LADY CAROLINE.
The Lady Caroline liked late hours. She was of a restless temperament,
and hated solitude, though she was also intolerant of anything like
dulness in her associates, and had sufficient taste for the
accomplishments which she possessed to render her independent of
society. Nevertheless she underwent an immense deal of boredom rather
than be alone, and whenever she found herself in a country house, she
set to work to form a coterie of late sitters, in order to avoid the
early hours which were her abhorrence. She was not an empty-headed
woman--far from it. She had a good deal more knowledge than most women
of her class, and a great deal of appreciation, some native humour,
and much of the kind of tact and knowledge of society which require
the possession and the exercise of brains. Nobody would have
pronounced her stupid, but every one agreed that she was supercilious
and superficial. The truth was that she was empty-hearted, and where
that void exists, no qualities of head will fill it; and even those
who do not know what it is they miss in the individual are impressed
by the effect of the deficiency. The Lady Caroline loved no one in the
world except herself, and sometimes she took that solitary object of
affection in disgust, which, if transient, was deep. She had arrived
at Westhope in one of those passing fits of _ennui_, mingled with
impatience and disgust of herself and irritation with everybody around
her. She never at any time liked Westhope particularly, and her
brother and his wife had no more interest for her, no more share in
her affections, than any other dull lord and lady among the number of
dull lords and ladies with whom she was acquainted. Her brother loved
her rather more than other people loved her, and Lady Hetherington and
she, though they "got on" charmingly, knew perfectly well that the
very tepid regard which they entertained for each other had nothing in
it resembling sympathy or companionship.
When the Lady Caroline retired to her own rooms after the dinner-party
at which Walter Joyce had learned the news from Woolgreaves, she was
no more inclined than usual to try the efficacy of a "beauty" sleep;
but she was much less inclined to grumble at the dulness of Westhope,
to wish the countess could contrive to have another woman or two whom
she might talk to of an evening, and who would not want such a lot of
sleep to be resorted to so absurdly early, and to scold her maid, than
usual. The maid perceived the felicitous alteration in her ladyship's
mood immediately. It made an important difference to her. Lady
Caroline allowed her to remove all her ornaments and to brush her hair
without finding fault with her, and surprised the patient Abigail, who
must have had it "made very well worth her while" to endure the
fatigues of her office, by telling her she should not require her any
longer, and that she was sure she must be tired. Left to herself, the
Lady Caroline did not feel so impatient of her solitude as usual, but
fell into a reverie which occupied her mind completely. We have seen
this nobly born, and in some respects (chiefly external) highly
gifted, woman as she appeared among her brother's guests. While she
sat by the fire in her dressing-room--with which she never dispensed,
at any season, in "the odious English climate," as she was wont to
call it--l-et us look into her life and see her as she really was.
Lady Caroline Mansergh had married, or rather, her mother had married
her to, a gentleman of considerable importance, wealth, and more than
mature years, when she was just seventeen. Very fair and very sweet
seventeen, whom it had been somewhat difficult to convince of the
delights and advantages of being "an old man's darling." But Lady
Hetherington had not accustomed her children to gentle or affectionate
treatment, or to having their inclinations consulted in any way. She
no more recognised Lady Caroline's right to choose her own husband
than she would have consulted her taste in her babyhood about her own
sashes; and the girl's feeble attempt at remonstrance in opposition to
the solid advantages of the proposals made by Mr. Mansergh did not
produce the least effect at the time. Her ladyship carried her point
triumphantly, and the girl found her fate more endurable, on the
whole, than she had expected. But she never forgave her mother, and
that was rather odd, though not, when looked into, very unreasonable;
Mr. Mansergh never forgave her either. The countess had accomplished
his wishes for him, the countess had bestowed upon him the wife he
coveted, but she had deceived him, and when he won his wife's
confidence he found her mother out. He had not been se foolish as to
think the girl loved him, but he had believed she was willing to
become his wife--he had never had a suspicion of the domestic scenes
which had preceded that pretty _tableau vivant_ at St. George's,
Hanover Square, in which every emotion proper to the occasion had been
represented to perfection. Fortunately for Lady Caroline, her elderly
husband was a perfect gentleman, and treated her with indulgence,
consideration, and respect, which appealed successfully to her
feelings, and were rewarded by a degree of confidence on her part,
which insured her safety and his peace in the hazardous experiment of
their unequal marriage. She told him frankly all about herself, her
tastes, her feelings--the estrangement, almost amounting to dislike,
which existed between herself and her mother--the attempt she had made
to avoid her marriage; in short, the whole story of her brief life, in
which there had been much to deplore. Mr. Mansergh possessed much
firmness of character and good sense, which, though it had not
preserved him from the folly of marrying a girl young enough to be his
daughter, came to his aid in making the best (and that much better
than could have been expected) of the perilous position. Lady Caroline
did not, indeed, learn to love her husband in the sense in which alone
any woman can be justified in becoming the wife of any man, but she
liked him better than she liked any one in the world, and she regarded
him with real and active respect, a sentiment which she had never
entertained previously for any one. Thus it fell out--contrary to the
expectations of "society," which would have acted in the aggregate
precisely as Lady Hetherington had done, but which would also have
congratulated itself on its discernment, and exulted hugely had the
matrimonial speculation turned out a failure--that Lady Caroline
Mansergh was happy and respectable. She never gave cause for the
smallest scandal; she was constantly with her husband, and was so
naturally unaffectedly cheerful and content in his company, that not
the most censorious observer could discover that he was used as a
shield or a pretence. There was a perfectly good understanding between
Mr. Mansergh and his young wife on all points; but if there was more
complete accord on one in particular than on others, it was in keeping
the countess at a distance. The manoeuvring mother profited little by
