Persons and pictures from the histories of France and England from the Norman conquest to the fall of the Stuarts |
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 | Ditton-in-the-Dale;
THE DAYS OF JAMES II.
1687. |
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 | Persons and pictures from the histories of France and England |  |
Ditton-in-the-Dale;
THE DAYS OF JAMES II.
1687.
1. CHAPTER I.
It has been gravely stated by an Italian writer of celebrity,
that “the very atrocity of the crimes which are therein committed,
proves that in Italy the growth of man is stronger and
more vigorous, and nearer to the perfect standard of manhood
than in any other country.”
A strange paradox, truly, but not uningenious—at least
for a native of that “purple land, where law secures not life,”
who would work out of the very reproach, an argument of honor
to his country. If it be true, however, that proneness to the
commission of unwonted and atrocious crime is to be held a
token of extraordinary vigor—vigor of nerve, of temperament,
of passion, of physical development—in a race of men, then
surely must the Anglo-Norman breed, under all circumstances
of time, place, and climate, be singularly destitute of all those
qualities—nay, singularly frail, effeminate, and incomplete.
For it is an undoubted fact, both of the past and present history
of that great and still increasing race, whether limited to
the narrow bounds of the island realm which gave it being, or
oceans, which it has filled with its arms, its arts, its industry, its
language—it is, I say, an undoubted fact, that those dreadful and
sanguinary crimes, forming a class apart and distinct of themselves,
engendered for the most part by morbid passions, love,
lust, jealousy, and revenge, which are of daily occurrence in the
southern countries of Europe, Asia, and America, are almost
unknown in those happier lands, where English laws prevail,
with English liberty and language.
It is to this that must be ascribed the fact, that, in the very
few instances where crimes of this nature have occurred in England
or America, the memory of them is preserved with singular
pertinacity, the smallest details handed down from generation to
generation, and the very spots in which they have occurred,
how much soever altered or improved in the course of ages,
haunted, as if by an actual presence, by the horror and the
scent of blood; while on the other hand the fame of ordinary
deeds of violence and rapine seems almost to be lost before the
lives of the perpetrators are run out.
One, and almost, I believe, a singular instance of this kind—
for I would not dignify the brawls and assassinations which have
disgraced some of our southern cities, the offspring of low principles
and an unregulated society, by comparing them to the
class of crimes is question, which imply even in their atrocity a
something of perverted honor, of extravagant affection, or at
least of not ignoble passion—is the well-known Beauchamp
tragedy of Kentucky, a tale of sin and horror which has afforded
a theme to the pens of several distinguished writers, and the
details of which are as well known on the spot at present, as if
years had not elapsed since its occurrence. And this, too, in a
country prone above all others, from the migratory habits of its
population, to cast aside all tradition, and to lose within a very
upon the very stage of their occurrence.
It is not, therefore, wonderful that in England, where the
immobility of the population, the reverence for antiquity, and
the great prevalence of oral tradition, induced probably at first
by the want of letters, cause the memory of even past trifles to
dwell for ages in the breasts of the simple and moral people, any
deed of romantic character, any act of unusual atrocity, any
crime prompted by unusual or extraordinary motives, should
become, as it were, part and parcel of the place wherein it was
wrought; that the leaves of the trees should whisper it to the
winds of evening; that the echoes of the lonely hills should
repeat it; that the waters should sigh a burthen to its strain;
and that the very night should assume a deeper shadow, a more
horrid gloom, from the awe of the unforgotten sin.
I knew a place in my boyhood, thus haunted by the memory
of strange crime; and whether it was merely the terrible romance
of the story, or the wild and gloomy character of the
scenery endowed with a sort of natural fitness to be the theatre
of terrible events, or yet again the union of the two, I know
not; but it produced upon my mind a very powerful influence,
amounting to a species of fascination, which constantly attracted
me to the spot, although when there, the weight of the tradition
and the awe of the scene produced a sense of actual pain.
The place to which I allude was but a few miles distant from
the celebrated public school, at which I passed the happiest
days of a not uneventful life, and was within an easy walk of
the college limits; so that when I had attained that favored
eminence, known as the sixth form, which allows its happy occupants
to roam the country, free from the fear of masters, provided
only they attend at appointed hours, it was my frequent
habit to stroll away from the noisy playing-fields through the
surface of the silver Thames, towards the scene of dark tradition;
and there to lap myself in thick-coming fancies, half sad, half
sweet, yet terrible withal, and in their very terror attractive,
until the call of the homeward rooks, and the lengthened
shadows of the tall trees on the green sward, would warn me
that I too must hie me back with speed, or pay the penalty of
undue delay.
Now, as the story has in itself, apart from the extraneous
interest with which a perfect acquaintance with its localities
may have invested it in my eyes, a powerful and romantic character;
as its catastrophe was no less striking than un-English;
and as the passions which gave rise to it were at once the
strongest and the most general—though rarely prevailing, at
least among us Anglo-Normans, to so fearful an extent—I am
led to hope that others may find in it something that may
enchain their attention for a time, though it may not affect
them as it has me with an influence, unchanged by change of
scene, unaltered by the lapse of time, which alters all things.
I propose, therefore, to relate it, as I heard it first from an
old superannuated follower of the family, which, owning other
though not fairer demesnes in some distant county, had never
more used Ditton-in-the-Dale as their dwelling-place, although
well nigh two centuries had elapsed since the transaction which
had scared them away from their polluted household gods.
But first, I must describe briefly the characteristies of the
scenery, without which a part of my tale would be hardly comprehensible,
while the remarkable effect produced by the coincidence,
if I may so express myself, between the nature of the
deed, and the nature of the place, would be lost entirely.
In the first place, then, I must premise that the name of
Ditton-in-the-Dale is in a great measure a misnomer, as the
visiter would be at first inclined to call a dead level, but on what
is in truth a small secondary undulation, or hollow, in the
broad, flat valley through which the father of the English rivers,
the royal-towered Thames, pursues, as Gray sang,
His silver-winding way.
valleys, much less abrupt glens or gorges, that any hollow containing
a tributary stream, which invariably meanders in slow
and sluggish reaches through smooth, green meadow-land, is
dignified with the name of dale, or valley. The country is,
however, so much intersected by winding lanes, bordered with
high straggling white-thorn hedges full of tall timber trees, is
subdivided into so many small fields, all inclosed with similar
fences, and is diversified with so many woods and clumps of
forest trees, that you lose sight of the monotony of its surface,
in consequence of the variety of its vegetation, and of the limited
space which the eye can comprehend at any one time.
The lane by which I was wont to reach the demesne of Ditton,
partook in an eminent degree of this character, being very
narrow, winding about continually without any apparent cause,
almost completely embowered by the tall hawthorn hedges, and
the yet taller oaks and ashes which grew along their lines,
making, when in full verdure, twilight of noon itself, and commanding
no view whatever of the country through which it ran,
except when a field-gate or cart-track opened into it, affording
a glimpse of a lonely meadow, bounded, perhaps, by a deep
wood-side.
On either hand of this lane was a broad, deep ditch, both of
them quite unlike any other ditches I have ever seen. Their
not been dug for any purposes of fencing or inclosure; and I
have sometimes imagined, from their varying width and depth—
for in places they were ten feet deep, and three times as broad,
and at others but a foot or two across, and containing but a few
inches of water—that their beds had been hollowed out to get
marl or gravel for the convenience of the neighboring cultivators.
Be this as it may, they were at all times brimful of the clearest
and most transparent water I ever remember to have seen—
never turbid even after the heaviest rains; and though bordered
by water-flags, and tapestried in many places by the broad,
round leaves of the white and yellow water-lilies, never corrupted
by a particle of floating scum or green duckweed.
Whether they were fed by secret springs I know not; or
whether they communicated by sluices or side-drains with the
neighboring Thames; I never could discover any current or
motion in their still, glassy waters, though I have wandered by
their banks a hundred times, watching the red-finned roach and
silvery dace pursue each other among the shadowy lily leaves—
now startling a fat yellow frog from the marge, and following
him as he dived through the limpid blackness to the very
bottom—now starting in my own turn, as a big water-rat would
swim from side to side, and vanish in some hole of the marly
bank—and now endeavoring to catch the great azure-bodied,
gauze-winged dragon-flies, as they shot to and fro on their
poised wings, pursuing, kites of the insect race, some of the
smaller ephemera.
It was those quiet, lucid waters, coupled with the exceeding
shadiness of the trees, and its very unusual solitude—I have
walked it, I suppose, from end to end at least a hundred times,
and I never remember to have met so much even as a peasant
the neighboring town—that gave its character, and I will add
its charm, to this half pastoral, half sylvan lane. For nearly
three miles it ran in one direction, although, as I have said,
with many devious turns and seemingly unnecessary angles,
and through that length it did not pass within the sound of one
farm-yard, or the sight of one cottage chimney. But to make
up for this, of which it was, indeed, a consequence, the nightingales
were so bold and familiar that they might be heard all
day long filling the air with their delicious melodies, not waiting,
as in more frequented spots, the approach of night, whose dull
ear to charm with amorous ravishment; nay, I have seen them
perched in full view on the branches, gazing about them fearless
with their full black eyes, and swelling their emulous throats in
full view of the spectator.
Three miles passed, the lane takes a sudden turn to the northward,
having previously run for the most part east and west;
and here, in the inner angle, jutting out suddenly from a dense
thicket of hawthorns and hazels, an old octagonal summer-house,
with a roof shaped like an extinguisher, projects into the
ditch, which here expands into a little pool some ten or twelve
yards over in every direction, and perhaps deeper than at any
other point of its course.
Beyond the summer-house there is a little esplanade of green
turf, faced with a low wall towards the ditch, allowing the eye
to run down a long, narrow avenue of gigantic elm-trees, meeting
at the top in the perfect semblance of a Gothic aisle, and
bordered on each hand by hedges of yew, six feet at least in
height, clipped into the form and almost into the solidity of a
wall. At the far end of this avenue, which must be nearly
two-thirds of a mile in length, one can discern a glimpse of a
to be a large building of red brick.
At the extremity of the esplanade and little wall, there grows
an enormous oak, not very tall, but with an immense girth of
trunk, and such a spread of branches that it completely over-shadows
the summer-house, and overhangs the whole surface of
the small pool in front of it. Thenceforth, the tall and tangled
hedge runs on, as usual denying all access of the eye, and the
deep, clear ditch all access of the foot, to the demesnes within;
until at the distance of perhaps a mile and a quarter, a little
bridge crosses the latter, and a green gate, with a pretty rustic
lodge beside it, gives entrance to a smooth lawn, with a gravel-road
running across it, and losing itself on the farther side,
in a thick belt of woodland.
It is, however, with the summer-house that I have to do principally,
for it is to it that the terror of blood has clung through
the lapse of years, as the scent of the Turkish attar is said to
cling, indestructible, to the last fragment of the vessel which
had once contained it.
When first I saw that small lonely pavilion, I had heard nothing
of the strange tradition which belonged to it; yet as I
looked on the plastered walls, all covered with spots of damp
and mildew, on the roof overrun with ivy, in masses so wildly
luxuriant as almost to conceal the shape—on the windows, one
in each side of the octagon, closed by stout jalousies, which
had been once green with paint, but were now green with damp
and vegetable mould, a strange feeling, half of curiosity and
half of terror, came over me, mixed with that singular fascination
of which I have spoken, which seemed to deny me any
rest until I should have searched out the mystery—for I felt
sure that mystery there was—connected with that summer-house,
so desolate and so fast lapsing into ruin, while the hedges
I well remember the first time I beheld that lonely and deserted
building. It was near sunset, on as lovely a summer
evening as ever shed its soft light on the earth; the air was
breathless; the sky cloudless; thousands of swallows were
upon the wing, some skimming the limpid surface of those old
ditches, others gliding on balanced pinions so far aloft in the
darkening firmament that the eye could barely discern them.
The nightingales were warbling their rich, melancholy notes
from every brake and thicket; the bats had come forth, and
were flitting to and fro on their leathern wings under the dark
trees; but the brilliant dragon-flies and all the painted tribe of
butterflies had vanished already, and another race, the insects
of the night, had taken their places.
