It was on a pleasant evening towards the end of August, that Sir
Arthur's chariot stopped at the Granby Hotel, which looked to the
travellers more like an entire street than a single house; and Marion
thought that accommodation might be prepared in it for all the invalids
in Great Britain. Her ears were instantly deafened by a noisy clamor of
bells, while the carriage was surrounded by a cluster of shabby
waiters, in second-hand looking clothes, dishevelled hair, soiled
cotton stockings, and dusty shoes, who were vociferous in their
protestations that the house was already more than full, and that a
hundred and fifty guests dined every day at the ordinary. In the mean
time, however, they hurriedly dismounted Sir Arthur's baggage from the
chariot, and at length ushered him into a sitting room, with a promise
of finding sleeping apartments for the whole party, up three pair of
stairs, in a lodging across the common, a tall old building spotted
over like a plum pudding with windows, where they must be ready to
abdicate on a moment's notice, if necessary, the whole house having
been bespoke some weeks before, for Miss Howard Smytheson, the heiress,
and suite.
No place is so little changed by lapse of time as Harrowgate, during
the last two centuries which have elapsed since first its unpalatable
waters were tasted. There the same three great hotels flourish supreme,
as in the days of Smollet, holding their crowded ordinaries, and
distinguished by their former designations, as the House of Lords, the
House of Commons, and the House of Drs. There, during three months of
every successive year, an equal crowd assembles in search of health for
their disordered bodies, and excitement for their stagnant minds, while
time and money are frantically squandered, as if both were dealt out in
unlimited portions among all who thus emulously seek with wearied
eagerness for frivolous amusements, idle flutter, and all those
relaxations of an unsatisfied existence, which soon became intolerable
to those who can amuse themselves, but necessary to those who cannot.
The very same rooms and furniture, the very same tables, knives,
glasses, and spoons, and the same hours of eating and drinking, which
were used during the time of old Humphrey Bramble, are still in
existence, while every thing remains as much unaltered as the blue
firmament above, except the company. Year after year has, at
Harrowgate, even more, perhaps, than elsewhere, testified the ceaseless
mutability of human affairs, where, amidst light laughter, mirth and
music, the young have become married, the old have died, and, as days
roll on in that little world of eager excitement, the names of all are
soon alike forgotten. At Harrowgate the visitors seem scarcely more
permanently interested in each other than in actors on the stage, or in
characters represented by a novelist. Any lounger who appears in the
public saloons a second year, becomes completely naturalized in the
house; after a third season, it is ten to one he may be considered a
bore; and during the fourth or fifth, he is completely superannuated. In
these gay rooms, how much of human life and feeling have existed! how
many of its joys and sorrows been experienced! and how many of its
deepest interests have arisen, amidst the gay dance, the ringing laugh,
the lively coquetry, the frantic dissipation, and the vows of endless
attachment! With many a past generation, the fever of frivolity is
over, and the dust of death now shrouds every remembrance in oblivion:
but a new race yet successively arises, to exist, like their
predecessors, in an atmosphere of music, dancing, flirting, riding,
driving, feasting, and gayety,
"Smiling as if earth contain'd no tomb."
"I cannot but think, when arriving at any new place," observed Marion,
"what solitary desolation must frequently be experienced by those
'citizens of the world,' who are for ever on the wing, from country to
country, throughout the habitable and uninhabitable globe! We who live
only for social companionship, would feel perfectly lost in arriving at
a perpetual succession of places, where not one human being depends
upon us for comfort or enjoyment--where not a single genuine tear would
be shed by any living individual, if we dropped down dead at their
feet!"
"You are right, Marion," replied Sir Arthur. "Once when taken
dangerously ill abroad, I was surrounded by those only to whom my very
language was unknown, my features strange, my name unheard of, and my
whole feelings indifferent. It was dreary and desolate indeed! A new
place may divert us for a time, but we do not live to enjoy mere
scenery or mere amusement. To find real happiness we must look within
the circle of home feelings, home duties, and home enjoyments."
When the very aristocratic and distinguished-looking Sir Arthur Dunbar
first appeared in the public room at the Granby, leading in his two
radiantly beautiful nieces, the babbling murmur of conversation became
suddenly hushed, while a general whisper of surprise and admiration
circulated round the tea-table. Many an eager inquiry was rapidly
promulgated who they could possibly be, and from whence they came;
while Lord Wigton, to produce some amusement, secretly announced that
it was the Duke of Lincolnshire and his two eldest unmarried daughters.
