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LADY CAR
PRINTED BY
SPOTTISWOODE & CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE
LONDON
LADY CAR
THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE
BY
MRS OLIPHANT
AUTHOR OF ‘CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD’ ETC.
_NEW EDITION_
LONDON
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
1890
_All rights reserved_
LADY CAR
_THE SEQUEL OF A LIFE_
CHAPTER I
Lady Caroline Beaufort was supposed to be, as life goes, an unusually
fortunate woman. It is true that things had not always gone well with
her. In her youth she had been married almost by force--as near it as
anything ever is in an age when parental tyranny is of course an
anachronism--to a man unlike herself in every way--an uncultured, almost
uncivilised, rich boor of the neighbourhood, the descendant of a navvy
who had become a millionaire, and who inherited all the characteristics
of his race along with their money, although he had never known anything
of navvydom, but had been born a Scotch country gentleman with a great
estate. It is to be supposed that her father and mother believed it to
be for her real good when they placed poor Car, fainting with fright and
horror, in the arms of a man whose manners made even them wince, though
they were forced into no such constant contact with him, for they were
far from being wicked parents or bad people in any way. There is nothing
in the world so difficult to understand as the motives which lead
fathers and mothers to such acts, not so common as they used to be, yet
not so rare as they ought to be. They think, perhaps, that a little
aversion at first tells for next to nothing in the long run, and that an
affectionate, gentle creature, submissive to law and custom, will end by
loving any man who belongs to her, or having at least some sort of
sentiment which will answer for love; and that, on the other hand, no
fantastic passion of youth is to be trusted to surmount all the risks of
life in the lottery of marriage, which affords so many changed points
of view; whereas wealth is a solid and unchangeable good which outlives
every sentiment. These, I suppose, were the conclusions of Lord and Lady
Lindores when they married their daughter to Mr. Thomas Torrance--or,
rather, these were the conclusions of the Earl, in which his wife
concurred very doubtfully, and with much reluctance, rather failing in
courage to support her child in any effort for liberty than helping to
coerce her. If Lord Lindores was determined as to the value of wealth,
Lady Lindores was one of those women who have come to the silent
conclusion that nothing is of any great value, and that life has no
prizes at all. What does it matter? she was in the habit of saying to
herself. She did not believe in happiness--a little less comfort or a
little more was scarcely worth struggling for; and no doubt, as Lord
Lindores said, wealth was one of the few really solid and reliable
things in the world, a thing with which many minor goods could be
purchased--relief to the poor, which was always a subject of
satisfaction, and other alleviations of life. Lady Car was sacrificed
to these tenets. But Providence had been good to her: and while she was
still young her husband had died. If he did not justify Lord Lindores’
expectations in his life he did in his death. For he left everything in
his wife’s hands; not only had she the excellent jointure which her
settlements secured her--a jointure without any mean and petty clause
about marrying again--but everything was left in her hands--the control
of the property during little Tom’s minority, and almost every advantage
which a queen-mother could have. Tom was a little fellow of six, so that
a long period of supremacy was in Carry’s hands, and the rough fellow
whom she had almost hated, from whom her very soul had shrunk with a
loathing indescribable, had done her the fullest justice. It is doubtful
whether Lady Car was at all touched by these evidences of devotion on
the part of a man who had bullied and oppressed her for years. But she
was startled into violent and passionate compunction, extraordinary in
so gentle a person, by the still wilder and more impassioned joy which
swept over her soul when she heard of his sudden death. Poor Lady Car
had not been able to resist that flood of exultation which took
possession of her against her will. What did she want with his money? He
was dead and she was free. It filled her with a guilty, boundless
delight, and then with compunction beyond expression, as she tried to
return from that wild joy and took herself to task.