The rich scent of the new-mown hay loaded the air with
fragrance, and vied with the odors of the eglantine and honeysuckle,
which, increased by the falling dew, steamed up like
incense to the evening skies.
I was alone, and thoughtful; for the time, although sweet
and delicious, had nothing in it gay or joyous; the lane along
which I was strolling was steeped in the fast increasing shadows,
for although the air aloft was full of sunshine, and the
topmost leaves of the tall ashes shimmered like gold in the
late rays, not a single beam penetrated the thick hedgerows, or
fell upon the sandy horse-road. The water in the deep ditches
looked as black as night, and the plunge of the frogs into their
cool recesses startled the ear amid the solitude and stillness of
the place.
It was one of those evenings, in a word, which calls up, we
know not why, a train of thought not altogether sad, nor wholly
tender, but calm and meditative and averse to action. I had
all the while, yet perfectly unconscious that I was musing, much
more what was the subject of my meditations, when coming
suddenly to the turn of the lane, the old summer-house met my
eyes, and almost startled me, so little did I expect in that place
to see anything that should recall to my mind the dwellings
or the vicinity of man.
The next minute I began to scrutinize, and to wonder—for it
was evident that this building must be an appendage to the
estate of some gentleman or person of degree, and, knowing all
the families of note in that neighborhood, I was well assured
that no one dwelt here of sufficient position to be the owner of
what appeared at first sight to be a noble property.
Anxious as I was, however, to effect my entrance into that
enchanted ground, I could discover no means of doing so; for
the depth of the water effectually cut off all access to the
hedgerow banks, even if there had been any prospect of forcing
a passage through the tangled thorn-bushes beyond. Before I
could find any solution to my problem, the fast thickening
shadows admonished me that I must beat my retreat; and it
was only by dint of redoubled speed that I reached college in
time to escape the consequences of absence from roll-call.
An early hour of the evening found me at my post on the
following day; for having a direct object now in view, I wasted
no time on the road, and the sun was still some distance above
the horizon when I reached the summer-house.
It had been my hope, as I went along, that I might find
some shallow spot, with a corresponding gap in the hedge, before
reaching the place, by means of which I might turn the
defences, and take the enemy in the rear; but it was all in vain;
and I came upon the ground without discovering any opening
ground.
Difficulty, it is well known, heightens desire; and, if I wished
before, I was now determined that I would get in. Quickening
my pace, I set off at a smart run to reconnoitre the defences
beyond, but having found nothing that favored my plans in
some half mile or so, I again returned, now bent on forcing my
way, even if I should be compelled to undress, and swim across
the pool to the further side.
Before having recourse to this last step, however, I reconnoitred
my ground somewhat more narrowly than before, and
soon discovered that one of the main limbs of the great oak
shot quite across the pool, and extended some little distance on
my side over terra firma.
It is true that the nearer extremity of the branch was rather
of the slenderest, to support the weight even of a boy, and that
the lowest point was a foot or two above my head. But what
of that? I was young and active in those days, and somewhat
bold withal; and without a spice of danger, where were the
pleasure or excitement of adventure?
It did not take me long to make up my mind, and before I
had well thought of the risk, I had swung myself up into the
branches, and was creeping, with even less difficulty than I had
anticipated, along the great gnarled bough above the mirrored pool.
Danger, in fact, there was none; for slender as the extremities
appeared, they were tough English oak; and the parent
branch once gained, would have supported the weight of Otus
and Ephialtes, and all their giant crew, much more of one slight
Etonian.
In five minutes, or less, I had reached the fork of the trunk,
and, swarming down on the further side, stood in the full fruition
of my hopes, on that enchanted ground.
It was, as I had expected to find it, a singular and gloomy
spot; the tall elm trees which formed the avenue, and the
black wall of clipped yew which followed their course, diverging
to the right and left, formed a semicircle, the chord
of which was the low wall and hawthorn hedge, the summer-house
standing, as I entered, in the angle on my left
hand.
Although, as I have said, the sun was still high in heaven,
the little area was almost dark already; and it was difficult, indeed,
to conjecture for what end the wisdom of our ancestors
had planted a sun-dial in the centre of the grass-plat, where it
seemed physically impossible that a chance sunbeam should
ever strike it, to tell the hour.
If it had not been for the narrow open space between the oak
tree and the summer house, the little lawn would even now
have been as black as night; as it was, a sort of misty-grey
twilight, increased, perhaps, by the thin vapors rising from the
tranquil pool, filled all its precincts; and beyond these, stretching
away in long perspective until the arch at the further end
seemed dwindled to the size of a needle's eye, was the long aisle
of gloomy foliage, as massive and impenetrable to any ray of
light as the stone arches of a Gothic cloister.
The only thing that conveyed an idea of gaiety or life to
the cold and tomb-like scenery, was the glimpse of bright sunshine
which lay on the open garden at the extremity of the
elm-walk, with the gaudy and glowing hues, indistinctly seen
in the distance, of some summer flowers.
Yet even this was not all unmixed with something of melancholy,
for the contrast of the gay sunbeams and bright
flowers only rendered the gloom more apparent, and like a convent-garden,
seemed to awaken cravings after the joyous world
without, diminishing nothing of the sorrow and monotony within.
But I was not in those days much given to moralizing, or to
the investigation of my own inward feelings.
I had come thither to inquire, to see, to learn, to find out
things—not causes. And perceiving at one glance that my
first impression was correct, that the grass-plots were recently
mown, the gravel-walks newly rolled and spotless of weeds, the
tall yew hedges assiduously clipped into the straightest and
most formal lines; that everything, in short, displayed the
most heedful tendance, the neatest cultivation, with the exception
of the summer-pavilion, which evidently was devoted to
decay, I became but the more satisfied that there was some
mystery, and the more resolute to probe it to the core.
It was quite clear that when that garden was laid out, and
that avenue planted, how many years ago the giant size of the
old elms denoted, the summer-house was the meaning of the
whole design. The avenue had no object but to lead to it, the
little lawn no purpose but to receive it. Doubly strange, therefore,
did it seem that these should be kept up in all their trimness—
that suffered to fall into decay.
It was the tragedy of Hamlet, with Hamlet's part omitted!
I stood for a little while wondering, and half overcome by a
sort of indescribable fanciful superstition. A cloud had come
over the sun, the nightingales had ceased to sing, and there
was not a sound of any kind to be heard, except the melancholy
murmur of the summer air in the tree-tops.
In a moment, however, the transitory spell was shaken off,
and, once more the bold and reckless schoolboy, I turned to the
performance of my self-imposed task.
The summer-house, as I have said, was octagon, three of its
sides, with a window in each, jutting out into the clear pool,
and three, with a door in the centre, and a window on each
side, fronting the little lawn. But, alas! the windows were all
and the door was secured by a lock, the key of which was
absent.
A short examination showed, however, that the door was
held by no bolts at the top or bottom; and the rusty condition
of both lock and hinges rendered it probable that it would not
stand a very violent assault.
Wherefore, retreating some twenty paces, I ran at it more
Etonensi, at the top of my speed, planted the sole of my foot
even and square against the key-hole, with the whole impetus
of my charge, and had the satisfaction of feeling the door fly
open in an instant, while a jingling clatter within showed
that my entrance had been effected with no greater damage
to the premises than the starting of the staple into which the
bolt of the lock shot.
Having entered thus, my first task was to repair damages,
which was effected in five minutes, by driving the staple into
its old place by aid of a great stone; my second, to provide
means for future visits, which was as speedily managed by
driving back the bolt of the lock with the same great stone;
and my third, to look eagerly and curiously about me. To do
this more effectually, I soon opened the two windows looking
upon the lawn, and let in the light, for the first time, I
fancy, in many a year, to that deserted room.
If I had marvelled much before I entered, much more did
I marvel now; for although everything within showed marks
of the utmost negligence and decay, though spiders had
woven their webs in every angle, though mildew and damp
mould had defaced the painted walls, though the gilding was
black and tarnished, though the dust lay thick on the furniture,
still I had never seen anything in my life, except the
state-rooms at Hampton Court and Windsor Castle, which
decoration.
Its area was about thirty feet in diameter, and in height
nearly the same, with a domed roof, richly fretted with what
had once been golden scroll-work upon an azure ground.
The walls were painted, as even I could discover, by the
hand of a master, with copies from Guido and Caracci, in
compartments bordered with massive gilded scroll-work, the
ground between the panels having been originally, like the
ceiling, of bright azure. The window-frames had been gilded;
and the inside of the door painted, like the walls, in azure,
with pictures of high merit in the panels. Every side of the
octagon but two, the opposite walls to the right and left,
was occupied by windows or a door; but that to the right
was filled by a mantel-piece, exquisitely wrought with Caryatides
in white Carrara marble, with a copy of the Aurora above
it, while the space opposite to it had been occupied by a
superb mirror, reaching from the cornice of the ceiling.
Nearly in the centre of this mirror, however, there was a
small circular fracture, as if made by a stone or bullet, with
long cracks radiating, like the beams of a star, in all directions
over the shivered plate: and when I looked at it more closely,
I observed that it was dashed in many places with large drops
of some dark purple fluid, which had hardened with time into
compact and solid gouts.
I thought little of this at the time, and only wondered why
people could be so mad as to abandon so beautiful a place;
and why, since they had abandoned it, they did not remove
the furniture, of which even a boy's eye could detect the
value.
There was a centre-table of circular form, the pedestal of
which, curiously carved, had been wrought, like all the rest,
with some fresh green leaves the thick layer of dust which
covered it, positively astonished my eyes, by the delicacy and
beauty of the designs with which it was adorned. Besides
this, there were divans and arm-chairs of the same fashion and
colors, with cushions which had been once of sky-blue damask,
though their brilliancy, and even their hues, had long been
defaced by the dust, the dampness, and the squalor of that neglected
place.
I should have mentioned, that on the beautiful table I discovered
gouts of the same dark substance which I had previously
observed on the broken mirror; and that there were
still clearly perceptible on one of the divans, dark splashes, and
what must, when fluid, have been almost a pool of the same
deep, rusty hue.
At the time, it is true, I paid little attention to these things,
being busily employed in the boy-like idea of putting my
newly discovered palace of Armida into a complete state of
repair, and coming to pass all my leisure moments, even to the
studying my Prometheus Bound, and composing my weekly
hexameters and Alcaics, in this sweet sequestered spot.
And, in truth, within a week I had put the greater part of
my plan into execution; purloined dusters from my dame's
boarding-house, green boughs of the old elms for brooms, and
water from the ditch, soon made things clean at least; and the
air, which I suffered so long as I was there, daily to blow
through it in all directions, soon rendered it, comparatively
speaking, dry and comfortable; and when all its windows
were thrown wide, it would be scarcely possible to find a more
lightsome or delicious spot for summer musing than that old
English summer-house.
Thus things went on for weeks—for months—unsuspected;
within, before leaving my fairy palace for the night; and as all
looked just as usual without, no one so much as dreamed of
trying the lock, to ascertain if a door were still fastened, the
threshold of which, as men believed, no human foot had
crossed since the days of the second James.
I could often, it is true, discover the traces of recent labor
in the immediate neighborhood of my discovery; I could
perceive at a glance where the grass had been newly shorn,
the yew hedges clipped, or the gravel-walks rolled, but never,
in the course of several months, during which I spent every
fine evening, either reading, or musing, or composing my boy
verses, in that my enchanted castle—for I began really to
consider it almost my own—did I see any human being on the
premises.
The cause of this, which I did not suspect until it was revealed
to me, after chance had discovered my visits to the
place, was simply this, that my intrusions were confined solely
to the evening; whereas, so great was the awe of the servants
and the workmen for that lonely and terror-haunted spot, that
nothing short of absolute compulsion, or the strongest necessity,
would have induced them to go near the place after the
sun had turned downwards from the zenith.
In the meantime, gratified by the complete success of my
first inroad, and the possession of my first discovery, I felt no
inclination to push my advances further, or to make any incursion
into the body of the place.
Every evening, as soon as I could escape from the college
walls, I was at my post, and lingered there as late as college
hours would permit. It was a strange fancy in a boy, and
stranger yet than would at first appear in this, that there was
a very considerable admixture of something nearly approaching
me so assiduous in my visits to that old pavilion.
