Agreeably to the usual custom in great houses, as soon as I arrived
at Compton I was conducted to my room, to adjust my toilet, or
compose my spirits by solitude:--it wanted an hour to dinner. I had
not, however, been thus left ten minutes, before the door opened,
and Trevanion himself, (as I would fain still call him) stood before
me. Most cordial were his greeting and welcome; and, seating himself
by my side, he continued to converse, in his peculiar way--bluntly
eloquent, and carelessly learned--till the half hour bell rang. He
talked on Australia, the Wakefield system--cattle--books, his trouble
in arranging his library--his schemes for improving his property,
and embellishing his grounds--his delight to find my father look so
well--his determination to see a great deal of him, whether his old
college friend would or no. He talked, in short, of everything except
politics, and his own past career--showing only his soreness in that
silence. But (independently of the mere work of time,) he looked yet
more worn and jaded in his leisure than he had done in the full tide
of business; and his former abrupt quickness of manner now seemed to
partake of feverish excitement. I hoped that my father _would_ see much
of him, for I felt that the weary mind wanted soothing.
Just as the second bell rang, I entered the drawing-room. There were
at least twenty guests present--each guest, no doubt, some planet of
fashion or fame, with satellites of its own. But I saw only two forms
distinctly--first, Lord Castleton, conspicuous with star and garter,
somewhat ampler and portlier in proportions, and with a frank dash of
gray in the silky waves of his hair, but still as pre-eminent as ever
for that beauty--the charm of which depends less than any other upon
youth--arising, as it does, from a felicitous combination of bearing
and manner, and that exquisite suavity of expression which steals
into the heart, and pleases so much that it becomes a satisfaction to
admire! Of Lord Castleton, indeed, it might be said, as of Alcibiades,
'that he was beautiful at every age.' I felt my breath come thick, and
a mist passed before my eyes, as Lord Castleton led me through the
crowd, and the radiant vision of Fanny Trevanion, how altered--and how
dazzling!--burst upon me.
I felt the light touch of that hand of snow; but no guilty thrill shot
through my veins. I heard the voice, musical as ever--lower than it was
once, and more subdued in its key, but steadfast and untremulous--it
was no longer the voice that made "my soul plant itself in the
ears."[10] The event was over, and I knew that the dream had fled from
the waking world for ever.
"Another old friend!" as Lady Ulverstone came forth from a little group
of children, leading one fine boy of nine years old, while one, two or
three years younger, clung to her gown. "Another old friend!--and,"
added Lady Ulverstone, after the first kind greetings, "two new ones,
when the old are gone." The slight melancholy left the voice, as, after
presenting to me the little viscount, she drew forward the more bashful
Lord Albert, who indeed had something of his grandsire's and namesake's
look of refined intelligence in his brow and eyes.
The watchful tact of Lord Castleton was quick in terminating whatever
embarrassment might belong to these introductions, as, leaning
lightly on my arm, he drew me forward, and presented me to the guests
more immediately in our neighbourhood, who seemed by their earnest
cordiality to have been already prepared for the introduction.
Dinner was now announced, and I welcomed that sense of relief and
segregation with which one settles into one's own "particular" chair at
your large miscellaneous entertainments.
I stayed three days at that house. How truly had Trevanion said that
Fanny would make "an excellent great lady." What perfect harmony
between her manners and her position; just retaining enough of the
girl's seductive gaiety and bewitching desire to please, to soften the
new dignity of bearing she had unconsciously assumed--less, after all,
as great lady than as wife and mother: with a fine breeding, perhaps
a little languid and artificial, as compared with her lord's--which
sprang, fresh and healthful, wholly from nature--but still so void of
all the chill of condescension, or the subtle impertinence that belongs
to that order of the inferior _noblesse_, which boasts the name of
"exclusives;" with what grace, void of prudery, she took the adulation
of the flutterers, turning from them to her children, or escaping
lightly to Lord Castleton, with an ease that drew round her at once the
protection of hearth and home.
