THE DUCHESS.
When it was known that the old house at Birrenshead had been taken by a
gentleman for shooting quarters, the astonishment of the neighbourhood
was great. The house was known to be in a most dilapidated condition,
and the rooms had not been occupied in the memory of man. The village
took the most anxious interest in the rash gentleman, and inquired, with
much solicitude, “what motive” he could have for burying himself in such
a place? Was it for the sake of Lydia Joscelyn? But then he had been
much nearer Lydia Joscelyn at the White House, where the family no doubt
would gladly have kept him had he wished it; or was it on the other hand
to get away from Lydia, who had been devoting herself too unreasonably
to him? Both these opinions had their supporters; but as it was
impossible to prove either, the question remained a burning question for
half of the time that young Brotherton lived at Birrenshead, where he
soon became well-known. He was quite a gentleman, there could be no
doubt of that. He had a couple of horses and a man, and money did not
seem to be wanting with him. The neighbours soon found out all that was
to be found, which was not saying much--that he was Sir John
Brotherton’s son, and a great friend of Lord Eldred, the second son at
the Castle; and that he was actually, on his own showing, second cousin
to Mrs. Joscelyn. Had she said it the neighbourhood might have doubted;
but he said it himself; and he was constantly at the White House.
Scarcely a day elapsed that he was not there on one pretence or another,
and sometimes Lord Eldred would go with him, having his dinner there,
the gossips said, and sometimes tea, and conducting himself as if the
Joscelyns were his equals. This opened a new and exciting question,
which was discussed warmly by the different sides, each maintaining its
own view. What would the Duchess do? She had excluded the Joscelyns from
the list of county gentry when they were first married, asking, with a
contempt for blood, which was most unbecoming in the local head of
society (and the Joscelyns _had_ blood--it was the one thing that could
not be denied to them), “Why should I call upon people who have nothing
to recommend them but that their grandfathers were gentlemen?” This
leaving out of the family altogether had been very marked; when you
consider that the Selbys, who were nobodies, had cards from the Duchess
because the old Doctor was their father! Mrs. Joscelyn had not said
anything about it, but she had felt the sting all her life. And she was
not less interested than the rest of the world in the question--What
would the Duchess now do? This problem was not solved for several weeks;
but at last, just before the great ball which absorbed the whole county
in consideration of what to wear, and how to appear to the best
advantage, the village was convulsed by the appearance of the ducal
liveries. It was an October day, with frost in the air, so clear that
you could see to any distance, from one end of the dale to the other.
The Selbys, called to their windows by the roll of wheels and the jingle
of the horses’ feet and furniture, and the flood of blue and yellow in
the air, rushed to the vicarage to rouse their friends to the
seriousness of the crisis. “The Duchess is going to call,” they cried,
rushing in open-mouthed. “The Duchess _has_ called,” cried the others,
who were all grouped round a telescope which they had brought to bear on
the door of the White House. There the carriage was undoubtedly
standing, delayed an unreasonable time at the door--which both the
families felt, whatever reason they might have, showed bad taste on the
part of the Joscelyns. Then the footman, a splendid apparition all plush
and powder, was seen to make his way a second time up the narrow path,
between the two grass plots, bordered all round with chrysanthemums. The
watchers had a moral certainty that Mrs. Joscelyn was not out. Had she
denied herself to the Duchess? A thrill of sensation passed through the
minds of the observers--of mingled stupefaction and excitement. To say
“not at home” was a moral offence upon which people were hard in that
primitive community; but to have the courage to say it, was something
which overawed them. And to the Duchess! Imagination could scarcely go
further.
When Mrs. Joscelyn perceived, with a sudden rush of blood from her heart
to her head, that the honour she had been looking for all her life had
actually happened to her, she rose up precipitately and fled, throwing a
shawl over her head. This was partly fright, and partly resentment, and
partly it was a wise impulse. The family parlour and Betty in her white
apron to open the door, were not accessories which would impress the
Duchess, and Mrs. Joscelyn had not much confidence in the refinement of
her own appearance. She was not so bold a sinner, however, as to sit
still and instruct her innocent maid to say, “Not at home,” a task to
which Betty, knowing it was not true, would not have been equal. So she
went out, meeting Betty trembling with excitement, tying on her clean
apron as she came. “It’s the Duchess, missis!” Betty said, overwhelmed.