There was, it is true, nothing definite in my fancies. I knew
nothing—I cannot say even that I suspected anything—concerning
the mysterious closing of the place; and often, since I
have been made acquainted with the tale, I have marvelled at
my own obtuseness, and wondered that a secret so transparent
should have escaped me.
So it was, however, that I suspected nothing, although I
felt sure that mystery there was; and being of somewhat an
imaginative temper, I used to amuse myself by accounting for
it in my own mind, weaving all sorts of strange and wild
romances, and inventing the most horrible stories that can be
conceived, until, as the shadows would fall dark around me,
daunted by my own conceptions, I would make all secure and
fast with trembling fingers, swing myself back across over the
pool by my accustomed oak-branch, and run home as hard as
my legs could carry me, haunted by indistinct and almost
superstitious horror.
Thus things went on, until at the end of summer I was at
last detected in my stolen visits, and the whole mystery was
cleared up.
I remember as clearly as if I heard it now, the exclamation
of terror and dismay uttered by the old gardener, who, having
left some implement behind him on the lawn during the
morning labors, had been forced to bend his unwilling steps
back to the haunted ground to recover it.
I could not but smile afterwards, when he recounted to me
his astonishment and terror at seeing the old summer-house,
which never had been opened within the memory of man,
with all its windows wide to the free air and evening sunshine,
when he told me how often he turned back to seek aid from
were holding their foul sabbath there, and how he started
aghast with horror, not now for himself, but for me, as he
beheld the young Etonian stretched tranquilly upon the bloodstained
couch— for those dark stains were of human gore—
conning his task for the morrow.
I rushed out of the place at his horrid outery; a few words
told my story, and pleaded my excuse— with the good, simpleminded
rustic little excuse was needed—but it was not till
after many sittings, and many a long afternoon's discourse,
that I learned all the details of the sad event which had converted
that fair pavilion into a place as terrible to the ideas of
the country folks as a dark charnel-vault.
“Ay,” said the old man, as he gazed fearfully about
him, after I had persuaded him at length to cross the dreaded
threshold, “Ay! it is all as they tell, though not a man of
them has ever seen it. There is the glass which the bullet
broke, after passing right through his brain; and there is his
blood all spattered on the mirror. And look, young master,
those spots on the table came from her heart; and that couch
you was lying on, is where they laid her when they took her
up. See, it's all dabbled yet; and where your head was resting
now, the dead girl's head lay more than a hundred years
since! Come away, master! come away! I never thought to
have looked on these things, though I know all about them.”
“Oh, tell me—tell me about them!” I exclaimed; “I am
not a bit afraid. Do tell me all about them.”
“Not now—not now—nor not here,” said the old man,
gazing about as if he expected to see a spirit stalk out of some
shady nook of the surrounding trees. “I would not tell you
here to be master of all Ditton-in-the-Dale! But come up, if
you will, to the great house to-morrow, and ask for old Matthew
never lives here now, nor hasn't since that deed was done—
and then I'll tell you all about it, if you must hear. But if
you're wise, you'll shun it; for it will chill your young blood
to listen, and cling to your young heart with a gloom for
ever.”
“Oh, I will come, be sure, Matthew! I would not miss it
for the world. But it is getting late, so I'll fasten up the old
place and be going;” and suiting the action to the word, I
soon secured the fastenings, while the old gardener stood by,
marvelling and muttering at the boldness of young blood, until
I had finished setting things in order, when I shook hands
with the old man, slipping my one half-crown into his horny
palm, and saying,
“Well, good-night, Matthew Dawson, and don't forget to-morrow
evening.”
“That I wo'nt, master,” he replied, greatly propitiated by my
offering. “But which way are you going?”
“Oh, I'll soon show you,” I replied; and swinging myself up
my tree, I was beyond the precincts of the haunted ground
almost in a moment.
“The very way he came the time he did it,” cried the old
gardener, with upturned hands and eyes aghast. But I tarried
then to ask no further questions, being quite sufficiently
terrified for one night; although my pride forbade my displaying
my terrors to the old rustic.
The next day I was punctual to my appointment; and then,
for the first time, I heard the melancholy tale which, at length,
I purpose to relate.
It was a proud and noble Norman family which had held
the demesnes of Ditton-in-the-Dale since the reign of the last
Plantagenet; a brave and loyal race, which had poured its
At Evesham, a Fitz-Henry had fought beside Prince
Edward's bridle-rein, against the great De Montfort and his
confederate barons; and afterwards, through all the long and
cruel wars of the Roses, on every field a Fitz-Henry had won
honor or lost blood, upholding the claims of the true sovereign
house—the house of York—until at fatal Bosworth the house
itself went down, and dragged down with it the fortunes of its
bold supporters.
Thereafter, during the reign of the Tudors, the name of Fitz-Henry
was heard rarely in the court or on the field; impoverished
in fortune by fines and sequestrations, suspected of disloyalty
to the now sovereign house, the heads of the family had
wisely held themselves aloof from intrigue and conspiracy, and
dwelt among their yeomen, who had in old times been their
fathers' vassals, staunch lovers of field-sports, true English country
gentlemen, seeking the favor and fearing the ill-will of no
man—no, not of England's king.
Attached to the old religion, though neither bigots nor zealots,
they had escaped the violence of bluff Harry, when he
turned protestant for Bullen's eyes; and had—though something
to leeward of her favor, as lukewarm romanists and no lovers
of the Spaniard—passed safely through the ordeal of Mary's
cruel reign.
But with the accession of the man-minded Elizabeth, the fortunes
of the house revived for a while. It was the policy of that
great and gracious queen to gather around her all that were
brave, honest, and manly in her realm, without regard to family
creeds or family traditions. Claiming descent as much from
one as from the other of the rival houses of Lancaster and York,
loyalty to the one was no more offence to her clear eyes than
good faith to the other. While loyalty to what he honestly
to her favor in each and every subject.
The Fitz-Henry, therefore, of her day—a young and gallant
soldier, who visited the shores of the New World with Cavendish
and Raleigh, fought for his native land, although a catholic,
against the terrible armada of the Most Catholic King, with
Drake, and Frobisher, and Howard, waged war in the Low
Countries, and narrowly missed death at Zutphen by Philip
Sidney's side—stood as high in the favor of his queen as in the
estimation of all good and honorable men. It is true, when the
base and odious James succeeded to the throne of the lion-queen,
and substituted mean and loathsome king-craft for frank
and open English policy, the grey-haired soldier, navigator,
statesman—for he had shone in each capacity—retired, as his
ancestors had done before him, during the reigns of the seventh
and eighth Henries, to the peaceful shades and innocent pleasures
of Ditton-in-the-Dale.
So true, however, was he to the time-honored principles of
his high race, so loyally did he bring up his son, so firmly did
he strengthen his youthful mind with all maxims and all laws
of honor, linking the loyal subject to the rightful king, that no
sooner had the troubles broken out between the misguided monarch
and his rebellious Parliament—although the veteran of
Elizabeth had fallen asleep long before, full of years and honors,
than his young heir, Osborn Fitz-Henry, displayed the cognizance
of his old house, mustered his tenantry, and set foot in
stirrup, well nigh the first, to withdraw it the very last, of the
adherents of the hapless Charles. So long did he resist in arms,
so pertinaciously did he uphold the authority of the first Charles,
so early did he rise again in behalf of the second, that he was
noted by the parliament as an incorrigible and most desperate
malignant; and, had it not been that, by his gallantry in the
the personal good-will of Cromwell, it is most likely that it
would have gone hard with his fortunes if not with his life.
After the restoration, he was of course neglected by the
fiddling, gambling, wenching, royal buffoon, who succeeded the
royal martyr, and whose necessities he had supplied, when an
outcast pauper exile in a foreign land, from the proceeds of
those very estates which he had so nearly lost in fighting for
his crown.
Osborn Fitz-Henry, too, was gathered to his fathers. He
died little advanced beyond the prime of life, worn out with the
toil he had undergone in the camp, and shattered by the
wounds he had received on almost every battle-field from Edge-Hill
to Dunbar and Worcester.
He had, however, married very young, before the breaking
out of the rebellion, and had lived to see not his son only a
noble and superior man, ready to fill his place when vacant, and
in it uphold the honor of his family, but his son's children also
advancing fast towards maturity.
Allan Fitz-Henry, the son of Charles's stout partisan, the grandson
of Elizabeth's warrior, was the head of the house, when my
tale commences.
He, too, had married young—such, indeed, was the custom
of his house—and had survived his wife, by whom he had two
fair daughters, but no heir; and this was a source of vexation
so constantly present to his mind, that in the end it altered the
whole disposition of the man, rendering him irritable, harsh,
stern, unreasonable, and unhappy.
Fondly attached to the memory of his lost wife, whom he
had loved devotedly while living, it never entered his mind to
marry a second time, even with the hope of begetting an heir
by whom to perpetuate the honors and principles of his house;
making others miserable, in consequence of the certainty that
he should be the last of his race.
His only hope was now centred in his daughters, or to speak
more correctly, in his eldest daughter—for her he had determined
to constitute his heiress, endowing her with all his landed
property, all his heirlooms, all that could constitute her the
head of his house; in return for which he had predetermined
that she should become the wife of some husband of his own
choosing, who should unite to a pedigree as noble as that of the
Howards, all qualifications which should fit him to represent
the house into which he should be adopted; and who should
be willing to drop his own paternal name and bearings, how
ancient and noble soever, in order to adopt the style and the
arms of Fitz-Henry.
Proud by nature, by blood, and by education—though with
a clear and honorable pride—he had been rendered a thousand
times prouder and more haughty by the very circumstances
which seemed to threaten a downfall to the fortunes of his house
—his house, which had survived such desperate reverses; which
had come out of every trial, like pure gold, the better and the
brighter from the furnace—his house, which neither the ruin of
friendly monarchs, nor the persecutions of hostile monarchs, nor
the neglect of ungrateful monarchs, had been able to shake, any
more than the autumnal blasts, or the frosts of winter, had
availed to uproot the oak trees of his park, coeval with his name.
In the midst of health and wealth, honor and good esteem,
with an affectionate family, and a devoted household around
him, Allan Fitz-Henry fancied himself a most unhappy man—
perhaps the most unhappy of mankind.
Alas! was it to punish such vain, such sinful, such senseless,
and inordinate repinings?
Who shall presume to scrutinize the judgments, or pry into
the secrets of the Inscrutable?
This much alone is certain, that ere he was gathered to his
fathers, Allan Fitz-Henry might, and that not unjustly, have
termed himself that, which now, in the very wantonness of pampered
and insatiate success he swore that he was daily—the
most unhappy of the sons of men.
For to calamities so dreadful as might have disturbed the
reason of the strongest minded, remorse was added, so just, so
terrible, so overwhelming, that men actually marvelled how he
lived on, and was not insane.
But I must not anticipate.
It was a short time after the failure of the Duke of Monmouth's
weak and ungrateful attempt at revolution, a short time
after the conclusion of the merciless and bloody butcheries of
that disgrace to the English ermine, the ferocious Jefferies, that
the incidents occurred, which I learned first on the evening subsequent
to my discovery in the fatal summer-house.
At this time Allan Fitz-Henry—it was a singular proof, by
the way, of the hereditary pride of this old Norman race, that
having numbered among them so many friends and counsellors
of monarchs, no one of their number had been found willing to
accept titular honors, holding it a higher thing to be the premier
gentleman than the junior peer of England—at this time,
I say, Allan Fitz-Henry was a man of some forty-five or fifty
years, well built and handsome, of courtly air and dignified presence;
nor must it be imagined that in his fancied grievances
he forgot to support the character of his family, or that he
carried his griefs abroad with him into the world.
At times, indeed, he might be a little grave and thoughtful,
especially at such times as he heard mention made of the promise
or success of this or that scion of some noble house; but
friends, that he was wont to open his heart, and complain of
his ill-fortune, at being the first childless father of his race—for
so, in his contempt for the poor girls, whom he still, strange
contradiction! loved fondly and affectionately, he was accustomed
in his dark hours to style himself; as if forsooth an heir
male were the only offspring worthy to be called the child of
such a house.