The better half of pleasure was its novelty to Marion, whose half-shy,
half-amused looks, as she entered among a score or two of perfect
strangers, found a pleasing contrast to the criticising, examining,
fastidious air with which Agnes, in the full swell of magnificence,
glanced her brilliant, haughty eyes round the tables, and muttered
contemptuously to Sir Arthur, that the living furniture in the room
seemed little better than a zoological garden--a human menagerie of
tigers, bears, and monkeys, varied by a large proportion of red
inflamed strawberry-colored faces belonging to the water-drinkers. By
no means satisfied with the commencement of her Harrowgate existence,
Agnes established on the spot a little whispering gallery of satirical
discontent, while she ridiculed to Marion those of the company who were
unlucky enough first to attract her notice and her disapprobation.
Though the room appeared abundantly peopled with _dramatis personæ_ of
many kinds and degrees, yet, instead of seeing, as she had rather too
sanguinely anticipated, a society of distinguished-looking personages,
as select as if they had been introduced at a drawing-room in St.
James' Palace, the saloon was encumbered with groups of people as
ridiculous as any that Agnes ever remembered to have seen at a country
theatre. Old _beaux_ of half a century's duration,--two or three
remarkably conceited, overdressed officers in full-fledged
mustachios,--crowds of busy, bustling, managing-looking mothers,--four
or five over-dressed Irish fortune-hunters,--a knot of agricultural,
kill-your-own-mutton country gentlemen,--one or two widows of not very
doubtful age, but _rouged_ to excess,--a few Oxonian professors, who
were F.R.S. and the whole alphabet besides,--a multitude of
whist-playing clergymen, reverened only on their visiting cards, who
bore no symptom of their profession except a white neckcloth,--many old
people to be made young, and young people to be made younger,--besides
nearly an acre of very un-Almacks-like young ladies, showily attired in
pink, blue, or yellow, like a bed of tulips, all in very gay spirits,
or pretending to be so, who seemed to lead a life of perpetual smiles
and good-humor, as if all the troubles of existence were unknown or a
mere laughing matter to them.
Sir Arthur was not long in having a delighted recognition with an old,
wooden-legged messmate, Captain Ogilvie, who introduced to Marion his
"three head of daughters," pretty animated girls; and Agnes hastily
seated herself at the tea-table, disappointed beyond measure in the
first chapter of her adventures, and half determined already to set
about hating the whole party. Though deceived only by her own too vivid
anticipations, she felt in some way or other imposed upon, in being
unexpectedly introduced to such very third-rate society, and for
several minutes she maintained a petulant silence, so very unlike her
usual volubility, that she began, before long, to wish for some one
with whom to enjoy a laugh at the whole circle of whimsical-looking
oddities.
Close beside the seat on which Agnes had accidentally placed herself,
she very soon observed an old gentleman considerably past the meridian
of life, who nevertheless dressed with very obvious pretensions to
youth, wearing a fashionable, well-contrived wig, a perfectly startling
set of teeth, and a gouty black velvet shoe. His figure was well built,
and he had altogether a look of individual eccentricity peculiar to
himself, with an air of supercilious haughtiness, which testified that,
like Agnes, he thought himself too good for his company.
"Who can he be?" thought she, finding his eye fixed upon herself with a
fastidious look of connoisseurship, such as that with which he might
have examined some doubtful copy of a Vandyke or Titian, while an
expression of complacent approbation gradually stole into his features.
"Probably some eminent artist! He may perhaps ask leave to do my
picture for the exhibition!"
Having reached this conclusion, she was almost startled to hear herself
addressed by her unknown neighbor, in a consequential, rather
patronising voice, and with an air of unembarrassed distinction, while
he evidently watched her countenance with the same look of criticism as
before, so that she felt certain if there had been a flaw in her teeth,
or a single hair disarranged on her head, it could not have escaped his
notice. So fastidious a personage seemed almost worth the trouble of
pleasing, and Agnes, after replying rather graciously to his first few
remarks, became exceedingly surprised to discover that there was a tone
of well bred command in his dry, cynical manner, united with the most
perfect polish, which both awed and surprised her. His assumption of
superiority and importance seemed almost unconscious, but he evidently
entertained not the fraction of a doubt that his conversation was a
singular honor and an agreeable acquisition to any one on whom he
condescended to bestow the slightest attention.
"I have lived here lately at the rate of twenty new acquaintances a
day, and am happy this evening in adding another to my usual allowance.
One must enter into the humors of a place like Harrowgate, and do at
Rome as Rome does," said he, in a somewhat haughty, supercilious tone.
"This is the only spot in all the earth where English people attempt
the ease and sociability of foreign manners, and we must acknowledge it
fits rather awkwardly. Nevertheless, being in my own neighborhood, I
make a point every year of lending my countenance for a short time to
this house."