“You will say, Not at home,” said Mrs. Joscelyn breathless. “I am going
out, you see.” “Going out! Missis! and the Duchess at the door.” Betty
thought it was incredible. Mrs. Joscelyn, however, deaf to remonstrance,
though herself trembling with excitement, ran out upon the Fell side,
and enjoyed the spectacle. She was an Englishwoman, and it is not to be
supposed that the sight of the blue and yellow liveries, and the
carriage with a Duchess in it, did not touch the highest feelings in her
nature; and to have spoken to that Duchess, to have realised the full
glory of the event, would have been sweet--but it would have been
alarming too, and discretion is the better part of valour. She stood
upon the rising ground with her heart beating, and gazed at the
wonderful sight, visions rising before her of the ball, and the
invitation for Lydia which would be sure to follow, and the ball dress,
and all the excitement of so great an occasion. She breathed more freely
when the great lady drove away, and she was delivered from the fear of
being sent for, and compelled to come back by some dreadful mistake on
Betty’s part. But Betty too had risen to the occasion. She had said
trembling, but resolute, “Not at home, Sir,” to the fine
footman--arguing with herself that it was quite true that Missis wasn’t
at home, for hadn’t she seen her, with her own eyes, go out? Betty went
out too to ease her Mistress’s mind, when the incident was over,
carrying the cards in her apron. She did not like to touch them with her
hands, though she had scrubbed those hands crimson only a few minutes
before. “T’ gentleman said as Her Grace was sorry,” said Betty, her eyes
almost out of her head with staring. “T’ gentleman” was the biggest part
of the event to her; she had never in her life seen anything so grand so
near. Her ruddy cheeks were crimson, and her liberal bosom palpitated.
And Mrs. Joscelyn could not herself restrain a tremor when she took
these sacred bits of pasteboard in her hand.
The excitement about the ball, however, was not all pleasurable. The
invitation came a few days after, and at first Lydia, who had a great
spirit, altogether refused to avail herself of it. She was in the
parlour with her mother, arranging bunches of the ruddy leaves and rowan
berries which made the country gay, in the big old-fashioned china vases
which stood on the mantel-piece, and which were worth their weight in
silver, though nobody was aware of it. Lionel Brotherton had come in on
his way back from a short day’s shooting. He had brought some game,
which lay in a shallow basket on the table, the mingled colours of the
plumage harmonizing well with the warm autumnal tints of leaves and
fruit. The whole culminated in the girl’s glowing and animated
countenance as she stood by the table, twisting her garlands of leaves
and throwing them about with a freshness of gesture and energy which
only a touch of indignation could have given. She had put a cluster of
the red berries into her hair, with a few long serrated leaves, marked
with brilliant red upon the green; and thus crowned was like an
autumnal nymph, not mature enough for a Ceres, but yet warm with the
northern glow of colour and life. “Why should I go?” she was saying.
“What is it to me, mother? If the Duchess chooses to fling an invitation
at us after all these years, are you and I to seize upon it as if we
cared? I don’t care. I don’t want it. I should not like to go--Of course
I may be forced,” cried Lydia. “I may have to do it, for all the several
reasons which people always bring up; but listen, mother, this is the
truth, I should not like to go.”
“My dearest,” said her mother, joining her hands in that instinctive
movement of entreaty which was her natural attitude. Nobody could admire
Liddy as her mother did, not even the young man who sat a little apart
gazing at her, and thinking all kinds of foolish thoughts. Mrs. Joscelyn
saw in her the perfection of herself, the accomplished ideal to which
she had been striving all her life. She herself would never have had the
strength of mind to look so, and speak so--but Liddy had; and even while
she remonstrated and entreated, she approved. “My pet, that is just your
fancy. Why shouldn’t you like it? You have never been at a ball.”