Though he was fond, and gentle, and at times even tender to
his motherless daughters—for, to do him justice, he never suffered
a symptom of his disappointment and disgust to break out
to their annoyance, yet was there no gleam of paternal satisfaction
in his sad eye, no touch of paternal pride in his vexed
heart, as he looked upon their graceful forms, and noted their
growing beauties.
And yet they were a pair of whom the haughtiest potentate
on earth might have been proud, and with justice.
Blanche and Agnes Fitz-Henry were at this time in their
eighteenth and seventeenth years—but one summer having
passed between their births, and their mother having died within
a few hours after the latter saw the light.
They were, indeed, as lovely girls as the sun of merry England
shone upon; and in those days it was still merry England,
and famous then as now for the rare beauty of its women, whether
in the first dawn of girlhood, or in the full-blown flush of
feminine maturity.
Both tall, above the middle height of women, both exquisitely
formed, with figures delicate and slender, yet full withal, and
voluptuously rounded, with the long taper hands, the small and
shapely feet and ankles, the swan-like necks, and classic heads
gracefully set on, which are held to denote, in all countries, the
predominance of gentle blood; when seen at a distance, and
to distinguish the elder from the younger sister.
But look upon them face to face, and never, in all respects,
were two girls of kindred race so entirely dissimilar. The elder,
Blanche, was, as her name denotes, though ladies' names are
oftentimes misnomers, a genuine English blond. Her abundant
and beautiful hair, trained to float down upon her snowy shoulders
in silky masses of unstudied curls, was of the lightest golden
brown. There was not a shade of red in its hues, although her
complexion was of that peculiarly dazzling character which is
common to red-haired persons; yet when the sun shone on its
glistening waves, so brilliantly did the golden light flash from
it, that you might almost have imagined there was a circlet of
living glory above her clear white brow.
Her eyebrows and eyelashes were many shades darker than
her hair, relieving her face altogether from that charge of insipidity
which is so often, and for the most part so truly, brought
against fair-haired and fair-featured beauties. The eyes themselves,
which those long lashes shrouded, were of the deepest
violet blue; so deep, that at first sight you would have deemed
them black, but for the soft and humid languor which is never
seen in eyes of that color. The rest of her features were as near
as possible to the Grecian model, except that there was a slight
depression where the nose joins the brow, breaking that perfectly
straight line of the classical face, which, however beautiful to
the statue, is less attractive in life than the irregular outline of
the northern countenance.
Her mouth, with the exception of—perhaps I should rather
say in conjunction with—her eyes, was the most lovely and
expressive feature in her face. There were twin dimples at
its corners; yet was not its expression one of habitual mirth,
but of tenderness and softness rather, unmixed, although an
to its voluptuous curve with the slightest expression of sensuality.
Her complexion was, as I have said, dazzlingly brilliant;
but it was the brilliance of the lily rather than of the rose,
though at the least emotion, whether of pain or pleasure, the
eloquent blood would rush, like the morning's glow over some
snow-crowned Alp, across cheek, brow, and neck, and bosom,
and vanish thence so rapidly, that ere you should have time to
say, nay, even to think,
“Look! look how beautiful, 'twas fled.”
Such was the elder beauty, the destined heiress of the
ancient house, the promised mother of a line of sons, who
should perpetuate the name and hand down the principles of
the Fitz-Henries to far distant ages. Such were the musings
of her father,
Proh! cœca mens mortalium!
come to swell his hope, whispering that for such a creature,
no man, however high or haughty, but would be willing to
renounce the pride of birth, even untempted by the demesnes
of Ditton-in-the-Dale, and many another lordly manor coupled
to the time-honored name of Fitz-Henry.
Her sister Agnes, though not less beautiful than Blanche—
and there were those who insisted that she was more so—was
as different from her, in all but the general resemblance of
figure and carriage, as night is from morning, or autumn from
early summer-time.
Her ringlets, not less profuse than Blanche's, and clustering
in closer and more mazy curls, were as black as the raven's
wing, and, like the feathers of the wild bird, were lighted up
metallic gloss, that defies alike the pen of the writer and the
painter's pencil to depict to the eye.
Her complexion, though soft and delicate, was of the very
darkest hue that is ever seen in persons of unmixed European
blood; so dark that the very blood which would mantle to her
cheek at times in burning blushes, was shaded, as it were, with
a darker hue, like damask roses seen through the medium of a
gold-tinted window-pane.
Her brows and lashes were as black as night, but, strange
to say, the eyes that flashed from beneath them with an almost
painful splendor, were of a clear, deep azure, less dark than
those of the fairer sister, giving a singular and wild character
to her whole face, and affecting the style of her beauty, but
whether for the better or the worse it was for those who admired
or shunned—and there were who took both parts—to
determine. Her face was rounder and fuller than her sister's,
and in fact this was true of her whole person—so much so,
that she was often mistaken for the elder—her features were
less regular, her nose having a slight tendency to that form
which has no name in our language, but which charmed all
beholders in Roxana, as retroussé. Her mouth was as warm,
as soft, as sweetly dimpled, but it was not free from that expression
which Blanche's lacked altogether, and might have
been blamed as too wooing and luxurious.
Such were the various characters of the sisters' personal
appearance—the characters of their mental attributes were as
distinctly marked and as widely different.
Blanche was all gentleness and moderation from her very
cradle—a delicate and tender child, smiling always but rarely
laughing; never boisterous or loud even in her childish plays.
And as she grew older this character became more definite,
creature, not melancholy, much less sad—for she was awake
to all that was beautiful or grand, all that was sweet or gentle
in the face of nature, or in the history of man; and there was,
perhaps, more real happiness concealed under her calm exterior,
than is often to be found under the wilder mirth of
merrier beings. Ever ready to yield her wishes to those of
her friends or companions, many persons imagined that she
had little will, and no fixed wishes or deliberate aspirations;
passionless and pure as the lily of the vale, many supposed
that she was cold and heartless. Oh! ignorant! not to remember
that the hearts of the fiercest volcanoes boil still beneath
a head of snow; and that it is even in the calmest
and most moderate characters that passion once enkindled
burns fierce, perennial, and unquenchable! Thus far, however,
had she advanced into the flower of fair maidenhood, undisturbed
by any warmer dream than devoted affection
towards her parent, whose wayward grief she could understand
if she could not appreciate, and whom she strove by every
gentle wile to wean from his morbid fancies; and earnest love
towards her sister, whom she, indeed, almost adored—perhaps
adored the more from the very difference of their minds, and
for her very imperfections.
For Agnes was all gay vivacity, and petulance, and fire;
so that her young companions, who sportively named Blanche
the icicle, had christened her the sunbeam; and, in truth, if
the first name were ill chosen, the second seemed to be an
inspiration; for like a sunbeam that touched nothing but to
illuminate it, like a sunbeam she played with all things, smiled
on all things in their turn—like a sunbeam she brought mirth
with her presence, and after her departure left a double gloom
behind her.
More dazzling than Blanche, she made her impression at
first sight, and so long as the skies were clear and the atmosphere
unruffled, the sunbeam would continue to gild, to charm,
to be worshipped. But if the time of darkness and affliction
came, the gay sunbeam held aloof, while the poor icicle, melted
from its seeming coldness, was ever ready to weep for the sorrows
of those who had neglected her in the days of their
happiness.
Unused to yield, high-spirited when crossed, yet carrying off
even her stubbornness and quick temper by the brilliancy, the
wit, the lively and bold audacity which she cast around them,
Agnes ruled in her circle an imperious and despotic queen;
while her slaves, even as they trembled before her half sportive
but emphatic frown, did not suspect the sceptre of the tyrant
beneath the spell of the enchantress.
Agnes, in one word, was the idol of the rich and gay;
Blanche was the saint of the poor, the lowly, the sick, and
those who mourn.
It may be that the peculiarity of her position, the neglect
which she had always experienced from her father, and mediately
from the hirelings of the household, ever prompt to
pander to the worst feelings of their superiors—the consciousness
that born co-heiress with her sister, she was doomed to
sink into the insignificance of an undowered and uncared-for
girl, had tended in some degree to form the character which
Agnes had ever borne, and which alone she had displayed,
until the period when my tale commences.
It may be that the consciousness of wrong endured, had
hardened a heart naturally soft and tender, and rendered it
unyielding and rebellious; it may be that injustice, endured
at the hands of hirelings in early years, had engendered a
spirit of resistance, and armed her mind and quickened her
It may be, more than all, that a secret, perhaps an unconscious
jealousy of her sister's superior advantages, not in the
wretched sense of worldly wealth and position, but of the love
and reverence of friends and kindred, had embittered her
young soul, and caused her to cast over it a veil of light and
wild demeanor, of free speech and daring mirth, which had by
degrees grown into habits, and become part and parcel of her
nature.
If it were so, however, there were no outward indications
that such was the case; for never were there seen two sisters
more united and affectionate—nor would it have been easy to
say on which side the balance of kindness preponderated. For
if Blanche was ever the first to cede to her sister's wishes, and
the last in any momentary disappointment or annoyance to
speak one quick or unkind word, so was Agnes, with her expressive
features and flashing eye, and ready, tameless wit,
prompt as light to avenge the slightest reflection cast on
Blanche's tranquillity and coldness; and if at times a quick
word or sharp retort broke from her lips, and called a tear to
the eye of her calmer sister, not a moment would elapse before
she would cast herself upon her neck and weep her sincere
contrition, and be for hours an altered being; until her natural
spirit would prevail, and she would be again the wild mirthful
madcap, whose very faults could call forth no keener reproach
than a grave and thoughtful smile from the lips of those
who loved her the most dearly.
Sad were the daughters of Allan Fitz-Henry—daughters
whom not a peer in England but would have regarded as the
brightest gems of his coronet, as the pride and ornament of
his house; but whom, by a strange anomaly, their own father,
full as he was of warm affections and kindly inclinations, never
that they were not other than they were; and
with a half-confessed conviction that fair as they were, tender
and loving, graceful, accomplished, delicate, and noble-minded,
he could have borne to lay them both in the cold grave, so
that a son could be given to the house in exchange for their
lost loveliness.
In outward demeanor, however, he was to his children all
that a father should be; a little querulous at times, perhaps,
and irritable, but fond, though not doting, and considerate;
and I have wandered greatly from my intention, if anything
that I have said has been construed to signify that there
existed the slightest estrangement between the father and his
children; for had Allan Fitz-Henry but suspected the possibility
of such a thing, he had torn the false pride like a
venomous weed from his heart, and had been a wiser and a
happier man. In his case it was the blindness of the heart
that caused its partial hardness; but events were at hand that
should flood it with the clearest light, and melt it to more than
woman's tenderness.
2. CHAPTER II.
A lovely summer's evening, in the year 168-, was drawing
towards its close, when many a gay and brilliant cavalcade of
both sexes, many of the huge gilded coaches of that day, and
many a train of liveried attendants, winding through the green
lane as they arrived, some in this direction from Eton, some
in that, across Datchet-mead from Windsor and its royal
castle, came thronging towards Ditton-in-the-Dale.
Lights were beginning to twinkle as the shadows fell thick
among the arcades of the trim gardens, and the wilder forestwalks
which extended their circuitous course for many a mile
along the stately hall of the Fitz-Henries; loud bursts of
festive or of martial music came pealing down the wind, mixed
with the hum of a gay and happy concourse, causing the
nightingales to hold their peace, not in despair of rivalling the
melody, but that the mirth jarred unpleasantly on the souls of
the melancholy birds.
The gates of Ditton-in-the-Dale were flung wide open, for it
was gala night, and never had the old hall put on a gayer or
more sumptuous show than it had donned that evening.
From far and near the gentry and the nobles of Buckingham
and Berkshire had gathered to the birth-day ball—for such
was the occasion of the festive meeting.
Yes! it was Blanche Fitz-Henry's birth-day; and on this
gay and glad anniversary was the fair heiress of that noble
house to be introduced to the great world as the future owner
of those beautiful demesnes.