Agnes gave an undervaluing glance at her companion, and privately
thought his thin, dry countenance, with every vein like whip cord,
might well have been dispensed with, but though he appeared to be
unpardonably ugly, she prudently sipped her tea in silence, looking
somewhat askance at the little consequential gentleman beside her;
while he took the opportunity of examining her profile with his keen,
observant eye, after which, having apparently satisfied himself that
she was worth the honor of being spoken to, he continued, in a hard,
croaking voice, like a door grating on its rusty hinges:
"The company here is nearly of the same calibre as you might probably
encounter in a Margate hoy, or in a second-class train on the
Birmingham railroad."
"Or at Bartholomew fair," added Agnes, determined not to be outdone. "I
feel as if we were dining for once at the second table. There should be
doorkeepers at Harrowgate to keep out the _canaille_! I wonder Captain
De Crespigny misinformed my brother so much about the society here; but
he would have said anything to make us come."
"No one would ever dream, in his wildest moments, of visiting
Harrowgate for society. Mere knife-grinders from Sheffield, and country
curates," replied her fastidious companion, in a short, abrupt tone.
"Are you acquainted with Louis De Crespigny?"
"Yes; everybody who is anybody knows him, and those who do not often
pretend they do," replied Agnes, indignant at the easy, almost
contemptuous manner in which her companion named one whom she
considered as her own peculiar property. "Not to know him would argue
ourselves unknown."
"I certainly am unknown," said her companion, with a strange little
conscious laugh, which seemed to Agnes quite unaccountable. "Has De
Crespigny so universal an acquaintance? People must be more at a loss
for society than I had supposed!"
"You know," replied Agnes, in an unanswerable tone, "he is the future
Marquis of Doncaster."
"Is he?" answered the old gentleman, with another short, dry laugh, and
a proving shrug of polite non-conviction. "So much the better for him.
You are quite sure of that?"
"Perfectly certain! His uncle is a rich old quiz, who never thought
anybody good enough to marry till now, when nobody would accept of him.
The old peer could not get a girl to marry him now if he sent the
bellman round to advertise for one. Captain De Crespigny's succession
is as undoubted as anything can be which depends on the life of a
whimsical, superannuated uncle, these many years past in the last stage
of infirmity. He has the wrinkles ironed out of his face every morning
with a smoothing iron, and I am told his very bones rattle whenever he
moves!"
"Indeed!" exclaimed the stranger, in a hard, withering tone, and with a
cool sneer on his lip. "How very singular!"
"Poor, dear old man! he was handsome once, and never can forget that;
but it is a century since he lost any looks he ever had, and I am told
he is quite preternaturally old, withered, and whimsical. Quite
ingeniously ugly! _laid a faire peur!_ I should be afraid to go near
him, in case his ugliness might be reflected upon me; but I hear he
fancies himself quite captivating still. Patrick tells me that the old
Marquis invested so large a sum of money lately in a new set of teeth,
that his nephew is quite uneasy lest he should be robbed and murdered
for the gold they are set in. He scratches his wig sometimes to look as
if it were his own hair; and he had an ossification of the leg last
year, in consequence of a disappointment in love!"
"Very remarkable!"
"Yes!" added Agnes, encouraged by the attention she had evidently
excited, and happy to vent all her long accumulated antipathy. "The
oldest man who ever lived certainly died at last, but I believe nobody
ever before existed so long in this world without doing one atom of
good either to himself or others. He keeps a Roman Catholic Abbe to
think for him; and once his wig turned grey in a single night with
distress of mind when they had a quarrel. The Marquis is so afraid of
apoplexy, that when he walks out the Abbe Mordaunt always carries a
lancet to bleed him instantly, in case he has a fit."
"How very considerate! You have all this authentic intelligence on the
best authority of course?" asked the stranger with a submissive bow.
"De Crespigny's entire! I understand the nephew has not inherited his
uncle's antipathy to marrying! If this very whimsical old relative
could be safely packed into his grave,--let me assure you he is even
more whimsical than has been represented, though not quite so
infirm,--I suppose Captain De Crespigny would very soon dispose of
himself and his coronet."
"Certainly!" replied Agnes, unable to repress a conscious smile and
heightened color. "In that case we should all probably see before long
a Marchioness of Doncaster!"
"I might not, perhaps, live to be introduced," answered the old
gentleman demurely. "And I could lay a bet that, as long as I exist, we
shall never have Captain De Crespigny in the peerage. If you happen,
however, to know any young lady at all impatient to become Marchioness
of Doncaster, let her consult me, and I could, perhaps, suggest a
shorter cut to that situation, than by waiting for Louis De Crespigny."
"How!" exclaimed Agnes, with a bewildered look. "Quite impossible!"
"Unless by accepting the present Marquis, who ought, by your
description, to go very cheap, old, whimsical, and infirm as he is!"
replied the stranger, with a sly smile, and a graceful bow. "The report
you have heard of Lord Doncaster is such, that I feel almost tempted to
forswear my own name!"
