Produced by Sandra Laythorpe. HTML version by Al Haines.
LADY HESTER;
OR,
URSULA'S NARRATIVE.
by
CHARLOTTE M. YONGE
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I. SAULT ST. PIERRE
CHAPTER II. TREVORSHAM
CHAPTER III. THE PEERAGE CASE
CHAPTER IV. SKIMPING'S FARM
CHAPTER V. SPINNEY LAWN
CHAPTER VI. THE WHITE DOE'S WARNING
CHAPTER VII. HUNTING
CHAPTER VIII. DUCK SHOOTING
CHAPTER IX. TREVOR'S LEGACY
CHAPTER I.
SAULT ST. PIERRE.
I write this by desire of my brothers and sisters, that if any reports
of our strange family history should come down to after generations the
thing may be properly understood.
The old times at Trevorsham seem to me so remote, that I can hardly
believe that we are the same who were so happy then. Nay, Jaquetta
laughs, and declares that it is not possible to be happier than we have
been since, and Fulk would have me remember that all was not always
smooth even in those days.
Perhaps not--for him, at least, dear fellow, in those latter times; but
when I think of the old home, the worst troubles that rise before me
are those of the back-board and the stocks, French in the school-room,
and Miss Simmonds' "Lady Ursula, think of your position!"
And as to Jaquetta, she was born under a more benignant star. Nobody
could have put a back-board on her any more than on a kitten.
Our mother had died (oh! how happily for herself!) when Jaquetta was a
baby, and Miss Simmonds most carefully ruled not only over us, but over
Adela Brainerd, my father's ward, who was brought up with us because
she had no other relation in the world.
Besides, my father wished her to marry one of my brothers. It would
have done very well for either Torwood or Bertram, but unluckily, as it
seemed, neither of them could take to the notion. She was a dear
little thing, to be sure, and we were all very fond of her; but, as
Bertram said, it would have been like marrying Jaquetta, and Torwood
had other views, to which my father would not then listen.
Then Bertram's regiment was ordered to Canada, and that was the real
cause of it all, though we did not know it till long after.
Bertram was starting out on a sporting expedition with a Canadian
gentleman, when about ten miles from Montreal they halted at a farm
with a good well-built house, named Sault St. Pierre, all looking
prosperous and comfortable, and a young farmer, American in his
ways--free-spoken, familiar, and blunt--but very kindly and friendly,
was at work there with some French-Canadian labourers.
Bertram's friend knew him and often halted there on hunting
expeditions, so they went into the house--very nicely furnished, a
pretty parlour with muslin curtains, a piano, and everything pleasant;
and Joel Lea called his wife, a handsome, fair young woman. Bertram
says from the first she put him in mind of some one, and he was trying
to make out who it could be. Then came the wife's mother, a neat
little delicate, bent woman, with dark eyes, that looked, Bertram said,
as if they had had some great fright and never recovered it. They
called her Mrs. Dayman.
She was silent at first, and only helped her daughter and the maid to
get the dinner, and an excellent dinner it was; but she kept on looking
at Bertram, and she quite started when she heard him called Mr. Trevor.
When they were just rising up, and going to take leave, she came up to
him in a frightened agitated manner, as if she could not help it, and
said--
"Sir, you are so like a gentleman I once knew. Was any relation of
yours ever in Canada?"
"My father was in Canada," answered Bertram.
"Oh no," she said then, very much affected, "the Captain Trevor I knew
was killed in the Lake Campaign in 1814. It must be a mistake, yet you
put me in mind of him so strangely."
Then Bertram protested that she must mean my father, for that he had
been a captain in the --th, and had been stationed at York (as Toronto
was then called), but was badly wounded in repulsing the American
attack on the Lakes in 1814.
"Not dead?" she asked, with her cheeks getting pale, and a sort of
excitement about her, that made Bertram wonder, at the moment, if there
could have been any old attachment between them, and he explained how
my father was shipped off from England between life and death; and how,
when he recovered, he found his uncle dying, and the title and property
coming to him.
"And he married!" she said, with a bewildered look; and Bertram told
her that he had married Lady Mary Lupton--as his uncle and father had
wished--and how we four were their children. I can fancy how kindly
and tenderly Bertram would speak when he saw that she was anxious and
pained; and she took hold of his hand and held him, and when he said
something of mentioning that he had seen her, she cried out with a sort
of terror, "Oh no, no, Mr. Trevor, I beg you will not. Let him think
me dead, as I thought him." And then she drew down Bertram's tall head
to her, and fairly kissed his forehead, adding, "I could not help it,
sir; an old woman's kiss will do you no harm!"
Then he went away. He never did tell us of the meeting till long
after. He was not a great letter writer, and, besides, he thought my
father might not wish to have the flirtations of his youth brought up
against him. So we little knew!