“That is just the reason,” cried Lydia; “when I do go I want to enjoy
it. I want to be as good as anybody there. I want people to think as
much of me as anyone, and ask me to dance, and think my dress pretty,
and like me altogether. I won’t go anywhere unless I can be sure of
that.”
“And so you will, my darling,” Mrs. Joscelyn said. Brotherton did not
venture to speak, but he put a great deal into his eyes. Lydia indeed
did not look at him, and so could not perceive this, but perhaps she had
some notion of it all the same. Her colour increased the least in the
world, taking a glow from the red leaves in her hands and the red
berries in her hair.
“No, mother, I know how it will be. We shall come in at the end with the
Selbys, and the Armstrongs and the Pilgrims, and--oh, a great many more.
There will not be any want of companions in distress. We will all keep
together at one end of the room, and our hearts will all beat if anybody
comes near us. If it is an officer from Carlisle, or if it is Mr.
Brotherton, or still more if it should happen to be Lord Eldred. Oh my!”
cried Lydia with momentary mimicry, clasping her hands, “We shall look
at him as if we could eat him, and almost hold out our hands like the
children at school, and cry, me, me! If you think that is nice for nice
girls to have to do, mother, I don’t,” said Lydia with a sudden vivid
flush. “So I don’t want to go.”
“But that is impossible,” Brotherton cried.
“No, not at all impossible; it is just what happens, when people ask you
because they cannot help it; of course they don’t take any trouble about
you; and of course the gentlemen prefer to dance with girls they know,
and who belong to their own class, instead of seeking out poor little
Miss Selbys and Miss Armstrongs, and Miss Jos--No,” said Liddy
vehemently, “a Miss Joscelyn has never been in it, and, mother, if you
please, never will be. I don’t say,” she added, calming down, “that it
is anyone’s fault. I feel quite sure for one that you would ask me to
dance, Mr. Brotherton.”
“Do you really--think so? The time has come,” said the young man,
hurried and nervous, but with a laugh of excitement, “to set one matter
to rights. Mr. Brotherton will certainly not ask you to dance, Miss
Joscelyn. I have a right to be Cousin Lionel, and I will be so. I am not
to be defrauded of my birthright any longer. You talk of the Duchess,
but you are far more haughty than the Duchess. Take the beam out of
your own eye, Cousin Lydia, and then you will see more clearly to take
the mote out of the Duchess’s. Mrs. Joscelyn, am I not right?”
Mrs. Joscelyn looked at them both with a pleasure that almost went the
length of tears. In the sudden union which her glance from one to
another made between them, the young man and the young woman
blushed--blushed for nothing at all, for sympathy, for fellow-feeling,
and a little for pleasure. “Yes, yes, my dear,” Mrs. Joscelyn said,
“yes, yes, I think he is right; and your cousin--your cousin would make
a difference. And then, my darling, if you do not go, people will never
know that you were invited, Liddy; and that means--”
“That we are not county people; and we are not county people. We need
not keep up any pretences before--before Cousin Lionel,” said Lydia with
a blush and a smile, and a curtsey to the young man, who looked on with
a sense of enchantment. “Uncle Henry was one of them; but not we. We are
Joscelyns, however,” she cried, tossing her head upwards with a proud
movement, “and if blood means anything, that means something better than
her Grace.”
“But why do you say _if_ blood means anything, Liddy?” said her mother,
“of course it means everything, my love.”
Then Lydia looked straight at the two people before her; both so
admiring, the one more foolish than the other--and the meaning changed
in her face. She sighed; her pretty head, crowned with the glowing red
berries and brilliant leaves, drooped a little. “Because I don’t believe
it does,” she said.
Then there was an outcry, “Oh, Liddy, Liddy!” of horror and alarm from
her mother, who had borne everything else, poor soul, but who could not
bear any attack upon her last stronghold, her pride of family. It had
always been a comfort to her in all her troubles, and specially in those
social ones which her greater neighbours had made her suffer--that, to
everybody who knew, the Joscelyns were far superior even to her Grace,
who had been nobody. To hear her favourite child express this scepticism
was terrible. Even Brotherton sustained a slight shock of
disappointment. He would have preferred on the whole that Lydia should
have felt a romantic certainty of the claims of “blood;” but since it
was not so, he made a virtue out of her incredulity, and looked at her
with a smile and little nod of sympathy. Lydia, however, was wise enough
to make no answer to her mother’s exclamation of horror.
