang for another. She undressed in the dark, and went to bed ditto. As she lay alone, with night round her, she began to weep. Sobs were audible a long time from her pillow, sobs not of grief, but of baffled will and smothered passion. She could hardly abide to be thus thwarted, to be thus forced from Verdopolis, when she would have given her ears to be allowed to stay.
The reader will ask why she had set her heart so fixedly on this point. I’ll tell him plainly, and make no mystery of it. The fact was, she wanted to see her guardian. For weeks, almost months, she had felt an invincible inclination to behold him again by the new lights Mr Montmorency had given her as to his character. There had also been much secret enjoyment in her mind from the idea of shewing herself to him, improved as she knew she was by her late sojourn in Paris. She had been longing for the time of his arrival in town to come, and that very morning she had seen it announced in the newspaper that orders had been given to prepare Wellesley House for the immediate reception of his Grace the Duke of Zamorna and suite, and that the noble Duke was expected in Verdopolis before the end of the week. After reading this, Miss Caroline had spent the whole morning in walking in the garden behind Ellrington House, reverieing on the interesting future she imagined to be in store for her, picturing the particulars of her first interview with Mr Wellesley, fancying what he would say, whether he would look as if he thought her pretty, whether he would ask her to come and see him at Wellesley House, if she should be introduced to the Duchess, how the Duchess would treat her, what she would be like, how she would be dressed, etcetera etceterorum. All this was now put a stop to, cut off, crushed in the bud, and Miss Caroline was thereupon in a horrid bad temper, choked, almost, with obstinacy and rage and mortification. It seemed to her imposssible that she could endure the disappointment. To be torn away from a scene where there was so much of pleasure, and exiled into comparative dark, blank solitude was frightful. How could she live? After long musing in midnight silence, she said half-aloud, ‘I’ll find some way to alter matters,’ and then she turned on her pillow and went to sleep.
Two or three days elapsed. Miss Vernon, it seemed, had not succeeded in finding a way to alter matters, for on the second day she was obliged to leave Ellrington House, and she took her departure in tearless taciturnity, bidding no one good-bye except her father, and with him she just shook hands and offered him no kiss. The Earl did not half like her look and manner. Not that he was afraid of anything tragic, but she seemed neither fretful nor desponding. She had the air of one who had laid a plan, and hoped to compass her ends, yet she scrupled not to evince continued and haughty displeasure towards his Lordship, and her anger was expressed with all her mother’s temerity and acrimony; with something, too, of her mother’s whimsicality, but with none of her fickleness. She seemed quite unconscious of any absurdity in her indignation, though it produced much the same effect as if a squirrel had thought proper to treat a Newfoundland dog with lofty hauteur. Northangerland smiled when her back was turned. Still, he perceived that there was character in all this, and he felt far from comfortable. However, he had written to Sir John Denard desiring him to watch her during her stay at Eden Cottage and he knew Sir John dared not be a careless sentinel.
The very morning after Miss Vernon’s departure, Zenobia, Countess of Northangerland, arrived at Ellrington House, and in the course of the same day a cortège of six carriages conveyed the Duke and Duchess of Zamorna, their children and household to the residence in Victoria Square. Mr Percy had made the coast clear only just in time.
One day, when the Duke of Zamorna was dressing to go and dine in state at Waterloo Palace with some much more respectable company than he was accustomed to associate with, his young man, Mr Rosier, said, as he helped him on with his Sunday coat,
‘Has your Grace ever noticed that letter on the mantle-piece?’
‘What letter? No. Where did it come from?’
‘It’s one that I found on your Grace’s library table the day we arrived in town – that’s nearly a week ago – and as it seemed to be from a lady, I brought it up here, intending to mention it to your Grace; and somehow it slipped down between the toilet and the wall, and I forgot it till this morning, when I found it again.’
‘You’re a blockhead. Give me the letter.’
It was handed to him. He turned it over, and examined the superscription and seal. It was a prettily folded, satin paper production, nicely addressed, and sealed with the impression of a cameo. His Grace cracked the pretty classic head, unfolded the document, and read.
My Lord Duke,
I am obliged to write to you, because I have no other way of letting you know how uncomfortable everything is. I don’t know whether you will expect to find me in Verdopolis, or whether you’ve ever thought about it, but I’m not there. At least, I shall not be there to-morrow, for Papa has settled that I am to go to Eden Cottage near Fidena, and live there all my life, I suppose. I call this very unreasonable, because I have no fondness for the place and no wish ever to see it, and I know none of the people there, except an old plain person called Denard, whom I exceedingly dislike. I have tried all ways to change Papa’s mind, but he has refused me so often that I think it would shew a want of proper spirit to beg any longer. I intend, therefore, not to submit, but to do what I can’t help doing, though I shall let Papa see that I consider him very unkind, and that I should be very sorry to treat him in such a way. He was quite different at Paris, and seemed as if he had too much sense to contradict people and force them to do things they have a particular objection to.
Will your Grace be so kind as to call on Papa, and recommend him to think better of it, and let me come back to Verdopolis? It would perhaps be as well to say that very likely I shall do something desperate if I am kept long at Eden Cottage. I know I cannot bear it, for my whole heart is in Verdopolis. I had formed so many plans, which are now all broken up. I wanted to see your Grace. I left France because I was tired of being in a country where I was sure you would not come, and I disliked the thought of the sea being between your Grace and myself. I did not tell Papa that this was the reason I wished to remain in Verdopolis, because I was afraid he would think me silly, as he does not know the regard I have for your Grace.
I am in a hurry to finish this letter, as I wish to send it to Wellesley House without Papa knowing, and then you will find it there when you come. Your Grace will excuse faults, because I have never been much accustomed to writing letters, though I am nearly sixteen years old. I know I have written in much too childish a way. However, I cannot help it, and if your Grace will believe me, I talk and behave much more like a woman than I did before I went to Paris, and I can say what I wish to say much better in speaking than I can in a letter. This letter, for instance, is all contrary to what I had intended. I had not meant to tell your Grace that I cared at all about you. I had intended to write in a reserved, dignified way, that you might think I was changed – which I am, I assure you, for I have by no means the same opinion of you that I once had, and, now that I recollect myself, it was not from pure friendship that I wished to see you, but chiefly from the desire I had to prove that I had ceased to respect your Grace so much as formerly. You must have a great deal of cover in your character, which is not a good sign.
I am, my Lord Duke,
Your obedient servant,
Caroline Vernon.
P.S. I hope you will be so kind as to write to me. I shall count the hours and minutes till I get an answer. If you write directly, it will reach me the day after tomorrow. Do write! My heart aches; I am so sorry and so grieved. I had thought so much about meeting you. But perhaps you don’t care much about me, and have forgotten how I cried the evening before I left Hawkscliffe. Not that this signifies, or is of the least consequence; I hope I can be comfortable whoever forgets me. And of course, you have a great many calls on your thoughts, being a sort of king – which is a great pity; I hate kings. It would conduce to your glory if you would turn Angria into a Commonwealth, and make yourself Protector. Republican principles are very popular in France. You are not popular there; I heard you very much spoken against. I never defended you; I don’t know why. I seemed as if I disliked to let people know I was acquainted with you.
Believe me,
Yours respectfully,
C V.
Zamorna, having completed the perusal of this profound and original document, smiled, thought a minute, smiled again, popped the epistle into the little drawer of a cabinet which he locked, pulled down his brief black silk waistcoat, adjusted his stock, settled himself in his dress-coat, ran his fingers three times through his hair, took his hat and new light lavender kid gloves, turned a moment to a mirror, backed, erected his head, took a survey of his whole longitude from top to toe, walked downstairs, entered a carriage that was waiting for him, sat back with folded arms, and was whirled away to Waterloo Palace. He dined very heartily with a select gentleman party, consisting of his Grace the Duke of Wellington, his Grace the Duke of Fidena, the Right Honourable the Earl of Richton, the Right Honourable Lord St Clair, General Granville and Sir R Weaver Pelham. During the repast he was too fully occupied in eating to have time to commit himself much by any marked indecorum of behaviour, and even when the cloth was withdraw[n] and the wine placed on the table, he comported himself pretty well for some time, seeming thoughtful and quiet. After a while, he began to sip his glass of champagne and crack his walnuts with an air of easy impudence much more consistent with his usual habits. Erelong, he was heard to laugh to himself at some steady constitutional conversation going on between General Grenville and Lord St Clair. He likewise leant back in his chair, stretched his limbs far under the table, and yawned. His noble father remarked to him aside that if he were sleepy he knew the way up-stairs to bed, and that most of the guests there present would consider his room fully an equivalent for his company. He sat still, however, and before the party were summoned to coffee in the drawing-room he had proceeded to the indecent length of winking at Lord Richton across the table. When the move was made from the dining-room, instead of following the rest up-stairs, he walked down into the hall, took his hat, opened the door, whistling, to see if it was a fine night, having ascertained that it was, turned out into the street without carriage or servant, and walked home with his hands in his breeches pockets, grasping fast hold of a bob and two joeys.120
He got home in good time, about eleven o’clock, as sober as a water-cask, let himself in by the garden-door at the back of Wellesley House, and was ascending the private staircase in a most sneaking manner, as if he was afraid of somebody hearing him and wanted to slink to his own den unobserved, when hark! a door opened in the little hall behind him. It was her Grace the Duchess of Zamorna’s drawing-room door. Mr Wellesley had in vain entered from the garden like a thief, and trodden across the hall like a large tom-cat, and stepped on his toes like a magnified121 dancing-master as he ascended the softly carpeted stairs. Some persons’ ears are not to be deceived, and in a quiet hour of the night, when people are sitting alone, they can hear the dropping of a pin within doors or the stirring of a leaf without.