From the roof to the foundation the old manor-house—it
was a stately red brick mansion of the latter period of Elizabethan
architecture, with mullioned windows and stacks of
curiously wreathed chimneys—was one blaze of light; and as
group after group of gay and high-born riders came caracoling
up to the hospitable porch, and coach after coach, with its
running footmen or mounted outriders, lumbered slowly in
their train, thes aloons and corridors began to fill up rapidly
with a joyous and splendid company.
The entrance-hall, a vast square apartment, wainscoted with
old English oak, brighter and richer in its dark hues than
mahogany, received the entering guests; and what with the
profusion of wax-lights, pendent in gorgeous chandeliers from
festoons of green wreaths and fresh summer flowers mixed
quaintly with old armor, blazoned shields, and rustling banners,
some of which had waved over the thirsty plains of Syria,
and been fanned by the shouts of triumph that pealed so high
at Cressy and Poitiers, it presented a not unapt picture of that
midway period—that halting-place, as it were, between the
old world and the new—when chivalry and feudalism had
ceased already to exist among the nations, but before the rudeness
of reform had banished the last remnants of courtesy, and
the reverence for all things that were high and noble—for all
things that were fair and graceful—for all things, in one word,
except the golden calf, the mob-worshipped mammon.
Within this stately hall was drawn up in glittering array
the splendid band of the Life Guards, for royalty himself was
present, and all the officers of that superb regiment quartered
at Windsor had followed in his train; and as an ordinary
courtesy to their well-proved and loyal host, the services of
those chosen musicians had been tendered and accepted.
Through many a dazzling corridor, glittering with lights,
and redolent of choicest perfumes, through many a fair saloon
the guests were marshalled to the great drawing-room, where,
beneath a canopy of state, the ill-advised and imbecile monarch,
soon to be deserted by the very princes and princesses
who now clustered round his throne, sat, with his host and his
lovely daughters at his right hand, accepting the homage of
the fickle crowd, who were within a little year to bow obsequiously
to the cold-blooded Hollander.
That was a day of singular, and what would now be termed
hideous costumes—a day of hair-powder and patches, of hoops
and trains, of stiff brocades and tight-laced stomachers, and
high-heeled shoes among the ladies—of flowing periwigs and
of diamond-hilted rapiers and diamond buckles, ruffles of
Valenciennes and Mechlin lace, among the ruder sex. And
though the individual might be metamorphosed strangely from
the fair form which nature gave him, it cannot be denied that
the concourse of highly-bred and graceful persons, when viewed
as a whole, was infinitely more picturesque, infinitely more like
what the fancy paints a meeting of the great and noble, than
any assemblage nowadays, however courtly or refined, in
which the stiff dress coats and white neckcloths of the men
are not to be redeemed by the Parisian finery—how much
more natural, let critics tell, than the hoop and train—of the
fair portion of the company.
The rich materials, the gay colors, the glittering jewelry,
and waving plumes, all contributed their part to the splendor
of the show; and in those days a gentleman possessed at least
this advantage, lost to him in these practical utilitarian times,
that he could not by any possibility be mistaken for his own
valet de chambre—a misfortune which has befallen many a one,
the most aristocratic not excepted, of modern nobility.
A truly graceful person will be graceful, and look well in
every garb, however strange or outrè; and there is, moreover,
undoubtedly something, apart from any paltry love of finery
or mere vanity of person, which elevates the thoughts, and
stamps a statelier demeanor on the man who is clad highly
for some high occasion. The custom, too, of wearing arms,
peculiar to the gentlemen of that day, had its effect, and that
not a slight one, as well on the character as on the bearing of
the individual sodistinguished.
As for the ladies, loveliness will still be loveliness, disguise
it as you may; and if the beauties of King James's court lost
much by the travesty of their natural ringlets, they gained,
and brilliancy of their eyes.
So that it is far from being the case, as is commonly supposed,
that it was owing to fashion alone, and the influence of
all powerful custom, that the costume of that day was not
tolerated only, but admired by its wearers.
At this time, however, the use of hair-powder, though general,
was by no means universal; and many beauties who fancied
that it did not suit their complexions, dispensed with it
altogether, or wore it in some modified shape, and tinged with
some coloring matter, which assimilated it more closely to the
natural tints of the hair.
At all events, it must have been a dull eye, and a cold heart,
that could have looked undelighted on the assemblage that
night gathered in the ball-room of Ditton-in-the-Dale.
But now the reception was finished; the royal party moved
into the ball-room, from which they shortly afterwards retired,
leaving the company at liberty from the restraint which their
presence had imposed upon them. The concourse broke up
into little groups; the stately minuet was performed, and
livelier dances followed it; and gentlemen sighed tender sighs,
and looked unutterable things; and ladies listened to soft nonsense,
and smiled gentle approbation; and melting glances
were exchanged, and warm hands were pressed warmly; and
fans were flirted angrily, and flippant jokes were interchanged
—for human nature, whether in the seventeenth or the nineteenth
century, whether arrayed in brocade or simply dressed
in broadcloth, is human nature still; and, perhaps, not one
feeling or one passion that actuated man's or woman's heart
five hundred years ago, but dwells within it now, and shall
dwell unchanged for ever.
It needs not to say that, on such an occasion, in their own
Blanche and Agnes, had their attractions been much
smaller, their pretensions much more lowly than they really
were, would have received boundless attention. But being, as
they were, infinitely the finest girls in the room, and being,
moreover, new debutantes on the stage of fashion, there was no
limit to the admiration, to the furor which they excited among
the wits and lady-killers of the day.
Many an antiquated Miss, proud of past conquests, and
unable yet to believe that her career of triumph was, indeed,
ended, would turn up an envious nose, and utter a sharp sneer
at the forwardness and hoyden mirth of that pert Mistress
Agnes, or at the coldness and inanimate smile of the fair
heiress; but the sneer, even were it a sneer of a duke's or a
minister's daughter, fell harmless, or yet worse, drew forth a
prompt defence of the unjustly assailed beauty.
No greater proof could be adduced, indeed, of the amazing
success of the sister beauties, than the unanimous decision of
every lady in the room numbering less than forty years, that
they were by no means uncommon; were pretty country hoppets,
who, as soon as the novelty of their first appearance should
have worn out, would cease to be admired, and sink back into
their proper sphere of insignificance.
So thought not the gentle cavaliers; and there were many
present there well qualified to judge of ladies' minds as of
ladies' persons; and not a few were heard to swear aloud that
the Fitz-Henries were as far above the rest of their sex in wit
and graceful accomplishments, as in beauty of form and face,
and elegance of motion.
See! they are dancing some gay, newly invented Spanish
dance, each whirling through the voluptuous mazes of the
courtly measure with her own characteristic air and manner,
him in turn; and the two together enchaining all eyes
and interesting all spectators, so that a gentle hum of approbation
is heard running through the crowd as they pause,
blushing and panting, from the exertion and excitement of the
dance.
“Fore Gad! she is exquisite, George! I have seen nothing
like her in my time,” lisped a superb coxcomb, attired in a
splendid civilian's suit of pompadour and silver, to a young
cornet of the Life Guard who stood beside him.
“Which she, my lord?” inquired the standard-bearer, in
reply. “Methinks they both deserve your encomiums; but I
would fain know which of the two your lordship means, for
fame speaks you a dangerous rival against whom to enter the
lists.”
“What, George!” cried the other gaily, “are you about to
have a throw for the heiress? Pshaw! it won't do, man—
never think of it! Why, though you are an earl's second son,
and date your creation from the days of Hump-backed Dickon,
old Allan would vote you a novus homo, as we used to say at
Christ Church. Pshaw! George, go hang yourself! No one
has a chance of winning that fair loveliness, much less of
wearing her, unless he can quarter Sir Japhet's bearings on
his coat armorial.”
“It is the heiress, then, my lord,” answered George Delawarr,
merrily. “I thought as much from the first. Well, I'll relieve
your lordship, as you have relieved me, from all fear of rivalry.
I am devoted to the dark beauty. Egad! there's life, there's
fire for you! Why, I should have thought the flash of that
eye-glance would have rendered Jack Greville to cinders in a
moment, yet there he stands, as calm and impassive a puppy as
ever dangled a plumed hat, or played with a sword-knot. Your
and that coal-black hair! Gad zooks! I honor the girl's spirit
for not disguising it with starch and pomatum. There's more
passion in her little finger, than in the whole soul of the
other.”
“You're out there, George Delawarr,” returned the peer.
“Trust me, it is not always the quickest flame that burns the
strongest; nor the liveliest girl that feels the most deeply.
There's an old saying, and a true one, that still water aye runs
deep. And, trust me, if I know anything of the dear, delicious,
devilish sex, as methinks I am not altogether a novice at the
trade, if ever Blanche Fitz-Henry love at all, she will love with
her whole soul, and heart, and spirit. That gay, laughing brunette
will love you with her tongue, her eyes, her head, and
perhaps her fancy—the other, if, as I say, she ever love at all,
will love with her whole being.”
“The broad acres! my lord! all the broad acres!” replied
the cornet, laughing more merrily than before. “Fore God! I
think it the very thing for you. For the first Lord St. George
was, I believe, in the ark with Noah, so that you will pass current
with the first gentleman of England. I prithee, my lord,
push your suit, and help me on a little with my dark Dulcinea.”
“Faith! George, I've no objection; and see, this dance is
over. Let us go up and ask their fair hands. You'll have no
trouble in ousting that shallow-pated puppy Jack, and I think
I can put the pass on Mr. privy-counsellor there, although he is
simpering so prettily. But, hold a moment, have you been
duly and in form presented to your black-eyed beauty!”
“Upon my soul! I hope so, my lord. It were very wrong
else; for I have danced with her three times to-night already.”
“The devil! Well, come along, quick. I see that they are
going to announce supper, so soon as this next dance shall be
fair company for an hour at least.”
“I am with you, my lord!”
And away they sauntered through the crowd, and ere long
were coupled for a little space each to the lady of his choice.
The dance was soon over, and then, as Lord St. George had
surmised, supper was announced, and the cavaliers led their
ladies to the sumptuous board, and there attended them with all
that courtly and respectful service, which, like many another
good thing, has passed away and been forgotten with the diamond-hilted
sword and the full bottomed periwig.
George Delawarr was full as ever of gay quips and merry
repartees; his wit was as sparkling as the champagne which in
some degree inspired it, and as innocent. There was no touch
of bitterness or satire in his polished and gentle humor; no envy
or dislike pointed his quick, epigrammatic speech; but all was
clear, light, and transparent, as the sunny air at noonday. Nor
was his conversation altogether light and mirthful. There were
at times bursts of high enthusiasm, at which he would himself
laugh heartily a moment afterwards—there were touches of passing
romance and poetry blending in an under-current with his
fluent mirth; and, above all, there was an evident strain of right
feeling, of appreciation of all that was great, and generous, and
good, predominant above romance and wit, perceptible in every
word he uttered.
And Agnes listened, and laughed, and flung back skilfully
and cleverly the ball of conversation, as he tossed it to her.
She was pleased, it was evident, and amused. But she was
pleased only as with a clever actor, a brilliant performer on
some new instrument now heard for the first time. The gay,
wild humor of the young man hit her fancy; his mad wit struck
a kindred chord in her mind; but the latent poetry and romance
gracious feelings, made no impression on the polished but hard
surface of the bright maiden's heart.
Meantime, how fared the peer with the calmer and gentler
sister? Less brilliant than George Delawarr, he had travelled
much, had seen more of men and things, had a more cultivated
mind, was more of a scholar, and no less of a gentleman, scarce
less perhaps of a soldier; for he had served a campaign or two
in his early youth in the Low Countries.
He was a noble and honorable man, clever, and eloquent, and
well esteemed—a little, perhaps, spoiled by that good esteem, a
little too confident of himself, too conscious of his own good
mien and good parts, and a little hardened, if very much
polished, by continual contact with the world.
He was, however, an easy and agreeable talker, accustomed to
the society of ladies, in which he was held to shine, and fond of
shining. He exerted himself also that night, partly because he
was really struck with Blanche's grace and beauty, partly because
Delawarr's liveliness and wit excited him to a sort of playful
rivalry.