“If I went,” she said with great decision, “you would have to go too; I
will not go with anybody but you.”
“Me, Liddy?” Mrs. Joscelyn cried in alarm.
“And my father. I will go with you both, or not at all,” Lydia gave out
as her final deliverance; and then she went out of the room, carrying
the remains of her autumnal wreaths, and paying no attention to the
pathos of her mother’s protestations. Mrs. Joscelyn could do nothing but
turn to her young kinsman, and appeal to his impartial judgment.
“What should I do among all those fine people? I have not been out in
the evening nor worn a low dress (in those days ‘low dresses’ were
exacted even from old ladies by the stern fiat of fashion) since that
child was born. You must speak to her, you must speak to her, Mr.
Brotherton--I mean Lionel. Oh, yes, I want her to go; but me! and Ralph.
Ralph has never gone among them, I think he has done himself injustice;
but it is too late to change now. You must tell her it would never do.”
“But you would not like her to go with the Selbys or the
Pilgrims--people not fit to be in the same room with her. _I_ should not
like that,” young Brotherton said. And Mrs. Joscelyn’s pale countenance
coloured with pleasure to think that her child should be so determined,
and her young cousin so approving. This sudden appreciation of herself
was late, but yet it was pleasant, though also embarrassing. And after
this there were continual remonstrances and arguments, Liddy holding to
her point, her mother fighting desperately against it. As for Ralph
Joscelyn, he separated himself at once from the feminine part of his
household. “Go to what tomfoolery you like,” he said, with his usual
courtesy, “but don’t ask me; I’ve nought to do with such nonsense.” Mrs.
Joscelyn was then driven to the end of her forces. She was disturbed too
about Lydia’s ball-dress, which Joan would fain have gone to Carlisle
for and been “done with,” in her energetic way; but the mother had no
confidence in Joan’s taste. And for her part, though Joan had behaved
generously it cannot be denied that she felt her exclusion from the
splendour which ought to have belonged to her as the eldest Miss
Joscelyn, but which her husband’s position excluded her from. The other
Selbys even, who went on sufferance as the Doctor’s family, made it more
hard for Joan.
“My husband is a deal better a man than Raaf Selby will ever be,” she
said with some indignation to Brotherton, who heard the complaints on
all sides, “and nobody that knows them would ever hesitate between them.
But Heatonshaw is only a little place, and we’ve nothing at all to do
with the great folks at the Castle. Of course it is me Liddy ought to go
with; and it is a joke to think that Raaf Selby’s family should all be
going, and not me. But I will never forgive mother if she sends Liddy
with them, and does not go herself to take care of the child. Mother’s a
strange woman. She was never happy till the Duchess called, and now she
has got her desire she’ll not hear any more of it. I like consistency.
Now I don’t care a snap of my fingers for the Duchess; but if she
invited me,” said Joan, magnanimously, “I’d go.” Here she paused, but a
minute or two after resumed with great gravity. “A woman takes her
husband’s rank, whatever that may be. I am not ashamed of my husband
because he does not take her Grace’s eye.” And here Joan laughed again,
but with an uneasy laughter. She was sore on the subject, and perhaps if
she had been entrusted with the buying of the dress the result might
have been disastrous. Mrs. Joscelyn would not trust Joan, but in her own
timid person hesitated and doubted what to do, when Brotherton, the
confidant of all their troubles, came to her aid. He proposed that his
mother, who was in town (much the best place for everything of the kind;
the place where fashion reigned, and ball-dresses were much more
plentiful than blackberries), should get the dress.
“Which will be of no use,” said Lydia, sternly, “without a dress for my
mother too.” At this Mrs. Joscelyn was ready to cry, not knowing what
else to do. Her hands stole towards each other with the nervous gesture
of old, when Brotherton again whispered in her ear a message of hope.
“My mother is coming--leave it to me,” he said. She had almost thrown
her arms round his neck in her intense relief and thankfulness.