Agnes never in her life approached more nearly to a genuine fainting
fit, than on hearing these words, and to have been swallowed up in an
earthquake would have been quite a relief. She felt now like Abon
Hassan, when he made the vizier bite his finger to ascertain if he were
really awake, while, with a look of vacant wonder, she became aware
that the middle-aged, nearly good-looking, and very elegant man beside
her, was actually the old, worn-out, almost dead, and all but buried
uncle, whose demise Captain De Crespigny had led her daily or hourly to
expect for the last two years. If his ghost had appeared, she would not
have been half so much astonished, while he seemed evidently more
amused than he chose to acknowledge, at having created such a
sensation, which he was by no means inclined to diminish, while
silently admiring the beautiful fluctuations of expression in Agnes'
resplendent eyes, fixed on himself with almost incredulous amazement.
At length he rose to take leave, with a smiling, supercilious bow, and
beckoned in an authoritative manner to a clerical-looking gentleman at
some distance, to follow him, who spoke in a voice of almost feminine
softness, though Agnes thought the expression of his countenance
peculiarly sinister and forbidding.
"That, then, must be the Abbe Mordaunt!" exclaimed Agnes, almost
aloud, while she gazed at his stern, sallow countenance, his shaggy
eyebrows, low forehead, and artful-looking smile. "He might act the
villain in any melo-drama! I would rather not stand between that man
and any earthly object he may set his heart on! He is the most
Jesuitical-looking Jesuit I ever beheld!"
Though Agnes' first recontre with the Marquis of Doncaster had been so
calamitous, and her first prejudice against his shadow, the Abbe, had
seemed most inveterate, she yet spent much of her time for the next few
days in their society, and was delighted to engross the attention and
the evident admiration of the two most distinguished-looking personages
at the ordinary, while, without scruple, she flattered the Marquis most
flagrantly, by laughing to excess at her own very mistaken ideas of him
previous to their meeting, and hinting that this had rendered her
subsequent surprise the more agreeable. Lord Doncaster in return amused
himself with talking to her in a style suited to the female society in
which most of his own time had hitherto been spent, though it should
not certainly have suited any young girl educated like Agnes, who
stretched her complaisance, however, to the utmost for a nobleman, and
the uncle of her intended, Captain De Crespigny.
Marion's refined and delicate feelings shrunk at once from the
libertine freedom of look and manner which she could not but observe in
the old Marquis' tone to ladies, and though he repeatedly tried to
engage her in the flippant and almost dissolute conversation which, in
a low lover-like tone, he addressed to her sister, and made an
ostentatious display of his admiration for both, Marion, disgusted and
shocked at what seemed so utterly unsuitable to his years, gently but
decidedly evaded all intercourse, being of opinion that the coquetry
which was dishonorable in the nephew, became ridiculous and
contemptible in the uncle, therefore she behaved to him with distant
politeness, and a degree of gravity by no means natural to her in
general. Marion devoted herself almost exclusively to Sir Arthur,
leading him about in his walks, and enlivening his conversation with
old Captain Ogilvy, while she could not but frequently compare the age
and respectability of her venerable uncle, with the almost equal age
and very opposite character of the Roman Catholic Marquis, whose thin
skeleton figure, hollow ghost-like laugh and old stories, as broad as
they were long, formed as unsuitable a contrast to his juvenile dress
and manners, as his withered aspect did, to the fresh and fragrant
flowers he constantly wore in his button-hole, and of which he lavished
a splendid profusion on Agnes.
Marion observed with increasing surprise and regret, that the lively
_persiflage_ of her sister with the Marquis, was varied very frequently
by long and apparently grave discussions, with the Abbe Mordaunt, and
at the end of a week, she became startled to observe that Agnes wore
round her neck a black ribbon, from which hung conspicuously suspended
a large gold crucifix of very beautiful workmanship. On many former
occasions, Marion had found reason to dread the bitter vengeance of
Agnes' tongue, but at no loss to guess the source from whence this
unusual ornament had been derived, she inwardly resolved not to let it
pass unnoticed, but warmly to remonstrate with her sister on the
growing influence of the Abbe, which seemed surprising and
unaccountable, while an undefined feeling of alarm respecting the
rapidly increasing intimacy of Agnes with Lord Doncaster, caused her to
long impatiently for the arrival of Sir Patrick, as she felt unwilling
to distress her uncle on the subject of Agnes' extraordinary conduct,
trusting that the whole affair was a mere girlish whim--a piece of
missyish coquetry to please Lord Doncaster, who in the mean time
laughingly boasted that never before had he made a proselyte so young
and beautiful.