Produced by Hanno Fischer
THERESA MARCHMONT,
OR,
THE MAID OF HONOUR.
A TALE.
By Mrs. Charles Gore
“La cour est comme un édifice bâti de marbre; je veux dire qu'elle est
composée d'hommes fort durs, mais fort polis.” _LA BRUYERE._
London, MDCCCXXIV
CHAPTER I.
“Take any shape but that, and my firm nerves
shall never tremble. Hence horrible shadow!
Unreal mockery, hence!”--_MACBETH_
It was a gloomy evening, towards the autumn of the year 1676, and the
driving blasts which swept from the sea upon Greville Cross, a dreary
and exposed mansion on the coast of Lancashire, gave promise of a stormy
night and added to the desolation which at all times pervaded its vast
and comfortless apartments.
Greville Cross had formerly been a Benedictine Monastery, and had been
bestowed at the Reformation, together with its rights of Forestry upon
Sir Ralph de Greville, the ancestor of its present possessor. Although
that part of the building containing the chapel and refectory had been
long in ruins, the remainder of the gloomy quadrangle was strongly
marked with the characteristics of its monastic origin. It had never
been a favourite residence of the Greville family; who were possessed of
two other magnificent seats, at one of which, Silsea Castle in Kent,
the present Lord Greville constantly resided; and the Cross, usually
so called from a large iron cross which stood in the centre of the
court-yard, and to which thousand romantic legends were attached, had
received few improvements from the modernizing hand of taste. Indeed
as the faults of the edifice were those of solid construction, it would
have been difficult to render it less gloomy or more convenient by any
change that art could affect. Its massive walls and huge oaken beams
would neither permit the enlargement of its narrow windows, nor the
destruction of its maze of useless corridors; and it was therefore
allowed to remain unmolested and unadorned; unless when an occasional
visit from some member of the Greville family demanded an addition to
its rude attempts of splendour and elegance. But it was difficult to
convey the new-fangled luxuries of the capital to this remote spot;
and the tapestry, whose faded hues and mouldering texture betrayed the
influence of the sea air, had not yet given place to richer hangings. The
suite of state apartments was cold and comfortless in the extreme, but
one of the chambers had been recently decorated with more than usual
cost, on the arrival of Lord and Lady Greville, the latter of whom had
never before visited her Northern abode. Its dimensions, which were
somewhat less vast than those of the rest of the suite, rendered it
fitter for modern habits of life; and it had long ensured the preference
of the ladies of the House of Greville, and obtained the name of “the
lady's chamber,” by which it is even to this day distinguished. The
walls were not incumbered by the portraits of those grim ancestors who
frowned in mail, or smiled in fardingale on the walls of the adjacent
galleries. The huge chimney had suffered some inhospitable contraction,
and was surmounted with marble; and huge settees, glittering with
gilding and satin, which in their turn would now be displaced by
the hand of Gillow or Oakley, had dispossessed the tall straight
ebony backed-chairs, which in the olden times must have inflicted martyrdom on
the persons of our weary forefathers.
The present visit of Lord Greville to the Cross, was supposed to
originate in the dangerous illness of an old and favourite female
servant, who had held undisturbed control over the household since the
death of the first Lady Greville about ten years before. She had been
from her infancy attached to the family service, and having married a
retainer of the house, had been nurse to Lord Greville, whom she still
regarded with something of a maternal affection. Her husband had died
the preceding year; equally lamented by the master whom he served, and
the domestics whom he ruled; and his wife was now daily declining, and
threatening to follow her aged partner to the grave. It was imagined by
the other members of the establishment, that the old lady had written to
her master, with whom she frequently corresponded, to entreat a personal
interview, in order that she might resign her “Stewardship” into his
hands before her final release from all earthly cares and anxieties; and
in consideration of the length and importance of her services, none were
surprised at the readiness with which her request was granted.
Lord Greville had never visited the North since the death of his first
wife, a young and beautiful woman whom he had tenderly loved, and who
died and was interred at Greville Cross. She left no children, and the
heir, a fine boy in the full bloom of childhood and beauty, who
now accompanied Lord Greville, was the sole offspring of his second
marriage.