‘Adrian!’ said one below, and Mr Wellesley was obliged to stop midway up the stairs.
‘Well, Mary?’ he replied, without turning round or commencing a descent.
‘Where are you going?’
‘Up-stairs, I rather think. Don’t I seem to be on that tack?’
‘Why did you make so little noise in coming in?’
‘Do you wish me to thunder at the door like a battering-ram, or come in like a troop of horse?’
‘Now that’s nonsense, Adrian. I suppose the fact is, you’re not well. Now just come down and let me look at you.’
‘Heaven preserve us! There’s no use in resisting. Here I am.’
He descended, and followed the Duchess from the hall to the room to which she retreated.
‘Am I all here, do you think?’ he continued, presenting himself before her. ‘Quite as large as life?’
‘Yes, Adrian, but –’
‘But what? I presume there’s a leg or an arm wanting, or my nose is gone, or my teeth have taken out a furlough,122 or the hair of my head has changed colour, eh? Examine well, and see that your worser half is no worse than it was.’
‘There’s quite enough of you, such as you are,’ said she. ‘But what’s the matter with you? Are you sure you’ve been to Waterloo Palace?’
‘Where do you think I have been? Just let us hear. Keeping some assignation, I suppose? If I had, I would not have come home so soon; you may be pretty certain of that.’
‘Then you have been only to Waterloo Palace?’
‘I rather think so. I don’t remember calling anywhere else.’
‘And who was there? And why did you come home by yourself, without the carriage? Did the rest leave when you did?’
‘I’ve got a head-ache, Mary.’ This was a lie, told to awaken sympathy and elude further cross-examination.
‘Have you, Adrian? Where?
‘I think I said I had a head-ache. Of course it would not be in my great toe.’
‘And was that the reason you came away so soon?’
‘Not exactly. I remembered I had a love-letter to write.’
This was pretty near the truth. The Duchess, however, believed the lie, and disregarded the truth. The matter was so artfully managed that jest was given for earnest and earnest for jest.123
‘Does your head ache very much?’ continued the Duchess.
‘Deucedly.’
‘Rest it on this cushion.’
‘Hadn’t I better go to bed, Mary?’
‘Yes; and perhaps if I were to send for Sir Richard Warner –? You may have taken cold.’
‘Oh no, not to-night. We’ll see to-morrow morning.’
‘Your eyes don’t look heavy, Adrian.’
‘But they feel so, just like bullets.’
‘What kind of a pain is it?’
‘A shocking bad one.’
‘Adrian, you are laughing. I saw you turn away your head and smile.’
His Grace smiled without turning away his head. That smile confessed that his head-ache was a sham. The Duchess caught its meaning quickly. She caught also an expression in his face which indicated that he had changed his mood since he came in, and that he was not so anxious to get away from her as he had been. She had been standing before him, and she now took his hand. Mary looked prettier than any of her rivals ever did. She had finer features, a fairer skin, more eloquent eyes. No hand more soft and delicate had ever closed on the Duke’s than that which was detaining him now. He forgot her superiority often, and preferred charms which were dim to hers. Still she retained the power of wakening him at intervals to a new consciousness of her price, and his Grace would every now and then discover with surprise that he had a treasure always in his arms that he loved better, a great deal, than the far-sought gems he dived amongst rocks so often to bring up.
‘Come, all’s right,’ said his Grace, sitting down, and he mentally added, ‘I shall have no time to write a letter to-night. It’s perhaps as well let alone.’ Dismissing Caroline Vernon with this thought, he allowed himself to be pleased by her elder and fairer sister, Mary.
The Duchess appeared to make no great bustle or exertion in effecting this. Nor did she use the least art, or agacerie, as the French call it, which indeed, she full well knew, with the subject she had to manage, would have instantly defeated its own end. She simply took a seat near the arm-chair into which his Grace had thrown himself, inclined herself a little towards him, and in a low, agreeable voice began to talk on miscellaneous subjects of a household and family nature. She had something to say about her children, and some advice to ask. She had also quietly to inquire into his Grace’s opinions on one or two political points, and to communicate her own notions respecting divers matters under discussion – notions she never thought of imparting to any living ear except that of her honourable spouse, for in everything like gossip and chit-chat the Duchess of Zamorna is ordinarily the most reserved person imaginable.
To all this the Duke hearkened almost in silence, resting his elbow on the chair and his head on his hand, looking sometimes at the fire and sometimes at his wife. He seemed to take her talk as though it were a kind of pleasant air on a flute, and when she expressed herself with a certain grave, naïve simplicity which is a peculiar characteristic of her familiar conversation, which she seldom uses but can command at will, he did not smile, but gave her a glance which somehow said that those little original touches were his delight. The fact was, she could, if she liked, have spoken with much more depth and sense. She could have rounded her periods like a blue,124 if she had had a mind, and discussed topics worthy of a member of parliament. But this suited better. Art was at the bottom of the thing, after all. It answered. His Grace set some store on her as she sat telling him every thing that came into her mind in a way which proved that he was the only person in whom she reposed this confidence, now and then, but very seldom, raising her eyes to his. And then her warm heart mastered her prudence, and a glow of extreme ardour confessed that he was so dear to her that she could not long feign indifference or even tranquillity while thus alone with him, close at his side.
Mr Wellesley could not help loving his Mary at such a moment, and telling her so, too, and, I daresay, asseverating with deep oaths that he had never loved any other lady half so well, nor ever seen a face that pleased his eye so much, or heard a voice that filled his ear with such sweetness. That night, she certainly recalled a wanderer. How long it will be before the wish to stray returns again is another thing. Probably, circumstances will decide this question. We shall see, if we wait patiently.
Louisa Vernon, sixteen years ago, gave the name of Eden to her romantic cottage at Fidena; not, one would suppose, from any resemblance the place bears to the palmy shades of an Asiatic paradise, but rather because she there spent her happiest days in the society of her lover, Mr Percy, the Drover, and because that was the scene where she moved as a queen in the midst of a certain set, and enjoyed that homage and adulation whose recollection she to this day dwells on with fondness, and whose absence she pines over with regret.
It was not with her mother’s feelings that Caroline Vernon viewed the place, when she arrived there late on a wet and windy November night, too dark to shew her the amphitheatre of highlands towards which her cottage looked, for the mountains had that evening muffled their brows in clouds, instead of crowning them ‘with the wandering star’. Caroline, as may be supposed, cherished other feelings towards the place than her mother would have done; other than she herself might very probably have entertained had the circumstances attending her arrival there been somewhat different. Had the young lady, for instance, made it her resting-place in the course of a bridal tour, had she come to spend her honeymoon amid that amphitheatre of highlands towards which the cottage looked, she might have deigned to associate some high or soft sensations with the sight of those dim mountains – only the portals, as it were, to a far wilder region beyond, especially when, in an evening, ‘they crowned their blue brows with the wandering star’.125 But Miss Caroline had arrived on no bridal tour. She had brought no inexpressibly heroic-looking personage as her camarade de voyage and also her camarade de vie. She came a lonely exile, a persecuted and banished being, according to her own notions; and this was her Siberia, and not her Eden.126
Prejudiced thus, she would not for a moment relax in her detestation of the villa and the neighbourhood. Her heaven for that season, she had decided, was to be Verdopolis. There were her hopes of pleasure, there were all the human beings on earth in whom she felt any interest, there were those she wished to live for, to dress for, to smile for. When she put on a becoming frock here, what was the good of it? Were those great staring mountains any judge of dress? When she looked pretty, who praised her? When she came down of an evening to her sitting-room, what was there to laugh with her, to be merry with her? Nothing but arm-chairs and ottomans and a cottage-piano. No hope, here, of happy arrivals, of pleasant rencontres.
