The Small House at Allington
had been heard to complain of her lord's frequent absence. But it is
hard to please some women,--and now she would not always be satisfied
with his presence.
And all the sons and daughters were there,--excepting Lord Porlock,
the eldest, who never met his father. The earl and Lord Porlock were
not on terms, and indeed hated each other as only such fathers and
such sons can hate. The Honourable George De Courcy was there with
his bride, he having lately performed a manifest duty, in having
married a young woman with money. Very young she was not,--having
reached some years of her life in advance of thirty; but then,
neither was the Honourable George very young; and in this respect
the two were not ill-sorted. The lady's money had not been very
much,--perhaps thirty thousand pounds or so. But then the Honourable
George's money had been absolutely none. Now he had an income on
which he could live, and therefore his father and mother had forgiven
him all his sins, and taken him again to their bosom. And the
marriage was matter of great moment, for the elder scion of the house
had not yet taken to himself a wife, and the De Courcy family might
have to look to this union for an heir. The lady herself was not
beautiful, or clever, or of imposing manners--nor was she of high
birth. But neither was she ugly, nor unbearably stupid. Her manners
were, at any rate, innocent; and as to her birth,--seeing that, from
the first, she was not supposed to have had any,--no disappointment
was felt. Her father had been a coal-merchant. She was always called
Mrs. George, and the effort made respecting her by everybody in and
about the family was to treat her as though she were a figure of
a woman, a large well-dressed resemblance of a being, whom it was
necessary for certain purposes that the De Courcys should carry in
their train. Of the Honourable George we may further observe, that,
having been a spendthrift all his life, he had now become strictly
parsimonious. Having reached the discreet age of forty, he had at
last learned that beggary was objectionable; and he, therefore,
devoted every energy of his mind to saving shillings and pence
wherever pence and shillings might be saved. When first this turn
came upon him both his father and mother were delighted to observe
it; but, although it had hardly yet lasted over twelve months, some
evil results were beginning to appear. Though possessed of an income,
he would take no steps towards possessing himself of a house. He
hung by the paternal mansion, either in town or country; drank the
paternal wines, rode the paternal horses, and had even contrived
to obtain his wife's dresses from the maternal milliner. In the
completion of which little last success, however, some slight family
dissent had showed itself.
The Honourable John, the third son, was also at Courcy. He had as yet
taken to himself no wife, and as he had not hitherto made himself
conspicuously useful in any special walk of life his family were
beginning to regard him as a burden. Having no income of his own to
save, he had not copied his brother's virtue of parsimony; and, to
tell the truth plainly, had made himself so generally troublesome to
his father, that he had been on more than one occasion threatened
with expulsion from the family roof. But it is not easy to expel a
son. Human fledglings cannot be driven out of the nest like young
birds. An Honourable John turned adrift into absolute poverty will
make himself heard of in the world,--if in no other way, by his
ugliness as he starves. A thorough-going ne'er-do-well in the upper
classes has eminent advantages on his side in the battle which he
fights against respectability. He can't be sent to Australia against
his will. He can't be sent to the poor-house without the knowledge
of all the world. He can't be kept out of tradesmen's shops; nor,
without terrible scandal, can he be kept away from the paternal
properties. The earl had threatened, and snarled, and shown his
teeth; he was an angry man, and a man who could look very angry; with
eyes which could almost become red, and a brow that wrinkled itself
in perpendicular wrinkles, sometimes very terrible to behold. But
he was an inconsistent man, and the Honourable John had learned to
measure his father, and in an accurate balance.
I have mentioned the sons first, because it is to be presumed that
they were the elder, seeing that their names were mentioned before
those of their sisters in all the peerages. But there were four
daughters,--the Ladies Amelia, Rosina, Margaretta, and Alexandrina.
They, we may say, were the flowers of the family, having so lived
that they had created none of those family feuds which had been so
frequent between their father and their brothers. They were discreet,
high-bred women, thinking, perhaps, a little too much of their own
position in the world, and somewhat apt to put a wrong value on
those advantages which they possessed, and on those which they did
not possess. The Lady Amelia was already married, having made a
substantial if not a brilliant match with Mr. Mortimer Gazebee, a
flourishing solicitor, belonging to a firm which had for many years
acted as agents to the De Courcy property. Mortimer Gazebee was now
member of Parliament for Barchester, partly through the influence
of his father-in-law. That this should be so was a matter of great
disgust to the Honourable George, who thought that the seat should
have belonged to him. But as Mr. Gazebee had paid the very heavy
expenses of the election out of his own pocket, and as George De
Courcy certainly could not have paid them, the justice of his claim
may be questionable. Lady Amelia Gazebee was now the happy mother of
many babies, whom she was wont to carry with her on her visits to
Courcy Castle, and had become an excellent partner to her husband.
