CUNIGUNDA’S SUCCESS.
For a wicked person, Cunigunda was, or rather had been, unusually happy.
She had succeeded in most of her wishes, and her life had been an
incessant series of triumphs. Her deepest feeling, or rather greatest
passion, had been excited by the man she succeeded in marrying, and yet
from the moment of that marriage began to date the decline of her
prosperity. She was not satisfied with the depth of his love, for she
began gradually to perceive that she could not inspire the same
devotion, the all-absorbing, reverential adoration he had evinced for
his affianced Dorina.
Then she flirted, and endeavoured to excite his jealousy, little
understanding the high tone of his mind, but judging him by the standard
of her own. She was first surprised, then alarmed to see the feeling of
disgust her efforts produced. She soon became tired of the unsuccessful
game she was playing, and strove to throw herself heartily into every
kind of dissipation and excitement. A triumphant season at Rome, and
then at Paris, was succeeded by one in London. At the end of the last,
having heard of the delights of English country-house society, she
thought a few months passed at the place to which she had succeeded
after the death of her cousin Dorina, might be an agreeable change. She
therefore made a great merit of going there, in order to gratify her
husband’s wishes, who, since their arrival in England, had passed
several weeks there, since which time he had often expressed a wish that
she would live at it, and restore the beauty of the somewhat ruinous
house and place.
I afterwards heard that Carlo was at that time the chief among her
numerous adorers. He had come to London after I had been taken ill, and
he, with a few other men and two ladies in high society, but with rather
damaged reputation, went to Castle Hall towards the end of August.
Some modern furniture had been sent, and a few necessary repairs
suggested by Count Rossi had been made, and the gay party were enchanted
with the grand old house, its fine terraced gardens and glowing
parterres. The extensive view from the battlements of the old ruined
castle above was so thoroughly English in its rich loveliness that its
novelty surprised Cunigunda, and seemed to give her that great
requirement of a _blasé_ distraction-seeker, or (what is usually
miscalled pleasure-seeker) a new sensation. Neighbours of various kinds
flocked in to see and become acquainted with the celebrated beauty; and
as there was in those days a large and gay neighbourhood, there was no
end of morning and evening parties, besides some regular balls, which
were given in the larger houses, or at the town of Darlingford, ten
miles off.
I think I said there was a fine old half-ruined banqueting-hall, which
joined the present house--an Elizabethan structure, with the lower
buildings of the old castle. Part of this castle had been destroyed in
the various wars from the time of the Roses down to the period when it
was regularly besieged by Cromwell. Numerous dinners and some good
private theatricals had been given at Castle Hall to the neighbours; but
the party staying in the house, as well as the neighbours, declared that
the beautiful Countess ought to give a ball.
“Yes, certainly, and let it be a fancy ball, or, better still, a
masquerade,” said the lovely Countess; “but where?”
The long gallery, with its beautifully-carved ceiling, which extends
for a hundred feet above the western wing of the house, would do very
well for theatricals, but it would be impossible to have a good valse in
a room not more than twenty-five feet wide, and the large wainscoted
dining-room, though large enough, would be wanted for supper. The
tapestried drawing-room was both lofty and spacious, but it was so full
of old china and _pietra-dura_ cabinets and curiosities, collected
during the last century, since the family had been connected with Italy,
that there was no room for dancing.
“Why not repair that splendid old banqueting-hall?” said Carlo, one
evening after dinner. “A good floor might soon be put in, and the
ceiling and windows mended. It is quite a sin to leave it in that
dilapidated state. Did you ever look at the splendid old oak carving on
the gallery at the farther end, and the curious little corner-room or
oriel at one side with a most elaborate canopy?” he inquired of
Cunigunda.
“No, for I thought it so very dismal and melancholy that I only just
peeped in at the door.”
“Come, then, let us go and inspect it now; let us take lights and
torches; we shall see it as well or better than by day, for some of
those fine old Gothic windows seem to have been boarded up.”
Lights were then called for, and the merry party, each taking a couple
of candles, declared they would all go and inspect the old hall.
“But I scarcely know the way,” said Cunigunda. “I only looked into the
place through a kind of window in the wall of an old room beyond the
library, a horrible kind of stone hall called the dead-room, and I don’t
know that there is any door that leads into it.”
“There is from the outside, I know,” said Carlo; “for, as I once climbed
up the steepest side of the Castle hill, I came upon it--a fine arched
doorway, with a crossbar over it. This I knocked in, and I then saw
there was another arched doorway near the window you speak of, looking
into that dead-room. Moreover, I am sure the old housekeeper has the key
of that, and knows how to get in, for she was very angry, I saw, when I
told her I had been in it. She declared it was not safe, and nobody had
ventured under that old roof for a century or more.”
“Let us have her in, and make the dear old lady show us the way,” said
one of the ladies.