Then she thought, if she were but at that moment passing through the folding door of a saloon at Ellrington House, perhaps just opposite to her, by the marble fire-place, there would be somebody standing that she should like to see, perhaps nobody else in the room. She had imagined such an interview. She had fancied a certain delightful excitement and surprise connected with the event. The gentleman would not know her at first; she would be so changed from what she was five months ago. She was not dressed like a child now, nor had she the air and tournure of a child. She would advance with much state; he would, perhaps, move to her slightly. She would give him a glance, just to be quite certain who it was. It would of course be him and no mistake; and he would have on a blue frock-coat and white irreproachables,127 and would be very much bewhiskered and becurled as he used to be. Also, his nose would be in no wise diminished or impaired; it would exhibit the same aspect of a tower looking towards Lebanon128 that it had always done. After a silent inspection of two or three minutes, he would begin to see daylight. And then came the recognition. There was a curious uncertainty about this scene in Miss Caroline’s imagination. She did not know exactly what his Grace would do or how he would look. Perhaps he would only say, ‘What, Miss Vernon, is it you?’ and then shake hands. That, the young lady thought, would be sufficient if there was anybody else there; but if not – if she found his Grace in the saloon alone – such a cool acknowledgement of acquaintanceship would never do. He must call her his little Caroline, and must bestow at least one kiss. Of course there was no harm in such a thing. Wasn’t she his ward? And then there came the outline of an idea of standing on the rug talking to him, looking up sometimes to answer his questions about Paris, and being sensible how little she was near him. She hoped nobody would come into the room, for she remembered very well how much more freely her guardian used to talk to her when she took a walk with him alone than when there were other persons by.
So far Caroline would get in her reverie, and then something would occur to rouse her – perhaps the tinkling fall of a cinder from the grate. To speak emphatically, it was then dickey with all these dreams. She awoke, and found herself at Fidena, and knew that Verdopolis and Ellrington House were just three hundred miles off, and that she might wear her heart with wishes, but could neither return to them nor attain the hope of pleasure they held forth. At this crisis, Miss Vernon would sit down and cry; and when a cambric handkerchief had been thoroughly wet, she would cheer up again at the remembrance of the letter she had left at Wellesley House, and commence another reverie on the effects that profound lucubration was likely to produce. Though day after day elapsed and no answer was returned, and no messenger came riding in breathless haste, bearing a recall from banishment, she still refused to relinquish this last consolation. She could not believe that the Duke of Zamorna would forget her so utterly as to neglect all notice of her request. But three weeks elapsed, and it was scarcely possible to hope any longer. Her father had not written, for he was displeased with her. Her guardian had not written, for her sister’s charms had succeeded in administering a soft opiate to his memory, which for the time lulled to sleep all recollection of every other female face and deadened every faithless wish to roam.
Then did Miss Caroline begin to perceive that she was despised and cast off, even as she herself hid away a dress that she was tired of, or a scarf that had become frayed and faded. In deep meditation, in the watches of the night, she discerned, at first by glimpses, and at last, clearly, that she was not of that importance to the Earl of Northangerland and the Duke of Zamorna which she had vainly supposed herself to be.
‘I really think,’ she said to herself doubtfully, ‘that because I am not Papa’s proper daughter, but only his natural daughter, and Mamma was never married to him, he does not care much about me. I suppose he is proud of Mary Henrietta, because she married so highly and is considered so beautiful and elegant. And the Duke of Zamorna just considers me as a child, whom he once took a little trouble with, in providing her with masters, and getting her taught to play a tune on the piano and to draw in French chalk and to speak with a correct Parisian accent and to read some hard, dry, stupid, intricate Italian poetry. And now that I’m off his hands, he makes no more account of me than of one of those ricketty little Flowers129 whom he sometimes used to take on his knee a few minutes to please Lord Richton. Now, this will never do! I can’t bear to be considered in this light. But how do I wish him to regard me? What terms should I like to be on with him? Really, I hardly know. Let me see. I suppose there’s no harm in thinking about it at night to oneself, when one can’t sleep, but is forced to lie awake in bed, looking into the dark and listening to the clock strike hour after hour.’
And having thus satisfied herself with the reflection that silence could have no listener and solitude no watcher, she turned her cheek to her pillow and, shrouding her eyes even from the dim outline of a large window which alone relieved the midnight gloom of her chamber, she would proceed thus with her thoughts:
‘I do believe I like the Duke of Zamorna very much. I can’t exactly tell why. He is not a good man, it seems, from what Mr Montmorency said, and he is not a particularly kind or cheerful man. When I think of it, there were scores of gentlemen at Paris who were a hundred times more merry and witty and complimentary than ever he was. Young Vaudeville and Troupeau said more civil things to me in half an hour than ever he did in all his life. But still, I like him so much, even when he is behaving in this shameful way. I think of him constantly; I thought of him all the time I was in France. I can’t help it. I wonder whether –’
She paused in her mental soliloquy, raised her head and look[ed] forth into her chamber. All was dark and quiet. She turned again to her pillow. The question which she had thrust away returned, urging itself on her mind: ‘I wonder whether I love him?’
‘Oh, I do!’ cried Caroline, starting up in fitful excitement. ‘I do, and my heart will break.’ ‘I’m very wicked,’ she thought, shrinking again under the clothes. ‘Not so very,’ suggested a consolatory reflection. ‘I only love him in this way: I should like always to be with him and always to be doing something that would please him. I wish he had no wife, not because I want to be married to him, for that is absurd, but because if he were a bachelor he would have fewer to think about and then there would be more room for me. Mr Montmorency seemed to talk as if my sister Mary was to be pitied. Stuff! I can’t imagine that. He must have loved her exceedingly when they were first married, at any rate, and even now she lives with him, and sees him, and talks to him. I should like a taste of her unhappiness, if she would be Caroline Vernon for a month and let me be Duchess of Zamorna.
‘If there was such a thing as magic, and if his Grace could tell how much I care for him and could know how I am lying awake just now and wishing to see him, I wonder what he would think? Perhaps he would laugh at me, and say I was a fool. Oh, why didn’t he answer my letter? What makes Papa so cruel? How dark it is! I wish it was morning. The clock is striking only one. I can’t go to sleep; I’m so hot and so restless. I could bear now to see a spirit come to my bedside and ask me what I wanted. Wicked or not wicked, I would tell all, and beg it to give me the power to make the Duke of Zamorna like me better than ever he liked anybody in the world before, and I would ask it to unmarry him and change the Duchess into Miss Percy again, and he should forget her, and she should not be so pretty as she is, and I believe – yes, in spite of fate – he should love me and be married to me. Now then, I’m going mad. But there’s the end of it.’
Such was Miss Vernon’ midnight soliloquy, and such was the promising frame of mind into which she had worked herself by the time she had been a month at Fidena. Neglect did not subdue her spirit; it did not weaken her passions. It stung the first into such desperate action that she began to scorn prudence, and would have dared anything – reproach, disgrace, disaster – to gain what she longed for; and it worked the latter into such a ferment that she could rest neither day nor night. She could not eat, she could not sleep. She grew thin. She began to contemplate all sorts of strange, wild schemes. She would assume a disguise; she would make her way back to Verdopolis; she would go to Wellesley House and stand at the door and watch for the Duke of Zamorna to come out. She would go to him hungry, cold and weary, and ask for something. Perhaps he would discover who she was, and then, surely, he would at least pity her.130 It would not be like him to turn coldly away from his little Caroline, whom he had kissed so kindly when they had last parted on that melancholy night at Hawkscliffe.
Having once got a notion like this into her head, Miss Vernon was sufficiently romantic, wilful and infatuated to have attempted to put it into execution. In fact she had resolved to do so. She had gone so far as to bribe her maid by a present of her watch – a splendid trinket set with diamonds – to procure her a suit of boy’s clothes from a tailor’s at Fidena. That watch might have been worth two hundred guineas; the value of the clothes was at the utmost six pounds. This was just a slight hereditary touch of lavish folly. With the attire thus dearly purchased she had determined to array herself on a certain day, slip out of the house unobserved, walk to Fidena four miles, take the coach there, and so make an easy transit to Verdopolis.
Such was the stage of mellow maturity at which her wise projects had arrived when, about ten o’clock one morning, a servant came into her breakfast-room and laid down on the table beside her coffee-cup a letter; the first, the only one she had received since her arrival at Eden Cottage. She took it up; she looked at the seal, the direction, the post-mark. The seal was only a wafer-stamp,131 the direction, a scarcely legible scrawl, the post-mark, Freetown. Here was mystery. Miss Caroline was at fault. She could not divine who the letter came from. She looked at it long; she could not bear to break the seal. While there was doubt, there was hope. Certainty might crush that hope so rudely. At last, she summoned courage, broke it, opened the missive, and read:
Woodhouse Cliff
Freetown
Novbr 29th
My dear little Caroline,
Miss Vernon read so far, and she let the letter fall on her knee and her head drop forward on to the table, and fairly burst into a flood of tears. This was odd, but romantic young ladies are said to be often unaccountable. Hastily wiping away the tears from her eyes, she snatched the letter up again, looked at it, cried once more, smiled in the midst of her weeping, rose, walked fast about the room, stopped by the window and, while the letter trembled in the hand that held it, read with dim eyes that still flowed over the singular epistle that follows.132
My dear little Caroline
Business has called me for a few days to Woodhouse Cliff, a place of Mr Warner’s in the neighbourhood of Freetown. Freetown is a hundred miles nearer to Fidena than Verdopolis, and the circumstance of closer proximity has reminded me of a certain letter left some weeks ago on the library table at Wellesley House. I have not that letter now at hand, for as I recollect, I locked it up in the drawer of a cabinet in my dressing-room, intending to answer it speedily, but the tide changed, and all remembrance of the letter was swept away as it receded. Now, however, that same fickle tide is flowing back again and bringing the lost scroll with it.