Still, he was not successful; for though Blanche listened graciously,
and smiled in the right places, and spoke in answer
pleasantly and well, when she did speak, and evidently wished
to appear and to be amused; her mind was at times absent and
distracted, and it could not long escape the observation of so
thorough a man of the world as Lord St. George, that he had
not made that impression on the young country damsel which
he was wont to make, with one half the effort, on what might
be supposed more difficult ladies.
But though he saw this plainly, he was too much of a gentleman
to be either piqued or annoyed; and if anything he
exerted himself the more to please, when he believed exertion
and entered into the spirit of the hour with something
of her sister's mirth, though with a quieter and more chastened
tone.
It was a pleasant party, and a merry evening; but like all
other things, merry or sad, it had its end, and passed away, and
by many was forgotten; but there were two persons present
there who never while they lived forgot that evening—for there
were other two, to whom it was indeed the commencement of
the end.
But the hour for parting had arrived, and with the ceremonious
greetings of those days, deep bows and stately courtesies,
and kissing of fair hands, and humble requests to be permitted
to pay their duty on the following day, the cavaliers and ladies
parted.
When the two gallants stood together in the great hall,
George Delawarr turned suddenly to the peer—
“Where the deuce are you going to sleep to-night, St. George?
You came down hither all the way from London, did you not?
You surely do not mean to return to-night.”
“I surely do not wish it, you mean, George. No, truly. But
I do mean it. For my fellows tell me that there is not a bed to
be had for love, which does not at all surprise me, or for money,
which I confess does somewhat, in Eton, Slough, or Windsor.
And if I must go back to Brentford or to Hounslow, as well at
once to London.”
“Come with me! Come with me, St. George. I can give
you quarters in the barracks, and a good breakfast, and a game
of tennis if you will; and afterward, if you like, we'll ride over
and see how these bright-eyed beauties look by daylight, after
all this night-work.”
“A good offer, George, and I'll take it as it is offered.”
“How are you here? In a great lumbering coach I suppose.
Well, look you, I have got two horses here; you shall take
mine, and I'll ride on my fellow's, who shall go with your people
and pilot them on the road, else they'll be getting that great
gilded Noah's ark into Datchet-ditch. Have you got any tools?
Ay! ay! I see you travel well equipped, if you do ride in your
coach. Now your riding-cloak, the nights are damp here, by
the river-side, even in summer; oh! never mind your pistols,
you'll find a brace in my holsters, genuine Kuchenrenters. I
can hit a crown piece with them, for a hundred guineas, at fifty
paces.”
“Heaven send that you never shoot at me with them, if that's
the case, George.”
“Heaven send that I never shoot at any one, my lord, unless
it be an enemy of my king and country, and in open warfare;
for so certainly as I do shoot I shall kill.”
“I do not doubt you, George. But let's be off. The lights
are burning low in the sockets, and these good fellows are evidently
tired out with their share of our festivity. Fore God! I
believe we are the last of the guests.”
And with the word, the young men mounted joyously, and
galloped away at the top of their horses' speed to the quarters
of the life-guards in Windsor.
Half an hour after their departure, the two sisters sat above
stairs in a pleasant chamber, disrobing themselves, with the
assistance of their maidens, of the cumbrous and stiff costumes
of the ball-room, and jesting merrily over the events of the
evening.
“Well, Blanche,” said Agnes, archly, “confess, siss, who is
the lord paramount, the beau par excellence, of the ball? I
know, you demure puss! After all, it is ever the quiet cat that
licks the cream. But to think that on your very first night
to please, they say, and all the great court ladies dying for
him.”
“Hush! madcap. I don't know who you mean. At all
events, I have not danced four dances in one evening with one
cavalier. Ah! have I caught you, pretty mistress?”
“Oh! that was only poor George Delawarr. A paltry cornet
in the guards. He will do well enough to have dangling after
one, to play with, while he amuses one—but fancy, being proud
of conquering poor George! His namesake with the Saint
before it were worth a score of such.”
“Fie, sister!” said Blanche, gravely. “I do not love to hear
you talk so. I am sure he's a very pretty gentleman, and has
twice as much head as my lord, if I'm not mistaken; and three
times as much heart.”
“Heart, indeed, siss! Much you know about hearts, I fancy.
But, now that you speak of it, I will try if he has got a heart.
If he has, he will do well to pique some more eligible—”
“Oh! Agnes, Agnes! I cannot hear you—”
“Pshaw!” interrupted the younger sister, very bitterly, “this
affectation of sentiment and disinterestedness sits very prettily
on the heiress of Ditton-in-the-Dale, Long Netherby, and Waltham
Ferrers, three manors, and ten thousand pounds a year to
buy a bridegroom! Poor I, with my face for my fortune, must
needs make my wit eke out my want of dowry. And I'm not
one, I promise you, siss, to choose love in a cottage. No, no!
Give me your Lord St. George, and I'll make over all my right
and title to poor George Delawarr this minute. Heigho! I
believe the fellow is smitten with me after all. Well, well! I'll
have some fun with him before I have done yet.”
“Again,” said Blanche, gravely, but reproachfully, “I have
long seen that you are light, and careless whom you wound
bad-hearted.”
“Bad-hearted, sister!”
“Yes! bad-hearted! To speak to me of manors, or of
money, as if for fifty wills, or five hundred fathers, I would ever
profit by a parent's whim to rob my sister of her portion. As
if I would not rather lie in the cold grave, than that my sister
should have a wish ungratified, which I had power to gratify,
much less that she should narrow down the standard of her
choice—the holiest and most sacred thing on earth—to the
miserable scale of wealth and title. Out upon it! Never, while
you live, speak so to me again!”
“Sister, I never will. I did not mean it, sister, dear,” cried
Agnes, now much affected, as she saw how vehemently Blanche
was moved. “You should not heed me. You know my wild,
rash way, and how I speak whatever words come first.”
“Those were very meaning words, Agnes—and very bitter,
too. They cut me to the heart,” cried the fair girl, bursting
into a flood of passionate tears.
“Oh! do not—do not, Blanche. Forgive me, dearest! Indeed,
indeed, I meant nothing!”
“Forgive you, Agnes! I have nothing to forgive. I was not
even angry, but pained, but sorry for you, sister; for sure I am,
that if you give way to this bitter, jealous spirit, you will work
much anguish to yourself, and to all those who love you.”
“Jealous, Blanche!”
“Yes, Agnes, jealous! But let us say no more. Let this
pass, and be forgotten; but never, dear girl, if you love me, as
I think you do, never so speak to me again.”
“I never, never will.” And she fell upon her neck, and
kissed her fondly, as her heart relented, and she felt something
of sincere repentance for the harsh words which she
them.
Another hour, and, clasped in each other's arms, they were
sleeping as sweetly as though no breath of this world's bitterness
had ever blown upon their hearts, or stirred them into
momentary strife.
Peace to their slumbers, and sweet dreams!
It was, perhaps, an hour or two after noon, and the early
dinner of the time was already over, when the two sisters
strolled out into the gardens, unaccompanied, except by a tall
old greyhound, Blanche's peculiar friend and guardian, and
some two or three beautiful silky-haired King Charles spaniels.
After loitering for a little while among the trim parterres
and box-edged terraces, and gathering a few sweet summer
flowers, they turned to avoid the heat, which was excessive,
into the dark elm avenue, and wandered along between the tall
black yew hedges, linked arm-in-arm, indeed, but both silent
and abstracted, and neither of them conscious of the rich melancholy
music of the nightingale, which was ringing all around
them in that pleasant solitude.
Both, indeed, were buried in deep thought; and each,
perhaps, for the first time in her life, felt that her thought was
such that she could not, dared not, communicate it to her
sister.
For Blanche Fitz-Henry had, on the previous night, begun,
for the first time in her life, to suspect that she was the owner,
for the time being, of a commodity called a heart, although it
may be that the very suspicion proved in some degree that the
possession was about to pass, if it were not already passing,
from her.
In sober seriousness, it must be confessed that the young
cornet of the Life Guards, although he had made so little impression
produced an effect different from anything which she had
ever felt before on the mind of the elder sister. It was not his
good mien, nor his noble air that had struck her; for though
he was a well-made, fine-looking man, of graceful manners and
high-born carriage, there were twenty men in the room with
whom he could not for five minutes have sustained a comparison
in point of personal appearance.
His friend, the Viscount St. George, to whom she had lent
but a cold ear, was a far handsomer man. Nor was it his wit
and gay humor, and easy flow of conversation, that had captivated
her fancy; although she certainly did think him the
most agreeable man she had ever listened to. No, it was the
under-current of delicate and poetical thought, the glimpses of
a high and noble spirit, which flashed out at times through the
light veil of reckless merriment, which, partly in compliance
with the spirit of the day, and partly because his was a gay
and mirthful nature, he had superinduced over the deeper and
grander points of his character. No; it was a certain originality
of mind, which assured her that, though he might talk
lightly, he was one to feel fervently and deeply—it was the
impress of truth, and candor, and high independence, which
was stamped on his every word and action, that first riveted
her attention, and, in spite of her resistance, half fascinated her
imagination.
This it was that had held her abstracted and apparently indifferent,
while Lord St. George was exerting all his powers of
entertainment in her behalf; this it was that had roused her
indignation at hearing her sister speak so slightingly, and, as
it seemed to her, so ungenerously of one whom she felt intuitively
to be good and noble.
This it was which now held her mute and thoughtful, and
loving—loving one who, for aught that he had shown as yet,
cared not for her, perhaps even preferred another—and that
other her own sister.
Thereupon her maiden modesty rallied tumultuous to the
rescue, and suggested the shame of giving love unasked, giving
it, perchance, to be scorned—and almost she resolved to stifle
the infant feeling in its birth, and rise superior to the weakness.
But when was ever love vanquished by cold argument, or
bound at the chariot-wheels of reason?
The thought would still rise up prominent, turn her mind to
whatever subject she would, coupled with something of pity at
the treatment which he was like to meet from Agnes, something
of vague, unconfessed pleasure that it was so, and something of
secret hope that his eyes would ere long be opened, and that she
might prove, in the end, herself his consoler.
And what, meanwhile, were the dreams of Agnes? Bitter—
bitter, and black, and hateful. Oh! it is a terrible consideration,
how swiftly evil thoughts, once admitted to the heart,
take root and flourish, and grow up into a rank and poisonous
crop, choking the good grain utterly, and corrupting the very
soil of which they have taken hold. There is but one hope—
but one! To tear them from the root forcibly, though the
heart-strings crack, and the soul trembles, as with a spiritual
earthquake. To nerve the mind firmly and resolutely, yet
humbly withal, and contritely, and with prayer against temptation,
prayer for support from on high—to resist the Evil One
with the whole force of the intellect, the whole truth of the
heart, and to stop the ears steadfastly against the voice of the
charmer, charm he never so wisely.
But so did not Agnes Fitz-Henry. It is true that on the
preceding night her better feelings had been touched, her
evil counsellors, ambition, envy, jealousy, and distrust, from her
spirit.
But with the night the better influence passed away, and ere
the morning had well come, the evil spirit had returned to his
dwelling-place, and brought with him other spirits, worse and
more wicked than himself.
The festive scene of the previous evening had, for the first
time, opened her eyes fairly to her own position; she read it in
the demeanor of all present; she heard it in the whispers which
unintentionally reached her ears; she felt it intuitively in the
shade—it was scarcely a shade, yet she observed it—of difference
perceptible in the degree of deference and courtesy paid to herself
and to her sister.
She felt, for the first time, that Blanche was everything, herself
a mere cipher—that Blanche was the lady of the manor,
the cynosure of all eyes, the queen of all hearts; herself but the
lady's poor relation, the dependent on her bounty, and at the
best a creature to be played with, and petted for her beauty
and her wit, without regard to her feelings, or sympathy for
her heart.
And prepared as she was at all times to resist even just authority
with insolent rebellion; ready as she was always to
assume the defensive, and from that the offensive against all
whom she fancied offenders, how angrily did her heart now boil
up, how almost fiercely did she muster her faculties to resist, to
attack, to conquer, to annihilate all whom she deemed her
enemies—and that, for the moment, was the world.