Helen, the present Lady Greville, was by birth a Percy; and although her
predecessor had been celebrated at the Court of Charles, as one of the
most distinguished beauties of her time, there were many who considered
her eclipsed by the lovely and gentle being who now filled her place.
She was considerably younger than her husband; but her attachment to
him, and to her child, as well as her naturally domestic disposition,
prevented the ill effects often resulting from disparity of years. Lord
Greville, whose parents were zealous supporters of the royal cause, had
himself shared the banishment of the second Charles; had fought by his
side in his hour of peril, and shared the revelries of his court in
his after days of prosperity. At an age when the judgement is
rarely matured, unless by an untimely encounter with the dangers and
adversities of the world, such as those disastrous times too often
afforded, he had been employed with signal success in several foreign
missions; and it was universally known that the monarch was ever prompt
publicly to acknowledge the benefit he had on many occasions derived
from the prudent counsels of his adherent, as well as from his valour in
the field.
But notwithstanding the bond of union subsisting between them, from
the period of his first marriage, which had taken place under the Royal
auspices, Greville had retired to Silsea Castle; and resisting equally
the invitations of his condescending master, and the entreaties of his
former gay companions, he had never again joined the amusements of the
court. Whether this retirement originated in some disgust occasioned by
the licentious habits and insolent companions of Charles, whose
present mode of life was peculiarly unfitted to the purer taste, and
intellectual character of Lord Greville; or, whether it arose solely
from his natural distaste for the parasitical existence of a courtier,
was uncertain; but it was undeniable that he had faithfully followed the
fortunes of the expatriate king, and even supplied his necessities from
his own resources; and had only withdrawn his services when they were no
longer required.
After the death of Lady Greville, his secluded habits seemed more than
ever confirmed; but when he again became possessed of a bride, whose
youth, beauty, and rank in society, appeared to demand an introduction
to those pleasures which her age had hitherto prevented her from
sharing; it was a matter of no small mortification to Lord and Lady
Percy, to perceive that their son-in-law evinced no disposition to
profit by the Royal favour, or to relinquish the solitude of Silsea, for
the splendours of the Capital. But Helen shared not in their regrets.
She had been educated in retirement; she knew but by report the
licentious, but seductive gaieties of the Court of Charles, and she
had not the slightest wish to increase her knowledge of such dangerous
pleasures. Content with loving, and being beloved by a husband whom she
regarded with profound veneration, her happiness was not disturbed by
a restless search after new enjoyments; and her delighted parents soon
forgot their disappointment in witnessing the contentment of their
child.
For some years succeeding her marriage, they perceived no change in the
state of her feelings, but at length the anxiety of parental love led
them to form surmises, which renewed their former disapprobation of
the conduct of Greville. During their frequent visits to Silsea, they
observed that his love of study and retirement had deepened almost to
moroseness; that his address, always cold and reserved, was becoming
offensively distant; and that he was subject to fits of abstraction, and
at other times to a peevish discontent, which materially threatened
the happiness of their daughter. They also discovered that Helen, whose
playful humour and gaiety of heart had been their solace and amusement,
even from her infancy, was now pensive and dispirited. By degrees
the bright expression of her countenance had lost all that becoming
joyousness of youth, which had been its great attraction, and though
still
“Sphered in the stillness of those heaven-blue eyes,
The soul sate beautiful,”
it was the soul of melancholy beauty.
Alarmed and unhappy, Lady Percy wearied her daughter with inquiries as
to the cause of this inauspicious change; but in vain. Helen denied that
any alteration had taken place in her feelings; and declared that the
new and serious tone of her character arose naturally from her advance
in life, and from the duties devolving upon her as a wife and mother.