And then, after a very short interval, she had married again; she had
married what in the earlier years of the century people called the man
of the heart--the lover of old days who had been dropped, who had been
ignored when Lord Lindores came to his title and the prospects of the
family had changed. How much Lady Caroline knew or did not know of the
developments through which Mr. Beaufort had passed in the meantime no
one ever discovered. She found him much as he had been when her family
had dropped him, only not so young. A man who had made no way, a man
without reproach, yet without success, who had kept stationary all the
time, and was still a man of promise when his contemporaries had
attained all that they were likely to attain. Beaufort was poor, but
Lady Car was now rich. There was not the least reason why they should
not marry unless he had been fantastic and refused to do so on account
of her superior wealth. But he had no such idiotic idea. So that Lady
Car was considered by most people, especially those who had a turn for
the sentimental, as a very lucky woman. There had been the Torrance
episode when she had not been happy, and which had left her the mother
of two children, destined, perhaps, some time or other, to give her
trouble. But they were children amply provided for, and she had an
excellent jointure, and had been able to marry at thirty the man of her
heart. She was a very lucky woman, more fortunate than most--far more
fortunate than three parts of those women who make, compulsorily or
otherwise, ill-assorted marriages to begin with. In very few cases
indeed does the undesirable husband die, leaving his wife so much money
as that, unburdened by any condition as to marrying again; and very
seldom indeed does the woman so happily left pick up again in the nick
of time her first love, and find him unchanged. It was quite a romantic
story, and pleased people: for, however worldly minded we may be, we all
like to hear of a fortunate chance like this, and that all is well that
ends well, and that the hero and heroine live happy ever after, which
was the conclusion in this case.
The first part of Lady Car’s history has been written before: but
probably the reader remembers nothing of it, and no one would blame him;
for it is an old story, and a great many episodes of that human history
which we call fiction have been presented to his attention since then.
She was tall, of a pliant, willowy figure, soft grey eyes, and an
abundance of very soft light-brown hair. Her complexion was pale but
clear, and her nose a trifle, the merest trifle, longer than the
majority of noses. This conduced greatly (though I don’t deny that it
was a defect) to the general impression made by Lady Caroline, who was
what is called aristocratic in appearance from the crown of her head to
the sole of her foot. It was the grand distinction, an air such as some
of the humblest-minded and most simple of women often have of that
ethereal superiority of race which we all believe in. As a matter of
fact, her brother, Lord Rintoul, had a great deal less distinction in
his appearance than many a poor clerk. But Lady Car might have been a
princess in her own right, and so, to be sure, she was. Unfortunately, I
am obliged to describe her to begin with, since it is impossible to
bring her forward in her own person until I have told a little of her
story. She was amazingly, passionately happy in her second marriage--at
first. If she saw any drawbacks she closed her eyes to them, as
passionately determined to admit nothing that went against her
bliss--but perhaps she did not see anything. And, after all, there was
not much to see. Mr. Beaufort was a gentleman. He was a man of great
cultivation of mind, an excellent scholar, understanding every literary
allusion that could be made, never at a loss for a happy phrase or
quotation, quite an exceptional man in the way of culture and
accomplishment. He was extremely good-looking, his manners were
admirable, his character without reproach. Nothing seemed wanting in him
that a woman could desire. And, notwithstanding the uncomfortable
episode of her first marriage, and the two black-browed children, who
had not a feature of their mother’s, he was Lady Car’s only love, and,
so far as anybody knows, or as was ever known, she was his. By how many
devious ways a pair may be led who are destined to meet at last! He in
various wanderings over the world; she, in the blank of her dreadful
life, through all her martyrdoms, had all the time been tending to this.
And now they were happy at last.
‘No,’ she said, ‘Edward; don’t let us settle down; I can’t: a house
would not contain me. I want the grand air, as the French say. I should
be making horrible comparisons, I should be thinking’--she stopped with
a shiver--‘of the past. Let us go abroad. I have not been abroad since
we were parted; it will look like taking up the story where it dropped.’
Beaufort gave a half-conscious glance towards the spot outside where the
black-browed children were playing. He felt, perhaps, that it would not
be so easy to take up the story where it had dropped; but he assented,
with quiet gentleness soothing her. ‘I am always fond of wandering. I
have done little else all my life--and with you!’