And this was how it was that Lydia Joscelyn made such a sensation at the
ball. Had she gone with the Selbys, all would have happened precisely as
she predicted. She would have stood among them, in a white gown bought
at Carlisle, at the bottom of the room, surrounded by a little crowd of
other obscure young ladies, left out in the cold, tremulously eager to
secure partners, and taken notice of by nobody. There she would have
stayed, pretending to be amused, till old Mrs. Selby gave the signal,
and gathered her little flock around her, tired with standing, sick with
waiting, cross, and humiliated and mortified, consoled only by the
thought that the ball at the Castle would be a thing to talk of long
after people had forgotten to ask, “Did you dance much?” But for Lydia
was reserved a more splendid fate. She had a dress which everybody at
the White House thought would have been fit for a princess, and she went
with Lady Brotherton, with whom she stayed at the Wyburgh Hotel
afterwards, and whose presence introduced her into the selectest circle,
and the company of all the first people. Lady Althea went so far as to
admire her dress, and Lord Eldred danced with her so often that his
mother was alarmed, but yet could not do anything but smile upon the
stranger whom Lady Brotherton patronised and introduced as “my young
cousin.” Lady Brotherton was a fanciful and romantic woman, and she
seized at once upon the idea that Lydia was the object of a romantic
attachment on the part of Lord Eldred. Perhaps had she known that her
own son was in any danger from the same quarter, it might have checked
her enthusiasm. But Lionel did not feel bound in honour to give her any
information on that point. She was seized with an enthusiastic
friendship for Liddy before they had been half an hour together, and as
she was a graceful, sentimental woman, with very tender and engaging
manners, Lydia was not wanting in her response. Then Sir John, who was
much older than his wife, added his contribution to the rising warmth of
the relationship by vowing continually that this was the Cousin Lydia of
his youth over again. The fact was that he had seen his cousin Lydia
only once or twice in her youth, but he was old enough to have forgotten
that, and nobody knew it was a mistake. So all things concurred in the
growth of this sudden devotion, and before Lydia returned to her mother
she was invited to accompany the Brothertons abroad, and had become, so
to speak, one of the family.
“I will come and see your mother,” Lady Brotherton said, “and I will
take no denial;” while Sir John patted her on the shoulder, and told her
with his toothless jaws, that she was “sh’image of” her mother. Lydia
came home with her head turned, but faithful, among all these new
crotchets of other people’s, to her own.
“You are not to say no, mother dear; but I know you will never do that.
You are to put up with the loneliness, and manage without me the best
you can; for I am going to find Harry,” Lydia cried. This new piece of
excitement obliterated the ball, which was quite an inferior event. Mrs.
Joscelyn cried, and clung to her child in a kind of despair, yet hope.
“Oh, my darling, what shall I do without you? and how are you to find
him?” she said; then wept and wrung her hands. “And how am I to make
sure that your new friends will be kind to you? Oh, yes, they are kind
now; but it is different now and when you have nobody else; and what, oh
what, if you were unhappy, my pet, when you were away.”
“Well,” said Lydia, who was a young person of much strength of mind,
“even in that case there could be nothing desperate about it, for I
should come back. They could not lock me up in my room and feed me on
bread and water. If I was not happy I should come home.”
“But oh, my pet, think,” cried Mrs. Joscelyn, with a fresh outbreak,
“if you should be left like that to travel alone.”
“And why not?” said Liddy. “Nobody would meddle with me if I behaved
myself; and I hope I should always behave myself. But they will not be
unkind to me. Do you think there is anything unkind about--Cousin
Lionel.” She pronounced his name always with a little hesitation, which,
to the foolish young man himself, made it very sweet.
“No, no, Liddy; but then he is only a man--only a young man, and admires
you. His mother will not be like that. A lady is different; a lady is
not carried away.”
“A lady is--much more easily satisfied,” said Liddy. “She took to me in
a moment, mother. They said they never saw her take so quickly to
anyone; and Sir John says I am like you.”
“Like me! I don’t think he ever saw me.”
“Never mind, never mind, mother; they are not a den of robbers. They
cannot do me any harm. And I shall find Harry,” Lydia said.