No great injury has been done by this neglect on my part, because I could not fulfil the end for which your letter was written. You wished me to act as intercessor with your father, and persuade him, if possible, to change his mind as to your place of residence, for it seems Eden Cottage is not to your taste. On this point, I have no influence with him. Your father and I never converse about you, Caroline; it would not do at all. It was very well to consult him now and then about your lessons and your masters when you were a little girl. We did not disagree much on those subjects. But since you have begun to think yourself a woman, he and I have started on a different tack in our notions concerning you.
You know your father’s plan. You must have had sufficient experience of it lately at Paris and now at Fidena. You don’t know much about mine; and, in fact, it is as yet in a very unfinished state, scarcely fully comprehended even by its originator. I rather think, however, your own mind has anticipated something of its outline. There were moments now and then at Hawkscliffe when I could perceive that my ward would have been a constituent of her guardian’s, in case the two schemes had been put to the decision of a vote, and her late letter bears evidence that the preference has not quite faded away. I must not omit to notice a saucy line or two concerning my character, indicating that you have either been hearing or reading some foolish nonsense on that head. Caroline, find no fault with it, until experience gives you reason so to do. Foolish little girl! What have you to complain of? Not much, I think.
And you wish to see your guardian again, do you? You would like another walk with him in the garden at Hawkscliffe? You wish to know if I have forgotten you? Partly. I remember something of a rather round face, with a dimpled, childish little chin, and something of a head very much embarrassed by its unreasonable quantity of black curls, seldom arranged in anything like Christian order. But that is all; the picture grows very dim. I suppose when I see you again there will be a change. You tell me you are grown more of a woman. Very likely. I wish you good-bye. If you are still unhappy at Eden Cottage, write and tell me so.
Yours etc.,
Zamorna
People in a state of great excitement sometimes take sudden resolves, and execute them successfully on the spur of the moment, which in their calmer and more sane moments they would neither have the phrenzy to conceive nor the courage and promptitude to put in practice – as somnambulists are said in sleep to cross broken bridges unhurt and to walk on the leads of houses in safety, where awake, the consciousness of all the horrors round them would occasion instant and inevitable destruction.133 Miss Vernon, having read this letter, folded it up, and committed it to the bosom of her frock. She then, without standing more than half a minute to deliberate, left the room, walked quickly and quietly upstairs, took out a plain straw bonnnet and a large shawl, put them on, changed her thin satin slippers for a pair of walking shoes, unlocked a small drawer in her bureau, took therefrom a few sovereigns, slipped them into a little velvet bag, drew on her gloves, walked downstairs very lightly, very nimbly, crossed the hall, opened the front door, shut it quickly after her, passed up a plantation, out at a wicket gate, entered the high road, set her face towards Fidena with an intrepid, cheerful, unagitated air, kept the crown of the causeway, and in about an hour was at the door of the General Coach Office asking at what time a coach would start for Freetown. The answer was that there were conveyances in that direction almost every hour of the day, and that the Verdopolitan Mail was just going out. She took her place, paid her fare, entered the vehicle and, before any one at Eden Cottage was aware of her absence, was already a good stage on the road to Woodhouse Cliff.
Here was something more than the devil to pay!134 A voluntary elopement, without a companion, alone, entirely of her own free will, on the deliberation of a single moment! That letter had so crowded her brain with thoughts, with hopes, with recollections and anticipations, had so fired her heart with an unconquerable desire to reach and see the absent writer, that she could not have lived through another day of passive captivity. There was nothing for it but flight. The bird saw its cage open, beheld a free sky, remembered its own remote isle and grove and nest, heard in spirit a voice call it to come, felt its pinion nerved with impatient energy, launched into air, and was gone. Miss Vernon did not reflect, did not repent, did not fear. Through the whole day and night the journey lasted, she had no moment of misgiving. Some would have trembled from the novelty of their situation, some would have quailed under the reproaches of prudence, some would have sickened at the dread of a cold or displeased reception at their journey’s end. None of these feelings daunted Caroline a whit. She had only one thought, one wish, one aim, one object – to leave Fidena, to reach Freetown. That done, hell was escaped and heaven attained. She could not see the blind folly of her undertaking. She had no sense of the erroneous nature of the step. Her will urged it; her will was her predominant quality and must be obeyed.
Mrs Warner, a quiet, nice little woman, as everybody knows, had just retired from the dinner-table to her own drawing-room, about six o’clock one winter’s evening. It was nearly dark, very still. The first snow had begun to fall that afternoon, and the quiet walks about Woodhouse Cliff were seen from the long, low windows all white and wildered. Mrs Warner was without a companion. She had left her husband and her husband’s prodigious guest in the dining-room, seated each with a glass before him and decanters and fruit on the table. She walked to the window, looked out a minute, saw that all was cold and cheerless, then came to the fireside, her silk dress rustling as she moved over the soft carpet, sank into a bergère (as the French call it), and sat alone and calm, her ear-rings only glittering and trembling, her even brow relieved with smooth, braided hair, the very seat of serene good temper.
Mrs Warner did not ring for candles. She expected her footman would bring them soon, and it was her custom to let him choose his own time for doing his work. An easier mistress never existed than she is. A tap was heard at the door.
‘Come in,’ said the lady, turning round. She thought the candles were come. She was mistaken.
Hartley, her footman, indeed appeared, with his silk stockings and his shoulder knots, but he bore no shining emblems135 of the seven churches which are in Asia. The least thing out of the ordinary routine is a subject of gentle wonderment to Mrs Warner, so she said, ‘What is the matter, Hartley?’
‘Nothing, madam, only a post-chaise has just driven up to the door.’
‘Well, what for?’
‘Some one has arrived, madam.’
‘Who is it, Hartley?’
‘Indeed, madam, I don’t know.’
‘Have you shewn them into the dining-room?’
‘No.’
‘Where, then?’
‘The young person is in the hall, madam.’
‘Is it some one wanting Mr Warner, do you think?’
‘No, madam, it is a young lady, who asked if the Duke of Zamorna were here.’
Mrs Warner opened her blue eyes a trifle wider.
‘Indeed, Hartley! What must we do?’
‘Why, I thought you had better see her first, madam. You might recognize her. I should think, from her air, she is a person of rank.’
‘Well, but, Hartley, I have no business with it. His Grace might be displeased. It may be the Duchess, or some of those other ladies.’
What Mrs Warner meant by the term ‘other ladies’, I leave it to herself to explain. However, she looked vastly puzzled and put about.
‘What had we best do?’ she inquired again, appealing to Hartley for advice.
‘I really think, madam, I had better shew her up here. You can then speak to her yourself, and inform his Grace of her arrival afterwards.’
‘Well, Hartley, do as you please. I hope it’s not the Duchess, that’s all. If she’s angry about anything, it will be very awkward. But she would never come in a post-chaise, that’s one comfort.’
Hartley retired. Mrs Warner remained, fidgetting from her arm-chair to her work-table, putting on her gold thimble, taking it off, drawing her foot-stool to her feet, pushing it away. In spite of the post-chaise, she still entertained a lurking dread that the new-comer might be her mistress, the Duchess; and the Duchess was, in Mrs Warner’s idea, a very awful, haughty, formidable little personage. There was something in the high, melancholy look of the royal lady’s eyes which, when Mrs Warner met it, always made her feel uncomfortable and inspired with a wish to be anywhere rather than in her presence. Not that they had ever quarrelled, nothing of the kind, and her Grace was usually rather conspicuously civil to the lady of one of the most powerful men in Angria.136 Still, the feeling of restraint did exist, and nothing could remove it.
Steps were heard upon the staircase. Hartley threw open the panelled folding door of the drawing-room, ushered in the visitor, and closed it; first, however, depositing four thick and tall tapers of wax upon the table. Mrs Warner rose from her arm-chair, her heart fluttering a little, and her nice face and modest countenance exhibiting a trivial discomposure. The first glance at the stranger almost confirmed her worst fears. She saw a figure bearing a singular resemblance to the Duchess of Zamorna in air, size and general outline. A bonnet shaded the face, and a large shawl partially concealed the shape.
‘I suppose you are Mrs Warner,’ said a subdued voice, and the stranger came slowly forward.