‘Yes, with you!’ she repeated. She was accustomed to the children, and
did not think of the anachronism of their presence at the moment of
taking up the story. ‘You shall take me to all the new places where you
have been alone, and we’ll go to the old places where we were that
summer together; we’ll go everywhere and see everything, and then when
all the novelty is exhausted we shall come back and make a home of our
own. And then, Edward, you shall be left free for your work. How we used
to talk of it _that_ summer! You have not done much to it yet?’
‘Nothing at all,’ he said, with something like a blush.
‘So much the better,’ cried Lady Car. ‘I should have been jealous had
you done it without me--you could not do it without me. You shall not
touch a pen while we are away, but observe everything, and investigate
mankind in all aspects, and then we’ll come home--and then, Edward, what
care I shall take that you are not disturbed--how shall I watch and keep
off every care! You shall have no trouble about anything, no noises or
foolish interruption, no one to disturb you but me. And I will be no
interruption.’
‘Never, my love,’ he said fervently; but this was the only thing to
which he responded clearly. He had not, perhaps, the same intentions
about that great work as once he had. He did not see it in the same
light; but it gave him a certain pleasure to see her enthusiasm. It
surprised him, indeed, that she could be capable of that enthusiasm just
as if the story had never dropped. Women, sweet souls! are so strange.
There had been nothing in his life so definite as the Torrance marriage
and the black-browed children; but yet she was capable of taking up the
dropped story just where it had been thrown aside. So far as love went
he felt himself capable of that too, but then he had not dropped the
love when the story was dropped. Whereas she--In all these records there
was something to be got over with a faint uneasiness, to be ignored if
possible. He could not return with the same unity of mind as she
displayed to the half-forgotten things of the past. But he was sure that
her presence would never be any interruption, and he was pleased to fall
into her eager, delightful plans, and to think of wandering with her
wherever two people can wander, and when the two people are man and wife
that is virtually everywhere. He was very ready for that dream of life.
Besides, if there is anything out of the way in the conditions of a new
beginning, it is always a good thing to go abroad. Little anomalies
which stand out from the surface of quiet life at home look so much less
in the atmosphere of strange places and among the varieties of travel.
The best way to forget that there has been once a great gap between two
who are to be one, and a lifetime passed by each in surroundings so
different, is to go far away and make new joint associations for each
which will bridge over that severance. Neither of them gave this reason:
she, perhaps, because she was unconscious of it; he, because he had no
desire to state the case either to the world or to her--or even to
himself. He was, in his way, with the many precautions which he had
taken to keep disagreeable subjects at a distance, a genuine
philosopher in the old-fashioned sense of the word.
Accordingly they went abroad, for something more than the longest
honeymoon, the black-browed children accompanying them more or less,
that is, they performed certain journeys in the wake of the pair, and
were settled here and there, at suitable centres, with all the
attendance of skilled nurses and governesses which wealth makes it so
easy to procure, while Lady Car and her husband pursued their further
way, never altogether out of reach. She never forgot she was a mother
even in the first rapture of her new happiness. And he was very good to
the children. At their early age most children are amusing, and Mr.
Beaufort was eminently gentle and kind. His wife’s eyes shone when she
saw him enter into their little lives as if they had been his own. What
a thing for them to have such a man from whom to derive their first
ideas of what a man should be! What a thing! She stopped and shuddered
when she realised her own meaning; and yet how true it was--that the
instructor they might have had, the example, the warning, the man who
was their father, had been taken away, to leave the room open for so
much better a teacher, for a perfect example, for one who would be a
real father to them! Poor children! Lady Car felt for them something of
the conventional pity for the fatherless even in the midst of the
swelling of her heart over this great gift that had come to them. Their
father indeed!
The years of the honeymoon flew like so many days of happiness. They
went almost everywhere where a sea voyage was not indispensable, for
Lady Car was a very bad sailor. They avoided everything that could have
been troublesome or embarrassing in the conversations, and were quite
old married people, thoroughly used to each other, and to all their
mutual diversities of feeling and ways of thinking, before they returned
home. They were both vaguely aware that the homecoming would be a trying
moment, but not enough so to be afraid of it or resist the conviction
that the time had come when it was no longer possible to put it off. It
was before they returned home, however, in the first consultations over
their future dwelling, that the first real divergence of opinion arose.