Conscious of her own beauty, of her own wit, of her own
high and powerful intellect, perhaps over-confident in her resources,
she determined on that instant that she would devote
them all, all to one purpose, to which she would bend every
by means of some great and splendid marriage,
which should set her as far above the heiress of Ditton-in-the-Dale,
as the rich heiress now stood in the world's eye above
the portionless and dependent sister.
Nor was this all—there was a sterner, harder, and more
wicked feeling yet, springing up in her heart, and whispering
the sweetness of revenge—revenge on that amiable and gentle
sister, who, so far from wronging her, had loved her ever with
the tenderest and most affectionate love, who would have sacrificed
her dearest wishes to her welfare—but whom, in the hardness
of her embittered spirit, she could now see only as an
intruder upon her own just rights, a rival on the stage of
fashion, perhaps in the interests of the heart—whom she already
envied, suspected, almost hated.
And Blanche, at that self-same moment, had resolved to keep
watch on her own heart narrowly, and to observe her sister's
bearing towards George Delawarr, that in case she should perceive
her favoring his suit, she might at once crush down the
germ of rising passion, and sacrifice her own to her dear sister's
happiness.
Alas! Blanche! Alas! Agnes!
Thus they strolled onward, silently and slowly, until they
reached the little green before the summer-house, which was
then the gayest and most lightsome place that can be imagined,
with its rare paintings glowing in their undimmed hues, its
gilding bright and burnished, its furniture all sumptuous and
new, and instead of the dark funereal ivy, covered with woodbine
and rich clustered roses. The windows were all thrown
wide open to the perfumed summer air, and the warm light
poured in through the gaps in the tree-tops, and above the summits
of the then carefully trimmed hedgerows, blithe and golden.
They entered and sat down, still pensive and abstracted; but
ere long the pleasant and happy influences of the time and place
appeared to operate in some degree on the feelings of both,
but especially on the tranquil and well-ordered mind of the
elder sister. She raised her head suddenly, and was about to
speak, when the rapid sound of horses' feet, unheard on the soft
sand until they were hard by, turned her attention to the window,
and the next moment the two young cavaliers, who were
even then uppermost in her mind, came into view, cantering
along slowly on their well-managed chargers.
Her eye was not quicker than those of the gallant riders,
who, seeing the ladies, whom they had ridden over to visit,
sitting by the windows of the summer-house, checked their
horses on the instant, and doffed their plumed hats.
“Good faith, fair ladies, we are in fortune's graces to-day,”
said the young peer, gracefully, “since having ridden thus far
on our way to pay you our humble devoirs, we meet you thus
short of our journey's end.”
“But how are we to win our way to you,” cried Delawarr,
“as you sit there bright chatelaines of your enchanted bower—
for I see neither fairy skiff, piloted by grim-visaged dwarfs, to
waft us over, nor even a stray dragon, by aid of whose broad
wings to fly across this mimic moat, which seems to be something
of the deepest?”
“Oh! gallop on, gay knights,” said Agnes, smiling on Lord
St. George, but averting her face somewhat from the cornet,
“gallop on to the lodges, and leaving there your coursers, take
the first path on the left hand, and that will lead you to our
presence; and should you peradventure get entangled in the
hornbeam maze, why, one of us two will bring you the clue,
like a second Ariadne. Ride on and we will meet you. Come,
sister, let us walk.”
Blanche had as yet scarcely found words to reply to the greeting
of the gallants, for the coincidence of their arrival with her
own thoughts had embarrassed her a little, and she had blushed
crimson as she caught the eye of George Delawarr fixed on her
with a marked expression, beneath which her own dropped
timidly. But now she arose, and bowing with an easy smile,
and a few pleasant words, expressed her willingness to abide by
her sister's plan.
In a few minutes the ladies met their gallants in the green
labyrinth of which Agnes had spoken, and falling into pairs,
for the walk was too narrow to allow them all four to walk
abreast, they strolled in company toward the Hall.
What words they said I am not about to relate—for such
conversations, though infinitely pleasant to the parties, are for
the most part infinitely dull to third persons—but it so fell
out, not without something of forwardness and marked management,
which did not escape the young soldier's rapid eye,
on the part of Agnes, that the order of things which had been
on the previous evening was reversed; the gay, rattling girl
attaching herself perforce to the viscount, not without a sharp
and half-sarcastic jest at the expense of her former partner,
and the mild heiress falling to his charge.
George Delawarr had been smitten, it is true, the night
before by the gaiety and rapid intellect of Agnes, as well as
by the wild and peculiar style of her beauty; and it might
well have been that the temporary fascination might have
ripened into love. But he was hurt, and disgusted even more
than hurt by her manner, and observing her with a watchful
eye as she coquetted with his friend, he speedily came to the
conclusion that St. George was right in his estimate of her
character at least, although he now seemed to be flattered and
amused by her evident prepossession in his favor.
He had not, it is true, been deeply enough touched to feel
either pique or melancholy at this discovery, but was so far
heart-whole as to be rather inclined to laugh at the fickleness
of the merry jilt than either to repine or to be angry.
He was by no means the man, however, to cast away the
occasion of pleasure; and walking with so beautiful and soft
a creature as Blanche, he naturally abandoned himself to the
tide of the hour, and in a little while found himself engaged
in a conversation which, if less sparkling and brilliant, was a
thousand times more charming than that which he had yesterday
held with her sister.
In a short time he had made the discovery that with regard
to the elder sister, too, his friend's penetration had exceeded
his own; and that beneath that calm and tranquil exterior
there lay a deep and powerful mind, stored with a treasury of
the richest gems of thought and feeling. He learned in that
long woodland walk that she was, indeed, a creature both to
adore and to be adored; and he, too, like St. George, was
certain that the happy man whom she should love would be
loved for himself alone, with the whole fervor, the whole truth,
the whole concentrated passion of a heart, the flow of which
once unloosed, would be but the stronger for the restraint
which had hitherto confined it.
Ere long, as they reached the wider avenue, the two parties
united, and then more than ever he perceived the immense
superiority in all loveable, all feminine points, of the elder to
the younger sister; for Agnes, though brilliant and seemingly
thoughtless and spirit-free as ever, let fall full many a bitter
word, many a covert taunt and hidden sneer, which, with his
eyes now opened as they were, he readily detected, and which
Blanche, as he could discover, even through her graceful
quietude, felt, and felt painfully.
They reached the Hall at length, and were duly welcomed
by its master; refreshments were offered and accepted; and
the young men were invited to return often, and a day was
fixed on which they should partake the hospitalities of Ditton
at least as temporary residents.
The night was already closing in when they mounted their
horses and withdrew, both well pleased with their visit; for
the young lord was in pursuit of amusement only, and seeing
at a glance the coyness of the heiress and the somewhat forward
coquetry of her sister, he had accommodated himself to
circumstances, and determined that a passing flirtation with so
pretty a girl, and a short séjour at a house so well appointed
as Ditton, would be no unpleasant substitute for London in
the dog-days; and George Delawarr, like Romeo, had discarded
the imaginary love the moment he found the true
Juliet. If not in love he certainly was fascinated—charmed;
he certainly thought Blanche the sweetest and most lovely girl
he had ever met, and was well inclined to believe that she was
the best and most admirable. He trembled on the verge of
his fate.
And she—her destiny was fixed already, and for ever!
And when she saw her sister delighted with the attentions of
the youthful nobleman, she smiled to herself and dreamed a
pleasant dream, and gave herself up to the sweet delusion.
She had already asked her own heart “does he love me?” and
though it fluttered sorely and hesitated for a while, it did not
answer “No!”
But as the gentlemen rode homeward, St. George turned
shortly on his companion, and said, gravely,
“You have changed your mind, Delawarr, and found out
that I am right. Nevertheless, beware! do not, for God's
sake, fall in love with her, or make her love you!”
The blood flushed fiery-red to the ingenuous brow of George
Delawarr, and he was embarrassed for a moment. Then he
tried to turn off his confusion with a jest.
“What, jealous, my lord! jealous of a poor cornet with no
other fortune than an honorable name and a bright sword! I
thought you, too, had changed your mind when I saw you
flirting so merrily with that merry brunette.”
“You did see me flirting, George—nothing more; and I
have changed my mind since the beginning, if not since the
end of last evening—for I thought at first that fair Blanche
Fitz-Henry would make me a charming wife; and now I am
sure that she would not—”
“Why so, my lord? For God's sake! why say you so?”
“Because she never would love me, George; and I would
never marry any woman unless I were sure that she both
could and did. So you see that I am not the least jealous;
but still I say, don't fall in love with her—”
“Faith! St. George, but your admonition comes somewhat
late; for I believe I am half in love with her already.”
“Then stop where you are and go no deeper; for if I err
not, she is more than half in love with you, too.”
“A strange reason, St. George, wherefore to bid me stop!”
“A most excellent good one!” replied the other, gravely,
and almost sadly, “for mutual love between you two can only
lead to mutual misery. Her father never would consent to
her marrying you more than he would to her marrying a
peasant—the man is perfectly insane on the subject of title-deeds
and heraldry, and will accept no one for his son-in-law
who cannot show as many quarterings as a Spanish grandee
or a German noble. But, of course, it is of no use talking
about it. Love never yet listened to reason; and, moreover, I
suppose what is to be is to be—come what may.”
“And what will you do, St. George, about Agnes? I think
you are touched there a little!”
“Not a whit I—honor bright! And for what I will do—
amuse myself, George—amuse myself, and that pretty coquette
too; and if I find her less of a coquette, with more of a heart
than I fancy she has—” he stopped short and laughed.
“Well, what then—what then?” cried George Delawarr.
“It will be time enough to decide then.”
“And so say I, St. George. Meanwhile, I, too, will amuse
myself.”
“Ay! but observe this special difference—what is fun to
you may be death to her, for she has a heart, and a fine, and
true, and deep one; may be death to yourself, for you, too,
are honorable, and true, and noble; and that is why I love
you, George, and why I speak to you thus, at the risk of being
held meddlesome or impertinent.”
“Oh, never, never!” exclaimed Delawarr, moving his horse
closer up to him, and grasping his hand warmly, “never!
You meddlesome or impertinent! Let me hear no man call
you so. But I will think of this. On my honor, I will think
of this that you have said!”
And he did think of it. Thought of it often, deeply—and
the more he thought, the more he loved Blanche Fitz-Henry.
Days, weeks, and months rolled on, and still those two
young cavaliers were constant visitors, sometimes alone, sometimes
with other gallants in their company, at Ditton-in-the-Dale.
And ever still, despite his companion's warning, Delawarr
lingered by the fair heiress's side, until both were as deeply
enamored as it is possible for two persons to be, both single-hearted,
both endowed with powerful intellect and powerful
imagination; both of that strong and energetic temperament
which renders all impressions permanent, all strong passions
persons, and there were but two, who discovered nothing of
what was passing—suspected nothing of the deep feelings
which possessed the hearts of the young lovers; while all else
marked the growth of liking into love, of love into that absolute
and overwhelming idolatry which but few souls can comprehend,
and which to those few is the mightiest of blessings
or the blackest of curses.
And those two, as is oftentimes the case, were the very two
whom it most concerned to perceive, and who imagined themselves
the quickest and the clearest sighted—Allan Fitz-Henry
and the envious Agnes.
But so true is it that the hope is oft parent to the thought,
and the thought again to security and conviction, that, having
in the first instance made up his mind that Lord St. George
would be a most suitable successor to the name of the family,
and secondly, that he was engaged in prosecuting his suit to
the elder daughter, her father gave himself no further trouble
in the matter, but suffered things to take their own course
without interference.
He saw, indeed, that in public the viscount was more frequently
the companion of Agnes than of Blanche; that there
seemed to be a better and more rapid intelligence between
them; and that Blanche appeared better pleased with George
Delawarr's than with the viscount's company.
But, to a man blinded by his own wishes and prejudices,
such evidences went as nothing. He set it down at once to
the score of timidity on Blanche's part, and to the desire of
avoiding unnecessary notoriety on St. George's; and saw
nothing but what was perfectly natural and comprehensible in
the fact that the younger sister and the familiar friend should
be the mutual confidants, perhaps the go-betweens, of the two
acknowledged lovers.