the success of her scheme. To be sure she got rid of her daughter at
the comparatively trifling expense of a splendid _trousseau_, and the
unconsidered risk of the welfare and the reputation of the daughter in
question, and she had the advantage over the majority of her friends
of having married her advantageously in her first season. But the
profit of the transaction terminated there. In her daughter's house
Lady Hetherington remained on the same ceremonious footing as any
other visiting acquaintance, and every attempt she made either to
interfere or advise was met by a polite and resolute coldness, against
the silent obstinacy of which she would have striven unsuccessfully
had she not been much too wise to strive at all. If the barrier had
been reared by Lady Caroline's hands alone, though they were no longer
feeble, the countess would have flung it down by the force of her
imperious will; but when she found that her daughter had her husband's
opinion and authority to back her, Lady Hetherington executed the
strategic movement of retreat with celerity and discretion, and would
never have been suspected of discomfiture had she not spoken of her
daughter henceforth with suspicious effusion. Then "society" smiled,
and knew all about it, and felt that Mr. Mansergh had been foolish
indeed, but not immoderately, not unpardonably so. Lady Caroline was
very popular and very much admired, and had her only friend's life
been prolonged for a few years, until she had passed the dangerous
period of youth, she might have been as worthy of esteem and affection
as she was calculated to inspire admiration. But Mr. Mansergh died
before his wife was twenty-three years old, and left her with a large
fortune, brilliant beauty, and just sufficient knowledge of the world
to enable her to detect and despise its most salient snares, but with
a mind still but half educated, desultory habits, and a wholly
unoccupied heart. Her grief for her husband's loss, if not poignant
and torturing, was at least sincere, deep, and well founded. When he
died, she had said to herself that she should never again have so
true, so wise, and so constant a friend, and she was right. Life had
many pleasant and some good things in store for Lady Caroline
Mansergh, but such a love as that with which her husband had loved her
was not among them. She acknowledged this always; the impression did
not fade away with the first vehemence of grief--it lasted, and was
destined to deepen. She strayed into a bad "set" before long, and to
her youth and impulsiveness, with her tendency to _ennui_, and her sad
freedom from all ties of attachment, the step from feeling that no one
was _so_ good as her husband had been, to believing that no one else
was good at all, was very easy. And so Lady Caroline acquired a
dangerous and demoralising trick of contempt for her fellows, which
she hid under a mask of light and careless good-nature indeed, and
which was seriously offensive to no one, but which condemned her,
nevertheless, to much interior solitude and dreariness. That she was
not _of_ the world she lived in, was due less to any elevation of
sentiment than to a capricious and disdainful humour, which caused her
to grow bored very readily, and to dismiss her associates from her
thoughts after a brief scrutiny, in which their follies and foibles
came into strong light, and the qualities which would have required
time and patience to find out remained undiscovered.
It had occurred to Lady Caroline Mansergh, on several occasions of
late, to wonder whether she was destined ever to experience the
passion called love. She had not remained ignorant of the science of
flirtation up to her present time of life, but she had not been
beguiled, ever so briefly, into mistaking any of her flirtations for
love. So she was accustomed to wonder wearily, when in an unusually
desultory mood, whether she should ever feel that there existed in the
world a human being for whom she should be willing to suffer, with
whom life would be happy, without whom it would be intolerable, and
whose welfare she could deliberately and practically prefer to her
own. Of late she had begun to think that Fate was against her in this
particular. The idea of the possibility of feeling love for one of the
men whom she was in the habit of meeting was quite preposterous; she
did not hold her favourite followers half so dear as Hassan, her black
barb, or like them half so well as Gelert, her greyhound. Her life
would doubtless continue to be the bright, fashionable, flimsy,
careless, rather _ennuyé_ existence it had hitherto been, and she
should never know anything of the power, the pain, the engrossing
influence of love. So much the better, she would think, in her more
hopeful moods; it must be a narrowing kind of influence, bounding all
one's horizon within such small limits, shutting up one's mortal vista
with one figure.
When the Lady Caroline dismissed her maid, and resigned herself to
reverie, on this night, it was not, after her accustomed fashion, to
dwell in her thoughts on the dulness, staleness, flatness, and
unprofitableness of the world in general, and the section of it in
which she lived in particular. She had quite a distinct subject for
thought, she had a figure and a face in her fancy, a voice in her
memory which filled them wholly. What if she had been wrong, if not
only love were coming to her, to fill her life with delight, and turn
its weariness with purpose and meaning, but love at first sight? A
ridiculous notion, entertained by school-girls, housemaids, novelists,
and poets, but scouted by all reasonable people of the world, and in
"society." She knew this, but she did not care; there was a strange
delicious thrill about her heart; and in the swift flight of her
thoughts she swept the beams of happy possibilities, and felt that she
could, and would, and did despise society and its notions on this
point.
What did she know about Walter Joyce? Absolutely nothing, but that he
was young, handsome, brightly intelligent, presumably poor, and
socially insignificant, or he would not be her silly brother's
secretary. Her attention had been directed to him at first, because
she felt a compassionate curiosity about the person whom circumstances
had oppressed so cruelly as to oblige him to purvey ideas, and
language in which to express them, for Lord Hetherington. Curiosity
and compassion had been replaced, within a few minutes, by admiration,
which the difference between the manners and bearing of Walter, and
those of the men with whom she was accustomed to associate, rather
tended to increase. There was no awkwardness about Walter, but neither
was there the slightest pretence. He was at ease in the unaccustomed
company he found himself among, but he did not affect to be other than
an observant stranger in it.
"He has an intellect and a heart," said Lady Caroline half aloud, as
she rose from her seat by the fireside, and brought her reverie to a
conclusion, "and why should I care for the world's opinion? It could
not make me happy, if I conciliated it; but I think _he_ could, if I
defied it for his sake."