“Be satisfied, dear madam,” said she, “that I am still a happy and
adoring wife. You well know that my affections were not won by an
outward show of splendour and gay accomplishments, nor by the common
attraction of an idle gallantry. It was on Greville's high reputation
for just and honourable principles, and on his manly and noble nature,
that my love was founded, and these will never change;--and if, at
times, unpleasant circumstances should arise, into which my sex and age
unfit me to inquire to throw a cloud over his features, or a transient
peevishness into his humour, it would ill become me--in short,”
continued she in a trembling voice, and throwing her arms around Lady
Percy's neck, to conceal her tears, “in short, dear Madam, you must
remember that dearly, tenderly, dutifully, as Helen loves her mother,
the wife of Greville can have no complaints to make to the Countess of
Percy*.”
*[See “The family Legend”]
But however well the suffering wife might succeed in disguising the
bitterness of wounded affection from her inquiring family, she could
not conceal it from herself. She had devoted herself, in the pride
of youthful beauty, to the most secluded retirement, through romantic
attachment for one who had appeared to return her love with at least
an equal fervour. Her father's house--her own opening and brilliant
prospects--her numerous family connexions and “troops of friends,”--she
had deserted all for him, in her generous confidence in his future
kindness. “His people had become her people, and his God, her God!” She
had fondly expected that his society would atone for every loss, and
compensate every sacrifice; that in the retirements she shared with him,
he would devote some part of his time to the improvement of her mind,
and the development of her character, and that in return for her self
devotion, he would cheerfully grant her his confidence and affection.
But there--“there where she had garnered up her heart,”--she was doomed
to bear the bitterest disappointment. She found herself, on awaking
from her early dream of unqualified mutual affection, treated with
negligence, and at times with unkindness, and though gleams of his
former tenderness would sometimes break through the sullen darkness
of his present disposition, he continually manifested towards both her
child and herself, a discontented and peevish sternness, which wounded
her deeply, and filled her with inquietude. She retained, however,
too deep a veneration for her husband, too strong a sense of his
superiority, to permit her to resent, by the most trifling show of
displeasure, the alteration in his conduct. She forbore to indulge even
in the
“Silence that chides, and woundings of the eye.”
Helen's was no common character. Young, gentle, timid as she was, the
texture of her mind was framed of “sterner stuff;” and she nourished an
intensity of wife-like devotion and endurance, which no unkindness could
tire, and a fixedness of resolve, and high sense of moral rectitude,
which no meaner feeling had yet obtained the power to blemish.
“Let him be as cold and stern as he will,” said she to herself in
her patient affliction, “he is my husband--the husband of my free
choice--and by that I must abide. He may have crosses and sorrows of
which I know not; and is it fitting that I should pry into the secrets
of a mind devoted to pursuits and studies in which I am incapable of
sharing? There was a time when I fondly trusted he would seek to qualify
me for his companion and friend; but the enchantment which sealed my
eyes is over, and I must meet the common fate of woman, distrust and
neglect, as best I may.”
Anxious to escape the observation of her family, she earnestly requested
Lord Greville's permission to accompany him with her son, when he
suddenly announced his intention of visiting Greville Cross. Her
petition was at first met with a cold negative; but when she ventured to
plead the advice she had received recently from several physicians,
to remove to the sea coast, and reminded him of her frequent
indispositions, and present feebleness of constitution, he looked at her
for a time with astonishment at the circumstance of her thus exhibiting
so unusual an opposition to his will, and afterwards with sincere and
evident distress at the confirmation borne by her faded countenance to
the truth of her representation.
“Thou art so patient a sufferer,” he replied “that I am somewhat too
prone to forget the weakness of thy frame--but be content--I must be
alone in this long and tedious journey.”
The tears which rose in her eyes were her only remonstrance, and her
husband stood regarding her for some minutes in silence, but with the
most apparent signs of mental agitation on his countenance.
“Helen,” said he at length, in a low, earnest tone, “Helen, thou
wert worthy of a better fate than to be linked to the endurance of my
waywardness; but God who sees thine unmurmuring patience, will give
thee strength to meet thy destiny. Thou hast scarcely enough of womanly
weakness in thee to shrink from idle terrors, or I might strive to
appall thee,” he added faintly smiling, “with a description of the
gloom and discomfort of thine unknown northern mansion; but if thou art
willing to bear with its scanty means of accommodation, as well as with
thy husband's variable temper, come with him to the Cross.”