He would perhaps have liked it better if she had not spoken so
frequently to him of her own high position as the daughter of an
earl, or so frequently to others of her low position as the wife of
an attorney. But, on the whole, they did very well together, and Mr.
Gazebee had gotten from his marriage quite as much as he expected
when he made it.
The Lady Rosina was very religious; and I do not know that she was
conspicuous in any other way, unless it might be that she somewhat
resembled her father in her temper. It was of the Lady Rosina that
the servants were afraid, especially with reference to that so-called
day of rest which, under her dominion, had become to many of them
a day of restless torment. It had not always been so with the Lady
Rosina; but her eyes had been opened by the wife of a great church
dignitary in the neighbourhood, and she had undergone regeneration.
How great may be the misery inflicted by an energetic, unmarried,
healthy woman in that condition,--a woman with no husband, or
children, or duties, to distract her from her work--I pray that my
readers may never know.
The Lady Margaretta was her mother's favourite, and she was like her
mother in all things,--except that her mother had been a beauty. The
world called her proud, disdainful, and even insolent; but the world
was not aware that in all that she did she was acting in accordance
with a principle which had called for much self-abnegation. She had
considered it her duty to be a De Courcy and an earl's daughter at
all times; and consequently she had sacrificed to her idea of duty
all popularity, adulation, and such admiration as would have been
awarded to her as a well-dressed, tall, fashionable, and by no means
stupid young woman. To be at all times in something higher than they
who were manifestly below her in rank,--that was the effort that she
was ever making. But she had been a good daughter, assisting her
mother, as best she might, in all family troubles, and never repining
at the cold, colourless, unlovely life which had been vouchsafed to
her.
Alexandrina was the beauty of the family, and was in truth the
youngest. But even she was not very young, and was beginning to make
her friends uneasy lest she, too, should let the precious season
of hay-harvest run by without due use of her summer's sun. She had,
perhaps, counted too much on her beauty, which had been beauty
according to law rather than beauty according to taste, and had
looked, probably, for too bounteous a harvest. That her forehead, and
nose, and cheeks, and chin were well-formed, no man could deny. Her
hair was soft and plentiful. Her teeth were good, and her eyes were
long and oval. But the fault of her face was this,--that when you
left her you could not remember it. After a first acquaintance you
could meet her again and not know her. After many meetings you would
fail to carry away with you any portrait of her features. But such
as she had been at twenty, such was she now at thirty. Years had not
robbed her face of its regularity, or ruffled the smoothness of her
too even forehead. Rumour had declared that on more than one, or
perhaps more than two occasions, Lady Alexandrina had been already
induced to plight her troth in return for proffered love; but we all
know that Rumour, when she takes to such topics, exaggerates the
truth, and sets down much in malice. The lady was once engaged, the
engagement lasting for two years, and the engagement had been broken
off, owing to some money difficulties between the gentlemen of the
families. Since that she had become somewhat querulous, and was
supposed to be uneasy on that subject of her haymaking. Her glass
and her maid assured her that her sun shone still as brightly as
ever; but her spirit was becoming weary with waiting, and she dreaded
lest she should become a terror to all, as was her sister Rosina, or
an object of interest to none, as was Margaretta. It was from her
especially that this message had been sent to our friend Crosbie;
for, during the last spring in London, she and Crosbie had known
each other well. Yes, my gentle readers; it is true, as your heart
suggests to you. Under such circumstances Mr. Crosbie should not have
gone to Courcy Castle.
Such was the family circle of the De Courcys. Among their present
guests I need not enumerate many. First and foremost in all respects
was Lady Dumbello, of whose parentage and position a few words were
said in the last chapter. She was a lady still very young, having as
yet been little more than two years married. But in those two years
her triumphs had been many;--so many, that in the great world her
standing already equalled that of her celebrated mother-in-law, the
Marchioness of Hartletop, who, for twenty years, had owned no greater
potentate than herself in the realms of fashion. But Lady Dumbello
was every inch as great as she; and men said, and women also, that
the daughter-in-law would soon be the greater.
"I'll be hanged if I can understand how she does it," a certain noble
peer had once said to Crosbie, standing at the door of Sebright's,
during the latter days of the last season. "She never says anything
to any one. She won't speak ten words a whole night through."
"I don't think she has an idea in her head," said Crosbie.
"Let me tell you that she must be a very clever woman," continued the
noble peer. "No fool could do as she does. Remember, she's only a
parson's daughter; and as for beauty--"
"I don't admire her for one," said Crosbie.
"I don't want to run away with her, if you mean that," said the peer;
"but she is handsome, no doubt. I wonder whether Dumbello likes it."
Dumbello did like it. It satisfied his ambition to be led about as
the senior lacquey in his wife's train. He believed himself to be
a great man because the world fought for his wife's presence; and
considered himself to be distinguished even among the eldest sons