He was in high good humor, therefore; and as he fancied
himself on the high-road to the full fruition of his schemes,
nothing could exceed his courtesy and kindness to the young
cornet, whom he almost overpowered with those tokens of
affection and regard which he did not choose to lavish on the
peer, lest he should be thought to be courting his alliance.
Agnes, in the meantime, was so busy in the prosecution of
her assault on Lord St. George's heart, on which she began to
believe that she had made some permanent impression, that
she was perfectly contented with her own position, and was
well disposed to let other people enjoy themselves, provided
they did not interfere with her proceedings. It is true, that
at times, in the very spirit of coquetry, she would resume her
flirtation with George Delawarr, for the double purpose of
piquing the viscount and playing with the cornet's affections,
which, blinded by self-love, she still believed to be devoted to
her pretty self.
But Delawarr was so happy in himself, that, without any
intention of playing with Agnes, or deceiving her, he joked
and rattled with her as he would with a sister, and believing
that she must understand their mutual situation, at times
treated her with a sort of quiet fondness, as a man naturally
does the sister of his betrothed or his bride, which effectually
completed her hallucination.
The consequence of all this was, that, while they were unintentionally
deceiving others, they were fatally deceiving themselves
likewise; and of this, it is probable that no one was
aware, with the exception of St. George, who, seeing that his
warnings were neglected, did not choose to meddle further in
the matter, although keeping himself ready to aid the lovers
to the utmost of his ability by any means that should offer.
In the innocence of their hearts, and the purity of their young
love, they fancied that what was so clear to themselves, must be
that the lady's father not only saw, but approved their affection,
and that when the fitting time should arrive, there would be no
obstacle to the accomplishment of their happiness.
It is true that Blanche spoke not of her love to her sister, for,
apart from the aversion which a refined and delicate girl must
ever feel to touching on that subject, unless the secret be teased
or coaxed out of her by some near and affectionate friend, there
had grown up a sort of distance, not coldness, nor dislike, nor
distrust, but simply distaste, and lack of communication between
the sisters since the night of the birth-day ball. Still
Blanche doubted not that her sister saw and knew all that was
passing in her mind, in the same manner as she read her heart;
and it was to her evident liking for Lord St. George, and the
engrossing claim of her own affections on all her thoughts, and
all her time, that she attributed her carelessness of herself.
Deeply, however, did she err, and cruelly was she destined to
be undeceived.
The early days of autumn had arrived, and the woods had
donned their many-colored garments, when on a calm, sweet
evening—one of those quiet and delicious evenings peculiar to
that season—Blanche and George Delawarr had wandered away
from the gay concourse which filled the gardens, and unseen, as
they believed, and unsuspected, had turned into the old labyrinth,
where first they had begun to love, and were wrapped in
soft dreams of the near approach of more perfect happiness.
But a quick, hard eye was upon them—the eye of Agnes;
for, by chance, Lord St. George was absent, having been summoned
to attend the king at Windsor; and being left to herself,
her busy mind, too busy to rest for a moment idle, plunged into
mischief and malevolence.
No sooner did she see them turn aside from the broad walk
than the cloud was withdrawn, as if by magic, from her eyes;
her.
Not a second did she lose, but stealing after the unsuspecting
pair with a noiseless and treacherous step, she followed them,
foot by foot, through the mazes of the clipped hornbeam labyrinth,
divided from them only by the verdant screen, listening
to every half-breathed word of love, and drinking in with greedy
ears every passionate sigh.
Delawarr's left arm was around Blanche's slender waist, and
her right hand rested on his shoulder; the fingers of their other
hands were entwined lovingly together, as they wandered onward,
wrapped each in the other, unconscious of wrong on their
own part, and unsuspicious of injury from any other.
Meanwhile, with rage in her eyes, with hell in her heart,
Agnes followed and listened.
So deadly was her hatred, at that moment, of her sister, so fierce
and overmastering her rage, that it was only by the utmost exertion
of self-control that she could refrain from rushing forward and
loading them with reproaches, with contumely, and with scorn.
But biting her lips till the blood sprang beneath her pearly teeth,
and clenching her hands so hard that the nails wounded their
tender palms, she did refrain, did subdue the swelling fury of her
rebellious heart, and awaited the hour of more deadly vengeance.
Vengeance for what? She had not loved George Delawarr—
nay, she had scorned him! Blanche had not robbed her of her
lover—nay, in her own thoughts, she had carried off the admirer,
perhaps the future lover, from the heiress.
She was the wronger, not the wronged! Then wherefore
vengeance?
Even, therefore, reader, because she had wronged her, and
knew it; because her own conscience smote her, and she would
fain avenge on the innocent cause, the pangs which at times rent
her own bosom.
Envious and bitter, she could not endure that Blanche should
be loved, as she felt she was not loved herself, purely, devotedly,
for ever, and for herself alone.
Ambitious, and insatiate of admiration, she could not endure
that George Delawarr, once her captive, whom she still thought
her slave, should shake off his allegiance to herself, much less
that he should dare to love her sister.
Even while she listened, she suddenly heard Blanche reply to
some words of her lover, which had escaped her watchful ears.
“Never fear, dearest George; I am sure that he has seen and
knows all—he is the kindest and the best of fathers. I will tell
him all to-morrow, and will have good news for you when you
come to see me in the evening.”
“Never!” exclaimed the fury, stamping upon the ground
violently—“by all my hopes of heaven never!”
And with the words she darted away in the direction of the
hall as fast as her feet could carry her over the level greensward;
rage seeming literally to lend her wings, so rapidly did
her fiery passions spur her on the road to impotent revenge.
Ten minutes afterward, with his face inflamed with fury, his
periwing awry, his dress disordered by the haste with which he
had come up, Allan Fitz-Henry broke upon the unsuspecting
lovers.
Snatching his daughter rudely from the young man's half
embrace, he broke out into a torrent of terrible and furious
invective, far more disgraceful to him who used it, than to those
on whom it was vented.
There was no check to his violence, no moderation on his
tongue. Traitor, and knave, and low-born beggar, were the
mildest epithets which he applied to the high-bred and gallant
soldier; while on his sweet and shrinking child he heaped terms
the most opprobrious, the most unworthy of himself, whether as
a father or as a man.
The blood rushed crimson to the brow of George Delawarr,
and his hand fell, as if by instinct, upon the hilt of his rapier;
but the next moment he withdrew it, and was cool by a mighty
effort.
“From you, sir, anything! You will be sorry for this to-morrow!”
“Never, sir, never! Get you gone! base domestic traitor!
Get you gone, lest I call my servants, and bid them spurn you
from my premises!”
“I go, sir—” he began calmly; but at this moment St.
George came upon the scene, having just returned from Windsor,
eager, but, alas! too late, to anticipate the shameful scene—and
to him did George Delawarr turn with unutterable anguish in
his eyes. “Bid my men bring my horses after me, St. George,”
said he, firmly, but mournfully; “for me, this is no place any
longer. Farewell, sir! you will repent of this. Adieu, Blanche,
we shall meet again, sweet one.”
“Never! dog, never! or with my own hands—”
“Hush! hush! for shame. Peace, Mister Fitz-Henry, these
words are not such as may pass between gentlemen. Go,
George, for God's sake! Go, and prevent worse scandal,” cried
the viscount.
And miserable beyond all comprehension, his dream of biiss
thus cruelly cut short, the young man went his way, leaving his
mistress hanging in a deep swoon, happy to be for a while
unconscious of her misery, upon her father's arm.
Three days had passed—three dark, dismal, hopeless days.
Delawarr did his duty with his regiment, nay, did it well—but
he was utterly unconscious, his mind was afar off, as of a man
walking in a dream. Late on the third night a small note was
put into his hands, blistered and soiled with tears. A wan smile
crossed his face, he ordered his horses at daybreak, drained a
deep draught of wine, sauntered away to his own chamber,
himself on his bed, for the first time in his life without praying,
and slept, or seemed to sleep, till daybreak.
Three days had passed—three dark, dismal, hopeless days!
Blanche was half dead—for she now despaired. All methods
had been tried with the fierce and prejudiced old man, secretly
prompted by that demon-girl—and all tried in vain. Poor
Blanche had implored him to suffer her to resign her birthright
in favor of her sister, who would wed to suit his wishes, but in
vain. The generous St. George had offered to purchase for his
friend, as speedily as possible, every step to the very highest in
the service; nay, he had obtained from the easy monarch a
promise to raise him to the peerage, but in vain.
And Blanche despaired; and St. George left the Hall in
sorrow and disgust that he could effect nothing.
That evening Blanche's maid, a true and honest girl, delivered
to her mistress a small note, brought by a peasant lad; and
within an hour the boy went thence, the bearer of a billet,
blistered and wet with tears.
And Blanche crept away unheeded to her chamber, and
threw herself upon her knees, and prayed fervently and long; and
casting herself upon her painful bed, at last wept herself to sleep.
The morning dawned, merry, and clear, and lightsome; and
all the face of nature smiled gladly in the merry sunbeams.
At the first peep of dawn Blanche started from her restless
slumbers, dressed herself hastily, and creeping down the stairs
with a cautious step, unbarred a postern door, darted out into
the free air, without casting a glance behind her, and fled, with
all the speed of mingled love and terror, down the green avenue
toward the gay pavilion—scene of so many happy hours.
But again she was watched by an envious eye, and followed
by a jealous foot.
For scarce ten minutes had elapsed from the time when she
with her dark face livid and convulsed with passion; and after
pausing a moment, as if in hesitation, followed rapidly in the
footsteps of her sister.
When Blanche reached the summer-house, it was closed and
untenanted; but scarcely had she entered and cast open the
blinds of one window toward the road, before a hard horse-tramp
was heard coming up at full gallop, and in an instant George
Delawarr pulled up his panting charger in the lane, leaped to
the ground, swung himself up into the branches of the great
oak-tree, and climbing rapidly along its gnarled limbs, sprang
down on the other side, rushed into the building, and cast himself
at his mistress's feet.
Agnes was entering the far end of the elm-tree walk as he
sprang down into the little coplanade, but he was too dreadfully
preoccupied with hope and anguish, and almost despair, to
observe anything around him.
But she saw him, and fearful that she should be too late to
arrest what she supposed to be the lovers' flight, she ran like
the wind.
She neared the doorway—loud voices reached her ears, but
whether in anger, or in supplication, or in sorrow, she could not
distinguish.
Then came a sound that rooted her to the ground on which
her flying foot was planted, in mute terror.
The round ringing report of a pistol-shot! and ere its echo
had begun to die away, another!
No shriek, no wail, no word succeeded—all was as silent as
the grave.
Then terror gave her courage, and she rushed madly forward
a few steps, then stood on the threshold horror-stricken.
Both those young souls, but a few days before so happy, so
loving, had taken their flight—whither?
Both lay there dead, as they had fallen, but unconvulsed, and
graceful even in death. Neither had groaned or struggled, but
as they had fallen, so they lay, a few feet asunder—her heart
and his brain pierced by the deadly bullets, sped with the accuracy
of his never-erring aim.
While she stood gazing, in the very stupor of dread, scarce
conscious yet of what had fallen out, a deep voice smote her ear.
“Base, base girl, this is all your doing!” Then, as if wakening
from a trance, she uttered a long, piercing shriek, darted
into the pavilion between the gory corpses, and flung herself
headlong out of the open window into the pool beneath.
But she was not fated so to die. A strong hand dragged her
out—the hand of St. George, who, learning that his friend had
ridden forth towards Ditton, had followed him, and arrived too
late by scarce a minute.
From that day forth Agnes Fitz-Henry was a dull, melancholy
maniac. Never one gleam of momentary light dispersed
the shadows of her insane horror—never one smile crossed her
lip, one pleasant thought relieved her life-long sorrow. Thus
lived she; and when death at length came to restore her spirit's
light, she died, and made no sign.
Allan Fitz-Henry lived—a moody misanthropic man, and
shunned of all. In truth, the saddest and most wretched of the
sons of men.
How that catastrophe fell out none ever knew, and it were
useless to conjecture.
They were beautiful, they were young, they were happy.
The evil days arrived—and they were wretched, and lacked
strength to bear their wretchedness. They are gone where One
alone must judge them—may He have pity on their weakness.
Requiescant!
| Persons and pictures from the histories of France and England | |