‘I am,’ said that lady, quite reassured by the rather bashful tone in which those few words were spoken, and then, as a hesitating silence followed, she continued in her kind way, ‘Can I do anything for you? Will you sit down?’
The young person took the seat which was offered her. It was opposite Mrs Warner, and the brilliant wax lights shone full in her face. All remains of apprehension were instantly dissipated. Here was nothing of the delicate, fair and pensive aspect characteristic of Mary Henrietta. Instead of the light shading of pale brown hair, there was a profusion of dark tresses crowded under the bonnet, instead of the thoughtful, poetic hazel eye, gazing rather than glancing, there was a full, black orb charged with fire, fitful, quick and restless. For the rest, the face had little bloom, but was youthful and interesting.
‘You will be surprised to see me here,’ said the stranger, after a pause, ‘but I am come to see the Duke of Zamorna.’
This was said quite frankly. Mrs Warner was again relieved. She hoped there was nothing wrong, as the young lady seemed so little embarrassed in her announcement.
‘You are acquainted with his Grace, are you?’ she inquired.
‘Oh, yes,’ was the answer. ‘I have known him for a great many years. But you will wonder who I am, Mrs Warner. My name is Caroline Vernon. I came by the coach to Freetown this afternoon. I was travelling all night.’
‘Miss Vernon!’ exclaimed Mrs Warner. ‘What, the Earl of Northangerland’s daughter! Oh, I am sorry I did not know you! You are quite welcome here. You should have sent up your name. I am afraid Hartley was cold and distant to you.’
‘No, not at all. Besides, that does not much signify. I have got here at last. I hope the Duke of Zamorna is not gone away.’
‘No, he is in the dining-room.’
‘May I go to him directly? Do let me, Mrs Warner!’
Mrs Warner, however, perceiving that she had nothing to fear from the hauteur of the stranger, and experiencing likewise an inclination to exercise a sort of motherly or elder-sisterly kindness and protection to so artless a girl, thought proper to check this extreme impatience.
‘No,’ said she. ‘You shall go upstairs first, and arrange your dress. You look harassed with travelling all night.’
Caroline glanced at a mirror over the mantle-piece. She saw that her hair was dishevelled, her face pale, and her dress disarranged.
‘You are right, Mrs Warner. I will do as you wish me. May I have the help of your maid for five minutes?’
A ready assent was given to this request. Mrs Warner herself shewed Miss Vernon to an apartment upstairs, and placed at her command every requisite for enabling her to reappear in somewhat more creditable style. She then returned to her drawing-room, sat down again in her arm-chair, put her little round foot upon the foot-stool and, with her finger on her lip, began to reflect more at leisure upon this new occurrence. Not very quick in apprehension, she now began to perceive for the first time that there was something very odd in such a very young girl as Miss Vernon coming alone, unattended, in a hired conveyance to a strange house, to ask after the Duke of Zamorna. What could be the reason of it? Had she run away, unknown to her present protectors? It looked very like it. But what would the Duke say when he knew? She wished Howard would come in; she would speak to him about it. But she didn’t like to go into the dining-room and call him out. Besides, she did not think there was the least harm in the matter. Miss Vernon was quite open and free. She made no mystery about the business. The Duke had been her guardian; it was natural she should come to see him. Only the oddity was that she should be without carriage or servants. She said she had come by the coach. Northangerland’s daughter by the coach! Mrs Warner’s thinking faculties were suspended in amazement.
The necessity of pursuing this puzzling train of reflections was precluded by Miss Vernon coming down. She entered the room as cheerfully and easily as if Mrs Warner had been her old friend and she an invited guest at a house perfectly familiar.
‘Am I neat now?’ were her first words, as she walked up to her hostess. Mrs Warner could only answer in the affirmative, for indeed there was nothing of the traveller’s negligence now remaining in the grey silk dress, the smooth curled hair, the delicate silk stockings and slippers. Besides, now that the shawl and bonnet were removed, a certain fine turn of form was visible, which gave a peculiarly distinguished air to the young stranger. A neck and shoulders elegantly designed, and arms round, white and taper, fine ancles and small feet imparted something classic, picturesque and highly patrician to her whole mien and aspect. In fact, Caroline looked extremely lady-like; and it was well she had that quality, for her stature and the proportions of her size were on too limited a scale to admit of more superb and imposing charms.
She sat down.
‘Now I do want to see the Duke,’ said she, smiling at Mrs Warner.
‘He will be here presently,’ was the answer. ‘He never sits very long at table after dinner.’
‘Don’t tell him who I am when he comes in,’ continued Caroline. ‘Let us see if he will know me. I don’t think he will.’
‘Then he does not at all expect you?’ asked the hostess.
‘Oh no! It was quite a thought of my own coming here. I told nobody. You must know, Mrs Warner, Papa objected to my staying in Verdopolis this season, because, I suppose, he thought I had had enough gaiety in Paris, where he and I spent the autumn and part of the summer. Well, as soon as ever town began to fill, he sent me up beyond Fidena to Eden Cottage. You’ve heard of the place, I daresay – a dismal solitary house at the very foot of the highlands. I have lived there about a month, and you know how stormy and wet it has been all the time. Well, I got utterly tired at last, for I was determined not to care anything about the misty hills, though they looked strange enough sometimes. Yesterday morning, I thought I’d make a bold push for a change. Directly after breakfast, I set off for Fidena, with only my bonnet and shawl on, as if I were going to walk in the grounds. When I got there, I took the coach, and here I am.’
Caroline laughed. Mrs Warner laughed too. The nonchalant, off-hand way in which this story had been told her completely removed any little traces of suspicion that might still have been lurking in her usually credulous mind.
The reader by this time will have discerned that Miss Vernon was not quite so simple and communicative as she seemed. She knew how to give her own colouring to a statement without telling any absolute lies. The very warm sentiments which she indulged towards her guardian were, she flattered herself, known to no living thing but the heart that conceived and contained them. As she sat on a sofa near the fire, leaning her head against the wall so that the shade of a projecting mantle-piece almost concealed her face, she did not tell Mrs Warner that while she talked so lightly to her, her ear was on the stretch137 to catch an approaching foot-step, her heart fluttering at every sound, her whole mind in a state of fluttering and throbbing excitement, longing, dreading for the door to open, eagerly anticipating the expected advent, yet fearfully shrinking from it with a contradictory mixture of feelings.
The time approached. A faint sound of folding doors unclosing was heard below. The grand staircase ascending to the drawing-room was again trodden, and the sound of voices echoed through the lobby and hall.
‘They are here,’ said Mrs Warner.
‘Now, don’t tell who I am,’ returned Miss Vernon, shrinking closer into her dim corner.
‘I will introduce you as my niece, as Lucy Grenville,’ was the reply, and the young matron seemed beginning to enter into the spirit of the young maid’s espièglerie.
‘Your Grace is perfectly mistaken,’ said a gentleman, opening the drawing-room door and permitting a taller man to pass. ‘It is singular that reason does not convince your Grace of the erroneous nature of your opinion. Those houses, my lord Duke, will last for fifty years to come, with the expenditure of a mere trifle on repairs.’
‘With the expenditure of two hundred pounds on the erection [of] new walls and roofs, plaster, painting and wood-work, they will last a few years longer, I make no doubt,’ was the reply.
‘Your Grace speaks ignorantly,’ rejoined Warner Howard Warner Esqre. ‘I tell you, those houses have stood in their present state for the last twenty years. I recollect them perfectly when I was only twelve years old, and they looked neither better nor worse than they do now.’
‘They could not well look worse,’ returned the taller man, walking up to the hearth and pushing away an ottoman with his foot, to make room for himself to stand on the rug.
‘Are you talking about the Cliff Cottages still?’ asked Mrs Warner, looking up.
‘Yes, mistress, they have been the sole subject of conversation since you left the room. Your master has increased his estimate of their value every five minutes, and now at last he describes the rotten, roofless hovels as capital, well-built mansion-houses, with convenient out-houses, to wit a pig-stye each, and large gardens, id est a pitch of dunghill two yards square, suitable for the residence of a genteel family. And he tells me, if I would only buy them, I should be sure to make a rental of twenty pounds per annum from each. That won’t wash,138 will it, mistress?’
‘What won’t wash, please your Grace? The rug?’
‘No, Mr Ferguson’s pocket-handkerchief.’
‘I don’t know. Who is Mr Ferguson,139 and what kind of handkerchiefs does he wear?’
‘Very showy ones, manufactured at Blarney Mills.140 Your master always buys of him.’
‘Now your Grace is jesting. Howard does nothing of the kind. His pocket-handkerchiefs are all of cambric.’
A half-smothered laugh, excited no doubt by Mrs Warner’s simplicity, was heard from the obscure sofa-corner. The Duke of Zamorna, whose back had been to the mantle-piece and whose elbow had been supported by the projecting slab thereof, quickly turned. So did Mr Warner. Both gentlemen saw a figure seated and reclining back, the face half hid by the shade and half by a slim and snowy hand, raised as if to screen the eyes from the flickering and dazzling fire-light.