Helen longed to throw herself into his arms as in happier days, when he
granted her petition, but she had been more than once repulsed from
his bosom, and she therefore contented herself with thanking him
respectfully; and in another week, they became inmates of Greville
Cross.
The evening whose stormy and endless commencement I have before
described, was the fourth after her arrival in the North; and
notwithstanding the anxiety she had felt for a change of habitation, she
could not disguise from herself that there was an air of desolation,
a general aspect of dreariness about her new abode which justified
the description afforded by her husband. As she crossed the portal, a
sensation of terror ill-defined, but painful and overwhelming, smote
upon her heart, such as we feel in the presence of a secret enemy,
and Lord Greville's increasing uneasiness and abstraction since he had
returned to the mansion of his forefathers, did not tend to enliven
its gloomy precincts. The wind beat wildly against the casement of
the apartment in which they sat, and which although named “the lady's
chamber,” afforded none of those feminine luxuries, which are now to be
found in the most remote parts of England, in the dwellings of the
noble and wealthy. By the side of a huge hearth, where the crackling and
blazing logs imparted the only cheerful sound or sight in the apartment,
in a richly-carved oaken chair emblazoned with the armorial bearings
of his house, sat Lord Greville, lost in silent contemplation. A chased
goblet of wine with which he occasionally moistened his lips, stood on a
table beside him, on which an elegantly-fretted silver lamp was burning;
and while it only emitted sufficient light to render the gloom of the
spacious chamber still more apparent, it threw a strong glare upon his
expressive countenance and noble figure, and rendered conspicuous that
richness of attire which the fashion of those stately days demanded
from “the magnates of the land;” and which we now only admire amid the
mummeries of theatrical pageant, or on the glowing canvas of Vandyck.
His head rested on his hand, and while Lady Greville who was seated on
an opposite couch, was apparently engrossed by the embroidery-frame
over which she leant, his attention was equally occupied by his son, who
stood at her knee, interrupting her progress by twining his little
hands in the slender ringlets which profusely overhung her work, and by
questions which betrayed the unsuspicious sportiveness of his age.
“Mother,” said the boy, “are we to remain all winter in this ruinous
den? Do you know Margaret says, that some of these northern sea winds
will shake it down over our heads one stormy night; and that she would
as soon lie under the ruins, as be buried alive in its walls. Now I must
own I would rather return to Silsea, and visit my hawks, and Caesar,
and--”
“Hush! sir, you prate something too wildly; nor do I wish to hear you
repeat Margaret's idle observations.”
“But mother, I know you long yourself to walk once again in your own
dear sunshiny orangery?”
“My Hugh,” said Lady Greville without attending to his question, “has
Margaret shewn you the descent to the walk below the cliffs, and have
you brought me the shells you promised to gather?”
“How? with the spring tide beating the foot of the rocks, and the sea
raging so furiously that the very gulls dared not take their delicious
perch upon the waves. Tomorrow perhaps--”
“What now, my Hugh, afraid to venture? When I walked on the sands at
noon, there was a bowshot spare.”
“No! mother, no, not afraid, not afraid to venture a fall, or meet a
sprinkling of sea spray, and good truth I have enough to do with fears
in doors, here in this grim old mansion, without--”
“Fears?”--
“Yes, fears, dear mother,” said the boy, looking archly round at his
attendant, who waited in the back ground, and who vainly sought by signs
to silence her unruly charge.
“Do you know that the figure of King Herod, cruel Herod, the murderer of
his wife, and the slayer of the innocents, stalks down every night from
the tapestry in my sleeping room and wanders through the galleries at
midnight; and than the cross, where the three Jews were executed a long,
long time ago, in the reign of King John I think; they say that it drops
blood on the morning of the Holy Friday;--and then mother, and this is
really true,” continued the child, changing from his playful manner to
a tone of great earnestness, “there is the figure of a lady in rich
attire, but pale, very pale, who glides through the apartments--yes;
Herbert and Richard and several of the serving men have seen it; and
mistress Alice, poor old soul once was seen to address it, but she would
allow no one to question her on the subject; and they say it was her
doom, and that she must therefore die of her present sickness. Ay: 'twas
in this very room too--the lady's chamber.”