And certainly Lady Castleton was more incontestably beautiful than
Fanny Trevanion had been.
All this I acknowledged, not with a sigh and a pang, but with a
pure feeling of pride and delight. I might have loved madly and
presumptuously, as boys will do; but I had loved worthily;--the
love left no blush on my manhood; and Fanny's very happiness was my
perfect and total cure of every wound in my heart not quite scarred
over before. Had she been discontented, sorrowful, without joy in the
ties she had formed, there might have been more danger that I should
brood over the past, and regret the loss of its idol. Here there
was none. And the very improvement in her beauty had so altered its
character--_so_ altered--that Fanny Trevanion and Lady Castleton seemed
two persons. And, thus observing and listening to her, I could now
dispassionately perceive such differences in our nature as seemed to
justify Trevanion's assertion, which once struck me as so monstrous,
"that we should not have been happy had fate permitted our union."
Pure-hearted and simple though she remained in the artificial world,
still that world was her element; its interests occupied her; its talk,
though just chastened from scandal, flowed from her lips. To borrow the
words of a man who was himself a courtier, and one so distinguished
that he could afford to sneer at Chesterfield,[11] "_She_ had the
routine of that style of conversation which is a sort of gold leaf,
that is a great embellishment where it is joined to anything else." I
will not add, "but makes a very poor figure by itself,"--for _that_
Lady Castleton's conversation certainly did not do--perhaps, indeed,
because it was not "by itself"--and the gold leaf was all the better
for being thin, since it could not cover even the surface of the sweet
and amiable nature over which it was spread. Still, this was not the
mind in which now, in maturer experience, I would seek to find sympathy
with manly action, or companionship in the charms of intellectual
leisure.
There was about this beautiful favourite of nature, and fortune a
certain helplessness, which had even its grace in that high station,
and which perhaps tended to insure her domestic peace, for it served
to attach her to those who had won influence over her, and was happily
accompanied by a most affectionate disposition. But still, if less
favoured by circumstances, less sheltered from every wind that could
visit her too roughly--if, as the wife of a man of inferior rank, she
had failed of that high seat and silken canopy reserved for the spoiled
darlings of fortune--that helplessness might have become querulous. I
thought of poor Ellen Bolding and her silken shoes. Fanny Trevanion
seemed to have come into the world with silk shoes--not to walk where
there was a stone or a briar! I heard something, in the gossip of
those around, that confirmed this view of Lady Castleton's character,
while it deepened my admiration of her lord, and showed me how wise
had been her choice, and how resolutely he had prepared himself to
vindicate his own. One evening, as I was sitting a little apart from
the rest, with two men of the London world, to whose talk--for it ran
upon the _on-dits_ and anecdotes of a region long strange to me--I
was a silent but amused listener; one of the two said--"Well, I don't
know anywhere a more excellent creature than Lady Castleton; so fond
of her children--and her tone to Castleton so exactly what it ought
to be--so affectionate, and yet, as it were, respectful. And the more
credit to her, if, as they say, she was not in love with him when she
married, (to be sure, handsome as he is, he is twice her age!) And
no woman could have been more flattered and courted by Lotharios and
lady-killers than Lady Castleton has been. I confess, to my shame,
that Castleton's luck puzzles me, for it is rather an exception to my
general experience."