The first notion that struck His Majesty of Angria was the striking similarity of that grey silk dress, that pretty form and tiny slender foot to something that might be a hundred miles off at Wellesley House. In fact, a vivid though vague recollection of his own Duchess was suggested to his mind by what he saw. In the surprise and conviction of the moment, he thought himself privileged to advance a good step nearer, and was about to stoop down, to remove the screening hand and make himself certain of the unknown’s identity, when the sudden and confused recoil, the half-uttered interjection of alarm with which his advances were received, compelled him to pause. At the same time, Mrs Warner said hurriedly,
‘My niece, Lucy Grenville.’
Mr Warner looked at his wife with astonishment. He knew she was not speaking the truth. She looked at him imploringly. The Duke of Zamorna laughed.
‘I had almost made an awkward mistake,’ said he. ‘Upon my word, I took Miss Lucy Grenville for some one I had a right to come within a yard of without being reproved for impertinence. If the young lady had sat still half a minute longer, I believe I should have inflicted a kiss. Now I look better, though, I don’t know. There’s a considerable difference, as much as between a dark dahlia and a lily.’
His Grace paused, stood with his head turned fixedly towards Miss Grenville, scrutinized her features with royal bluntness, threw a transfixing glance at Mrs Warner, abruptly veered round, turning his back on both in a movement of much more singularity than politeness, erelong dropped into a chair, and crossing one leg over the other, turned to Mr Warner and asked him if he saw daylight. Mr Warner did not answer, for he was busily engaged in perusing a newspaper. The Duke then inclined his head towards Mrs Warner and, leaning half across her work-table, inquired in a tone of anxious interest ‘whether she thought this would wash?’
Mrs Warner was too much puzzled to make a reply. But the young lady laughed again, fitfully and almost hysterically, as if there was some internal struggle between tears and laughter. Again she was honoured with a sharp, hasty survey from the King of Angria, to which succeeded a considerable interval of silence, broken at length by His Majesty remarking that he should like some coffee. Hartley was summoned and His Majesty was gratified. He took about six cups, observing, when he had finished, that he had much better have taken as many eight-penn’orths of brandy and water, and that if he had thought of it before, he would have asked for it. Mrs Warner offered to ring the bell and order a case-bottle and a tumbler then, but the Duke answered that he thought, on the whole, he had better go to bed, as it was about half-past eight o’clock, a healthy, primitive hour, which he should like to stick to. He took his candle, nodded to Mr Warner, shook hands with Mrs Warner, and, without looking at the niece, said in a measured, slow manner, as he walked out of the room,
‘Good-night, Miss Lucy Grenville.’
How Miss Vernon passed the night which succeeded this interview, the reader may amuse himself by conjecturing. I cannot tell him. I can only say that when she went up-stairs, she placed her candle on a dressing-table, sat down at the foot of the bed where she was to sleep, and there remained, perfectly mute and perfectly motionless, till her light was burnt out. She did not soliloquize, so what her thoughts were it would be difficult to say. Sometimes she sighed, sometimes tears gathered in her eyes, hung a little while on her long eye-lashes, and then dropped to her lap, but there was no sobbing, no strong emotion of any kind. I should say, judging from her aspect, that her thoughts ran all on doubt, disappointment and suspense, but not on desperation or despair. After the candle had flickered a long time, it at last sank into darkness. Miss Vernon lifted up her head, which had been bent all the while, saw the vital spark lying on the table before her, rose and slowly undressed. She might have had a peculiar penchant for going to bed in the dark when anything happened to disturb her. If you recollect, reader, she did so before, the night her father had announced his resolution to send her to Eden Cottage.
The next morning, she woke late, for she had not fallen asleep before the dawn began to break. When she came down, she found that the Duke and Mr Warner were gone out to take a survey of the disputed Cliff Cottages – two superannuated old hovels, by the bye, fit habitations for neither man nor beast. They had taken with them a stone-mason and an architect, also a brace of guns, two brace of pointers and a game-keeper. The probability, therefore, was that they would not be back before night-fall. When Miss Vernon heard that, her heart was so bitter she could have laid her head on her hand and fairly cried like a child. If the Duke had recognized her – and she believed he had – what contemptuous negligence or cold displeasure his conduct evinced!
However, on second thoughts, she scorned to cry. She’d bear it all. At the worst, she could take the coach again, and return to that dungeon at Fidena. And what could Zamorna have to be displeased at? He did not know that she had wished her sister dead and herself his wife.141 He did not know the restless, devouring feeling she had when she thought of him. Who could guess that she loved that powerful and austere Zamorna when, as she flattered herself, neither look nor word nor gesture had ever betrayed that frantic dream? Could he be aware of it, when she had not fully learnt it herself till she was parted from him by mountain, valley and wave? Impossible, and since he was so cold, so regardless, she would crush the feeling and never tell that it had existed. She did not want him to love her in return. No, no, that would be wicked. She only wanted him to be kind, to think well of her, to like to have her with him, nothing more. Unless, indeed, the Duchess of Zamorna were to happen to die, and then – but she would drop this foolery, master it entirely, pretend to be in excellent spirits, and if the Duke should really find her out, affect to treat the whole transaction as a joke, a sort of eccentric adventure undertaken for the fun of the thing.
Miss Vernon kept her resolution. She drest her face in smiles, and spent the whole day merrily and sociably with Mrs Warner. Its hours passed slowly to her, and she still, in spite of herself, kept looking at the window, and listening to every movement in the hall. As evening and darkness drew on, she waxed restless and impatient. When it was time to dress, she arranged her hair and selected her ornaments with a care she could hardly account for herself.
Let us now suppose it to be eight o’clock. The absentees returned an hour since and are now in the drawing-room. But Caroline is not with them; she has not yet seen them. For some cause or other, she has preferred retiring to this large library in another wing of the house. She is sitting moping by the hearth like Cinderella; she has rung for no candles; the large fire alone gives a red lustre and quivering shadows upon the books, the ceiling, the carpet. Caroline is so still that a little mouse, mistaking her no doubt for an image,142 is gliding un-startled over the rug and around her feet. On a sudden, the creature takes alarm, makes a dart, and vanishes under the brass fender. Has it heard a noise? There is nothing stirring. Yes, something moves somewhere in this wing, which was before so perfectly still.
While Miss Vernon listened, yet doubtful whether she had really heard or only fancied the remote sound of a step, the door of her retreat was actually opened, and a second person entered its precincts. The Duke of Zamorna came straying listlessly in, as if he had found his way there by chance. Miss Vernon looked up, recognized the tall figure and overbearing build, and felt that now, at last, the crisis was come. Her feelings were instantly wound to their highest pitch; but the first word brought them down to a more ordinary tone.
‘Well, Miss Grenville, good evening.’
Caroline, quivering in every nerve, rose from her seat and answered,
‘Good evening, my lord Duke.’
‘Sit down,’ said he, ‘and allow me to take a chair near you.’
She sat down. She felt very queer when Zamorna drew a seat close to hers and coolly installed himself beside her. Mr Wellesley was attired in evening dress, with something more of brilliancy and show than has been usual with him of late. He wore a star on his left breast, and diamonds on his fingers. His complexion was coloured with exercise, and his hair curled round his forehead with a gloss and profusion highly characteristic of the most consummate coxcomb going.
‘You and I,’ continued His Sublimity, ‘seemed disposed to form a separate party of ourselves to-night, I think, Miss Lucy. We have levanted from the drawing-room and taken up our quarters elsewhere. I hope, by the bye, my presence is no restraint. You do not feel shy and strange with me, do you?’
‘I don’t feel strange,’ answered Miss Vernon, ‘but rather shy just at the first. I presume –’
‘Well, a better acquaintance will wear that off. In the meantime, if you have no objection, I will stir the fire, and then we shall see each other better.’
His Grace stooped, took the poker, woke up the red and glowing mass, and elicited a broad blaze, which flashed full on his companion’s face and figure. He looked, first, with a smile, but gradually with a more earnest expression. He turned away and was silent. Caroline waited, anxious, trembling, with difficulty holding in the feelings which swelled her heart. Again the Duke looked at her, and drew a little nearer.
‘He is not angry,’ thought Miss Vernon. ‘When will he speak and call me Caroline?’
She looked up at him. He smiled. She approached, still seeking in his eye for a welcome. Her hand was near his. He took it, pressed it a little.
‘Are you angry?’ asked Miss Vernon in a low, sweet voice. She looked beautiful, her eye bright and glowing, her cheek flushed, and her dark, wavy hair resting lightly upon it like a cloud. Expectant, impatient, she still approached the silent Duke, till her face almost touched his.