“Boy,” interrupted Lord Greville sternly, “if thou canst find no
better subject for thy prate, than these unbecoming fooleries, be
silent--Helen! why should you encourage his forwardness, and girlish
love of babbling? Go hence, sirrah! take thyself to rest; and you,
Margaret,” added he, turning angrily to the woman, “remember that from
this hour I hear no more insolent remarks, on any dwelling it may suit
your betters to inhabit, nor of this imp's cowardly apprehensions.”
Margaret led her young charge from the room; who, however sad his heart
at being thus abruptly dismissed, walked proud and erect with all the
welling consciousness of wounded pride. Helen followed him to the door
with her eyes; and when they fell again upon her work, they were too dim
with tears to distinguish the colours of the flowers she was weaving.
Lord Greville had again relapsed into silent musing; and as she
occasionally stole a glance towards him, she perceived traces of a
severe mental struggle on his countenance; the muscles of his fine
throat worked convulsively, his lips quivered, yet still he spoke not.
At length his eyes closed, and he seemed as if seeking to lose his own
reflections in sleep.
“I will try the spell which drove the evil spirit from the mind of the
King of Israel,” thought the sad and terrified wife; “music hath often
power to soothe the darkness of the soul;” and she tuned her lute,
and brought forth the softest of its tones. At length her charm was
successful; Lord Greville slept; and while she watched with all the
intense anxiety of alarmed affection, the unquiet slumbers which
distorted one of the finest countenances that sculptor or painter ever
conceived, she affected to occupy herself with her instrument lest he
should awake, and be displeased to find her attention fixed on himself.
With the sweetest notes of a “voice ever soft and low, an excelling
thing in woman,” she murmured the following song, which was recorded in
her family to have been composed by her elder brother, on parting from
a lady to whom he was attached, previous to embarkment on the expedition
in which he fell, and to which it alludes:
Parte la nave
Spiegan le vele
Vento crudele
Mi fa partir.
Addio Teresa,
Teresa, addio!
Piacendo a Dio
Ti rivedrò.
Non pianger bella,
Non pianger, No!--
Chè al mio ritorno
Ti sposerò.
Il Capitano
Mi chiama a bordo;
Io faccio il sordo
Per non partir!
Addio Teresa,
Teresa, Addio!
Piacendo a Dio
Ti rivedrò.
Non pianger bella,
Non pianger, No!--
Chè al mio ritorno
Ti sposerò.
Vado a levante
Vado a ponente
Se trovo gente
Ti scriverò.
Addio Teresa,
Teresa, Addio;
Piacendo a Dio
Ti rivedrò.
Non pianger bella,
Non pianger, No!--
Chè al mio ritorno
Ti sposerò.
Helen had reached the concluding cadence of her soft and melancholy
song, when raising her eyes from the strings to her still sleeping
husband, she beheld with panic-struck and breathless amazement, a
female figure, standing opposite resting her hand on the back of his
chair--silent, and motionless, and with fixed and glassy eyes gazing
mournfully on herself. She saw--yes!--distinctly saw, as described by
little Hugh, “a Lady in rich attire, but pale, very pale;” and in the
stillness and gloom of the apartment and the hour,
“'Twas frightful there to see
A lady richly clad as she,
Beautiful exceedingly.”
The paleness of that pensive face did not lessen its loveliness, and the
hair which hung in bright curls on her shoulders and gorgeous apparel,
was white and glossy as silver. Helen gazed for a moment spell-bound;
for she beheld in that countenance without the possibility of doubt, the
resemblance of the deceased Lady Greville, whose portrait, in a similar
dress, hung in the picture gallery at Silsea Castle. She shuddered; for
the eyes of the spectre remained steadfastly fixed upon her; and its
lips moved as if about to address her--“Mother of God--protect me!”
exclaimed Helen convulsively, and she fell insensible on the floor.