"My dear * * *," said the other, who was one of those wise men of
pleasure, who occasionally startle us into wondering, how they come
to be so clever, and yet rest contented with mere drawing-room
celebrity--men who seem always idle, yet appear to have read
everything; always indifferent to what passes before them, yet who know
the characters and divine the secrets of everybody--"my dear * * *,"
said the gentleman, "you would not be puzzled if you had studied Lord
Castleton, instead of her ladyship. Of all the conquests ever made by
Sedley Beaudesert, when the two fairest dames of the Faubourg are said
to have fought for his smiles in the _Bois de Boulogne_--no conquest
ever cost him such pains, or so tasked his knowledge of women, as that
of his wife after marriage! He was not satisfied with her hand, he was
resolved to have her whole heart, 'one entire and perfect chrysolite;'
and he has succeeded! Never was husband so watchful, and so little
jealous--never one who confided so generously in all that was best in
his wife, yet was so alert in protecting and guarding her wherever
she was weakest! When, in the second year of marriage, that dangerous
German Prince Von Leibenfels attached himself so perseveringly to Lady
Castleton, and the scandal-mongers pricked up their ears in hopes of
a victim, I watched Castleton with as much interest as if I had been
looking over Deschappelles playing at chess. You never saw anything
so masterly: he pitted himself against his highness with the cool
confidence, not of a blind spouse, but a fortunate rival. He surpassed
him in the delicacy of his attentions, he outshone him by his careless
magnificence. Leibenfels had the impertinence to send Lady Castleton
a bouquet of some rare flowers just in fashion. Castleton, an hour
before, had filled her whole balcony with the same costly exotics, as
if they were too common for nosegays, and only just worthy to bloom for
her a day. Young and really accomplished as Leibenfels is, Castleton
eclipsed him by his grace, and fooled him with his wit: he laid little
plots to turn his mustache and guitar into ridicule; he seduced him
into a hunt with the buckhounds, (though Castleton himself had not
hunted before, since he was thirty,) and drew him, spluttering German
oaths, out of the slough of a ditch; he made him the laughter of the
clubs; he put him fairly out of fashion--and all with such suavity and
politeness, and bland sense of superiority, that it was the finest
piece of high comedy you ever beheld. The poor prince, who had been
coxcomb enough to lay a bet with a Frenchman as to his success with
the English in general, and Lady Castleton in particular, went away
with a face as long as Don Quixote's. If you had but seen him at S----
House, the night before he took leave of the island, and his comical
grimace when Castleton offered him a pinch of the Beaudesert mixture!
No! the fact is, that Castleton made it the object of his existence,
the masterpiece of his art, to secure to himself a happy home, and the
entire possession of his wife's heart. The first two or three years, I
fear, cost him more trouble than any other man ever took, with his own
wife at least--but he may now rest in peace; Lady Castleton is won, and
for ever."
As my gentleman ceased, Lord Castleton's noble head rose above the
group standing round him; and I saw Lady Castleton turn with a look
of well-bred fatigue from a handsome young fop, who had affected to
lower his voice while he spoke to her, and, encountering the eyes of
her husband, the look changed at once into one of such sweet smiling
affection, such frank unmistakeable wife-like pride, that it seemed a
response to the assertion--"Lady Castleton is won, and for ever."
Yes, that story increased my admiration for Lord Castleton: it showed
me with what forethought and earnest sense of responsibility he had
undertaken the charge of a life, the guidance of a character yet
undeveloped; it lastingly acquitted him of the levity that had been
attributed to Sedley Beaudesert. But I felt more than ever contented
that the task had devolved on one whose temper and experience had so
fitted him to discharge it. That German prince made me tremble from
sympathy with the husband, and in a sort of relative shudder for
myself! Had that episode happened to me, I could never have drawn "high
comedy" from it!--I could never have so happily closed the fifth act
with a pinch of the Beaudesert mixture! No, no; to my homely sense of
man's life and employment, there was nothing alluring in the prospect
of watching over the golden tree in the garden, with a "woe to the
Argus, if Mercury once lull him to sleep!" Wife of mine shall need no
watching save in sickness and sorrow! Thank Heaven, that my way of life
does not lead through the roseate thoroughfares, beset with German
princes laying bets for my perdition, and fine gentlemen admiring the
skill with which I play at chess for so terrible a stake! To each rank
and each temper, its own laws. I acknowledge that Fanny is an excellent
marchioness, and Lord Castleton an incomparable marquis. But, Blanche!
if I can win thy true simple heart, I trust I shall begin at the fifth
act of high comedy, and say at the altar--
"Once won, won for ever!"