This passive stoicism on his part could not last long. It must bring a reaction. It did. Before she could catch the lightning change in face and eye, the rush of blood to the cheek, she found herself in his arms. He strained her to his heart a moment, kissed her forehead, and instantly released her.
‘I thought I would not do that,’ said Zamorna, rising and walking through the room. ‘But what’s the use of resolution? A man is not exactly a statue.’ Three turns through the apartment restored him to his self-command. He came back to the hearth.
‘Caroline! Caroline!’ said he, shaking his head as he bent over her. ‘How is this? What am I to say about it?’
‘You really know me, do you?’ answered Miss Vernon, evading her guardian’s words.
‘I think I do,’ said he. ‘But what brought you from Fidena? Have you run away?’
‘Yes,’ was the reply.
‘And where are you running to?’
‘Nowhere,’ said Caroline. ‘I have got as far as I wished to go. Didn’t you tell me in your letter that if I was still unhappy at Fidena Cottage, I was to write and tell you so? I thought I had better come.’
‘But I am not going to stay at Woodhouse Cliff, Caroline. I must leave to-morrow.’
‘And will you leave me behind you?’
‘God bless me!’ ejaculated Mr Wellesley, hastily raising himself from his stooping attitude, and starting back as if a wasp had stung his lip. He stood a yard off, looking at Miss Vernon, with his whole face fixed by the same expression that had flashed over it before. ‘Where must I take you, Caroline?’ he asked.
‘Anywhere.’
‘But I am to return to Verdopolis, to Wellesley House. It would not do to take you there. You would hardly meet with a welcome.’
‘The Duchess would not be glad to see me, I suppose,’ said Miss Vernon.
‘No, she would not,’ answered the Duke, with a kind of brief laugh.
‘And why should she not?’ inquired the young lady. ‘I am her sister. Papa is as much my father as he is hers. But I believe she would be jealous of anybody liking your Grace besides herself.’
‘Aye, and of my Grace liking anybody, too, Caroline.’
This was a hint which Miss Vernon could not understand. These words, and the pointed emphasis with which they were uttered, broke down the guard of her simplicity and discomfited her self-possession. They told her that Zamorna had ceased to regard her as a child; they intimated that he looked upon her with different eyes to what he had done, and considered her attachment to him as liable to another interpretation than the mere fondness of a ward for her guardian. Her secret seemed to be discovered. She was struck with an agony of shame. Her face burned; her eyes fell; she dared look at Zamorna no more.
And now the genuine character of Arthur Augustus Adrian Wellesley began to work. In this crisis, Lord Douro stood true to his old name and nature. Zamorna did not deny, by one noble and moral act, the character he has earned by a hundred infamous ones. Hitherto we have seen him rather as restraining his passions than yielding to them; he has stood before us rather as a Mentor than a misleader; but he is going to lay down the last garment of light143 and be himself entirely. In Miss Vernon’s present mood, burning and trembling with confusion, remorse, apprehension, he might by a single word have persuaded her to go back to Eden Cottage. She did not yet know that he reciprocated her wild, frantic attachment. He might have buried that secret, have treated her with an austere gentleness he well knew how to assume, and crushed in time the poison flowers of a passion whose fruit, if it reached maturity, would be crime and anguish. Such a line of conduct might be trodden by the noble and faithful Fidena. It lies in his ordinary path of life. He seldom sacrifices another human being’s life and fame on the altar of his own vices. But the selfish Zamorna cannot emulate such a deed. He has too little of the moral Greatheart144 in his nature. It is his creed that all things bright and fair live for him; by him they are to be gathered and worn, as the flowers of his laurel crown. The green leaves are victory in battle; they never fade. The roses are conquests in love; they decay and drop off. Fresh ones blow round him, are plucked and woven with the withered stems of their predecessors. Such a wreath he deems a glory about his temples. He may in the end find it rather like the snaky fillet which compressed Calchas’s brows, steeped in blue venom.145
The Duke reseated himself at Miss Vernon’s side.
‘Caroline,’ said he, desiring by that word to recall her attention, which was wandering wide in the distressful paroxysm of shame that overwhelmed her. He knew how to give a tone, an accent, to that single sound which should produce ample effect. It expressed a kind of pity. There was something protecting and sheltering about it, as if he were calling her home.
She turned. The acute pang which tortured her heart and tightened her breath dissolved into sorrow. A gush of tears relieved her.
‘Now then,’ said Zamorna, when he had allowed her to weep a while in silence, ‘the shower is over. Smile at me again, my little dove. What was the reason of that distress? Do you think I don’t care for you, Caroline?’
‘You despise me. You know I am a fool.’
‘Do I?’ said he, quietly; then, after a pause, he went on. ‘I like to look at your dark eyes and pretty face.’
Miss Vernon started and deeply coloured. Never before had Zamorna called her face pretty.
‘Yes,’ said he. ‘It is exquisitely pretty, and those soft features and dusky curls are beyond the imitation of a pencil. You blush because I praise you. Did you never guess before that I took a pleasure in watching you, in holding your little hand, and in playing with your simplicity, which has sported many a time, Caroline, on the brink of an abyss you never thought of?’
Miss Vernon sat speechless. She darkly saw, or rather felt, the end to which all this tended, but all was fever and delirium round her. The Duke spoke again, in a single blunt and almost coarse sentence compressing what yet remained to be said.
‘If I were a bearded Turk, Caroline, I would take you to my harem.’146
His deep voice as he uttered this, his high featured face and dark large eye, burning bright with a spark from the depths of Gehenna, struck Caroline Vernon with a thrill of nameless dread. Here he was, the man that Montmorency had described to her! All at once she knew him. Her guardian was gone; something terrible sat in his place. The fire in the grate was sunk down without a blaze, the silent, lonely library, so far away from the inhabited part of the house, was gathering a deeper shade in all its Gothic recesses.147 She grew faint with dread. She dared not stir, from a vague fear of being arrested by the powerful arm flung over the back of her chair. At last, through the long and profound silence, a low whisper stole from her lips.
‘May I go away?’
No answer. She attempted to rise. This movement produced the effect she had feared. The arm closed round her. Miss Vernon could not resist its strength; a piteous upward look was her only appeal. He, Satan’s eldest son, smiled at this mute prayer.
‘She trembles with terror,’ said he, speaking to himself. ‘Her face has turned pale as marble within the last minute or two. How did I alarm her? Caroline, do you know me? You look as if your mind wandered.’
‘You are Zamorna,’ replied Caroline. ‘But let me go.’
‘Not for a diadem, not for a Krooman’s head, not for every inch of land the Joliba148 waters.’
‘Oh, what must I do?’ exclaimed Miss Vernon.
‘Crede Zamorna!’149 was the answer. ‘Trust me, Caroline, you shall never want a refuge. I said I could not take you to Wellesley House, but I can take you elsewhere. I have a little retreat, my fairy, somewhere near the heart of my own kingdom, Angria, sheltered by Ingleside and hidden in a wood. It is a plain old house outside, but it has rooms within as splendid as any saloon in Victoria Square. You shall live there. Nobody will ever reach it to disturb you. It lies on the verge of moors; there are only a few scattered cottages and a little church for many miles round. It is not known to be my property. I call it my treasure-house, and what I deposit there has always hitherto been safe, at least’ (he added in a lower tone) ‘from human vigilance and living force. There are some things which even I cannot defy. I thought so that summer afternoon when I came to Scar House and found a King and Conqueror had been before me,150 to whom I was no rival but a trampled slave.’
The gloom of Zamorna’s look, as he uttered these words, told a tale of what was passing in his heart. What vision had arisen before him, which suggested such a sentence at such a moment, it matters little to know. However dark it might have been, it did not linger long.151 He smiled as Caroline looked at him with mixed wonder and fear. His face changed to an expression of tenderness more dangerous than the fiery excitement which had startled her before. He caressed her fondly, and lifted with his fingers the heavy curls which were lying on her neck. Caroline began to feel a new impression. She no longer wished to leave him; she clung to his side. Infatuation was stealing over her. The thought of separation and a return to Eden was dreadful. The man beside her was her guardian again, but he was also Mr Montmorency’s Duke of Zamorna.152 She feared; she loved. Passion tempted, conscience warned her; but, in a mind like Miss Vernon’s, conscience was feeble opposed to passion.153 Its whispers grew faint, and were at last silenced; and when Zamorna kissed her and said, in that voice of fatal sweetness which has instilled venom into many a heart, ‘Will you go with me to-morrow, Caroline?’, she looked up in his face with a kind of wild, devoted enthusiasm and answered, ‘Yes.’
[gap in ms.]
The Duke of Zamorna left Woodhouse Cliff on Friday the 7th of Decbr, next morning, and was precisely seven days in performing the distance between that place and Verdopolis. At least, seven days had elapsed between his departure from Mr Warner’s and his arrival at Wellesley House. It was a cold day when he came, and that might possibly be the reason that he looked pale and stern as he got out of his carriage, mounted the kingly steps of his mansion, and entered under its roof. He was necessitated to meet his wife after so long a separation, and it was a sight to see their interview. He took little pains to look at her kindly. His manner was sour and impatient, and the Duchess, after the first look, solicited no fonder embrace. She receded, even, from the frozen kiss he offered her, dropped his hand, and, after searching his face and reading the meaning of that pallid, harassed aspect, told him – not by words, but by a bitter smile – that he did not deceive her, and turned away with a quivering lip, with all the indignation, the burning pride, the heart-struck anguish stamped on her face that those beautiful features could express. She left him, and went to her room, which she did not leave for many a day afterwards.
The Duke of Zamorna seemed to have returned in a business mood. He had a smile for no one. When Lord Richton called to pay his respects, the Duke glanced at the card which he sent up, threw it on the table, and growled like a tiger, ‘Not at home.’ He received only his ministers; he discussed only matters of state. When their business was done he dismissed them. No hour of relaxation followed the hour of labour. He was as scowling at the end of the council as he was at the beginning.
Enara was with him one night and, in his blunt way, had just been telling him a piece of his mind, and intimating that he was sure all that blackening and sulking was not for nothing, and that he had as certainly been in some hideous mess as he now wore a head. The answer to this was a recommendation to Enara to go to hell. Henri was tasting a glass of spirits and water preparatory to making a reply, when a third person walked into the apartment and, advancing up to him, said,
‘I’ll thank you to leave the room, sir.’
The Colonel of Bloodhounds looked up fierce at this address but, having discerned from whom it proceeded, he merely replied,
‘Very well, my lord; but, with your leave, I’ll empty this tumbler of brandy and water first. Here’s to the King’s health and better temper.’ He drained his glass, set it down, and marched away.
The newcomer, judging from his look, seemed likely to give the Duke of Zamorna his match in the matter of temper. One remarkable thing about his appearance was that, though in the presence of a crowned king, he wore a hat upon his head which he never lifted a hand to remove. The face under that hat was like a sheet, it was so white; and like a hanged malefactor’s, it was so livid. He could not be said to frown, as his features were quiet, but his eye was petrifying. It had that in its light irid which passes shew.154 This gentleman took his station facing the Duke of Zamorna and, when Lord Etrei had left the room, he said, in a voice such as people use when they are coming instantly to the point and will not soften their demand a jot,
‘Tell me what you have done with her!’
The Duke of Zamorna’s conscience, a vessel of a thousand tons burthen, brought up a cargo of blood to his face. His nostrils opened. His head was as high, his chest as full, and his attitude standing by the table as bold as if from the ramparts of Gazemba he was watching Arundel’s155 horsemen scouring the wilderness.
‘What do you mean?’ he asked.
‘Where is Caroline Vernon?’ said the same voice of fury.
‘I have not got her.’
‘And you have never had her, I suppose? And you will dare to tell me that lie?’
‘I have never had her.’
‘She is not in your hands now?’
‘She is not.’
‘By G—d, I know differently, sir. I know you lie.’
‘You know nothing about it.’
‘Give her up, Zamorna.’
‘I cannot give up what I have not got.’
‘Say that again.’
‘I do.’
‘Repeat the lie.’
‘I will.’
‘Take that, miscreant.’
Lord Northangerland snatched something from his breast. It was a pistol. He did not draw the trigger, but he dashed the butt end viciously at his son-in-law’s mouth. In an instant, his lips were crimson with gore. If his teeth had not been fastened into their sockets like soldered iron, he would have been forced to spit them out with the blood with which his mouth filled and ran over. He said nothing at all to this compliment, but only leant his head over the fire and spat into the ashes, and then wiped his mouth with a white handkerchief which in five minutes was one red stain. I suppose this moderation resulted from the deep conviction that the punishment he got was only a millionth part of what he deserved.
‘Where is she?’ resumed the excited Percy.
‘I’ll never tell you.’
‘Will you keep her from me?’
‘I’ll do my best.’
‘Will you dare to visit her?’
‘As often as I can snatch a moment from the world to give to her.’
‘You say that to my face?’
‘I’d say it to the D—l’s face.’156
A little pause intervened, in which Northangerland surveyed the Duke and the Duke went on wiping his bloody mouth.
‘I came here to know where you have taken that girl,’ resumed Percy. ‘I mean to be satisfied. I mean to have her back. You shall not keep her. The last thing I had in the world is not to be yielded to you, you brutal, insatiable villain!’
‘Am I worse than you, Percy?’
‘Do you taunt me? You are worse. I never was a callous brute.’
‘And who says I am a brute? Does Caroline? Does Mary?’
‘How dare you join those names together? How dare you utter them in the same breath, as if both my daughters were your purchased slaves? You coarse voluptuary, filthier than that filthy Jordan!’
‘I am glad it is you who give me this character, and not Miss Vernon, or her sister.’
‘Arthur Wellesley, you had better not unite those two names again. If you do, neither of them shall ever see you more, except dead.’
‘Will you shoot me?’
‘I will.’
Another pause followed, which Percy again broke.
‘In what part of Angria have you put Caroline Vernon? For I know you took her to Angria.’
‘I placed her where she is safe and happy. I should say no more if my hand were thrust into that fire. And you had better leave the matter where it is, for you cannot undo what is done.’
Northangerland’s wild blue eye dilated into wilder hatred and fury.
He said, raising his hand and striking it on the table,
‘I wish there was a hell for your sake! I wish –’
The sentence broke off, and was resumed, as if his agitation shortened his breath too much to allow him to proceed far without drawing it afresh. ‘I wish you might now be withered hand and foot and struck into a paralytic heap –’ Again it broke. ‘What are you? You have pressed this hand and said you cared for me. You have listened to all I had to tell you: what I am, how I have lived, and what I have suffered. You have assumed enthusiasm, blushed almost like a woman, and even wearied me out with your boyish ardour.157 I let you have Mary, and you know what a curse you have been to her, disquieting her life with your constant treacheries and your alternations of frost and fire. I have let you go on with little interference, though I have wished you dead, many a time, when I have seen her pale harassed look, knowing how different she was before she knew you and was subjected to all your monstrous tyrannies and tantalizations,158 your desertion that broke her spirit, and your returns that kept her lingering on with just the shadow of a hope to look to.’
‘Gross exaggeration!’ exclaimed Zamorna with vehemence. ‘When did I ever tyrannize over Mary? Ask herself, ask her at this moment, when she is as much exasperated against me as ever she was in her life. Tell her to leave me. She will not speak to me or look at me – but see what her answer would be to that!’
‘Will you be silent and hear me out?’ returned Percy. ‘I have not finished the detail of your friendship. That Hebrew imposter Nathan tells David, the man after God’s own heart, a certain parable of an ewe lamb and applies it to his own righteous deeds. You have learnt the chapter by heart, I think, and fructified by it.159 I gave you everything but Caroline. You knew my feelings to her. You know how I reckoned on her as my last and only comfort. And what have you done? She is destroyed; she can never hold her head up again. She is nothing to me, but she shall not be left in your hands.’
‘You cannot take her from me, and if you could, how would you prevent her return? She would either die or come back to me now. And remember, sir, if I had been a Percy instead of a Wellesley, I should not have carried her away, and given her a home to hide her from scorn and shelter her from insult. I should have left her forsaken at Fidena, to die there delirious in an inn, as Harriet O’Connor160 did.’
‘I have my last word to give you now,’ said Percy. ‘You shall be brought into the courts of law for this very deed. I care nothing for exposure. I will hire Hector Montmorency to be my counsel. I will furnish him with ample evidence of all the atrocities of your character, which, handled as he will delight to handle it, will make the flesh quiver on your bones with agony. I will hire half the press and fill the newspapers with libels on you and your court, which shall transform all your fools of followers into jealous enemies. I will not stick at a lie. Montmorency shall indite the paragraphs, in order that they many be pungent enough. He will not scruple involving a few dozens of court ladies in the ruin that is to be hurled on you. He shall be directed to spare none. Your cabinet shall be a herd of horned cattle.161 The public mind shall be poisoned against you. A glorious triumph shall be given to your political enemies. Before you die, you shall curse the day that you robbed me of my daughter.’
So spoke Northangerland. His son answered with a smile,
‘The ship is worthless that will not live through a storm.’
‘Storm!’ rejoined the Earl. ‘This is no storm, but fire in the hold – a lighted candle hurled into your magazine! See if it will fall like a rain-drop!’
The Duke was still unquelled. He answered as he turned and walked slowly through the room,
‘In nature there is no such thing as annihilation. Blow me up, and I shall live again.’162
‘You need not talk this bombast to me,’ said Percy. ‘Keep it, to meet Montmorency with, when he makes you the target of his shafts; keep it, to answer Warner and Thornton and Castlereagh, when their challenges come pouring on you like chain-shot.’
His Grace pursued his walk, and said in an undertone,