But it seems that the daughter and son-in-law were just as much amazed
as Bertram, and when he was gone, and the poor old lady sank into her
chair and burst out crying, and as they came and asked who or what this
was, she sobbed out, "Your brother Hester! Oh! so like him--my
husband!" or something to that effect, as unawares. She wanted to take
it back again, but of course Hester would not let her, and made her
tell the whole.
It seems that her name was Faith Le Blanc; she was half English, half
French-Canadian, and lived in a village in a very unsettled part, where
Captain Trevor used to come to hunt, and where he made love to her, and
ended by marrying her--with the knowledge of her family and his brother
officers, but not of his family--just before he was ordered to the Lake
frontier. The war had stirred up the Indians to acts of violence they
had not committed for many years, and a tribe of them came down on the
village, plundering, burning, killing, and torturing those whom they
had known in friendly intercourse.
Faith Le Blanc had once given some milk to a papoose upon its mother's
back, and perhaps for this reason she was spared, but everyone
belonging to her was, she believed, destroyed, and she was carried away
by the tribe, who wanted to make her one of themselves; and she knew
that if she offended them, such horrors as she had seen practised on
others would come on her.
However, they had gone to another resort of theirs, where there was a
young hunter who often visited them, and was on friendly terms. When
he found that there was a white woman living as a captive among them,
he spared no effort to rescue her. Both he and she were often in
exceeding danger; but he contrived her escape at last, and brought her
through the woods to a place of safety, and there her child was born.
It was over the American frontier, and it was long before she could
write to her husband. She never knew what became of her letter, but
the hunter friend, Piers Dayman, showed her an American paper which
mentioned Captain Trevor among the officers killed in their attack.
Dayman was devoted to her, and insisted on marrying her, and bringing
up her daughter as his own. I fancy she was a woman of gentle passive
temper, and had been crushed and terrified by all she had gone through,
so as to have little instinct left but that of clinging to the
protector who had taken her up when she had lost everything else; and
she married him. Nor did Hester guess till that very day that Piers
Dayman was not her father!
There were other children, sons who have given themselves to hunting
and trapping in the Hudson's Bay Company's territory; but Hester
remained the only daughter, and they educated her well, sending her to
a convent at Montreal, where she learnt a good many accomplishments.
They were not Roman Catholics; but it was the only way of getting an
education.
Dayman must have been a warm-hearted, tenderly affectionate person.
Hester loved him very much. But he had lived a wild sportsman's life,
and never was happy at rest. They changed home often; and at last he
was snowed up and frozen to death, with one of his boys, on a bear
hunting expedition.
Not very long after, Hester married this sturdy American, Joel Lea, who
had bought some land on the Canadian side of the border, and her mother
came home to live with them. They had been married four or five years,
but none of their children had lived.
So it was when the discovery came upon poor old Mrs. Dayman (I do not
know what else to call her), that Fulk Torwood Trevor, the husband of
her youth, was not dead, but was Earl of Trevorsham; married, and the
father of four children in England.
Poor old thing! She would have buried her secret to the last, as much
in pity and love to him as in shame and grief for herself; and
consideration, too, for the sons, for whom the discovery was only less
bad than for us, as they had less to lose. Hester herself hardly fully
understood what it all involved, and it only gradually grew on her.
That winter her mother fell ill, and Mr. Lea felt it right that the
small property she had had for her life should be properly secured to
her sons, according to the division their father had intended. So a
lawyer was brought from Montreal and her will was made. Thus another
person knew about it, and he was much struck, and explained to Hester
that she was really a lady of rank, and probably the only child of her
father who had any legal claim to his estates. Lea, with a good deal
of the old American Republican temper, would not be stirred up. He
despised lords and ladies, and would none of it; but the lawyer held
that it would be doing wrong not to preserve the record. Hester had
grown excited, and seconded him; and one day, when Lea was out, the
lawyer brought a magistrate to take Mrs. Dayman's affidavit as to all
her past history--marriage witnesses and all. She was a good deal
overcome and agitated, and quite implored Hester never to use the
knowledge against her father; but she must have been always a passive,
docile being, and they made her tell all that was wanted, and sign her
deposition, as she had signed her will, as Faith Trevor, commonly known
as Faith Dayman.
She did not live many days after. It was on the 3rd of February, 1836,
that she died; and in the course of the summer Hester had a son, who
throve as none of her babies had done.
Then she lay and brooded over him and the rights she fancied he was
deprived of, till she worked herself up to a strong and fixed purpose,
and insisted upon making all known to her father. Now that her mother
was gone she persuaded herself that he had been a cruel, faithless
tyrant, who had wilfully deserted his young wife.
Joel Lea would not listen to her. Why should she wish to make his son
a good-for-nothing English lord? That was his view. Nothing but
misery, distress, and temptation could come of not letting things
alone. He held to that, and there were no means forthcoming either of
coming to England to present herself. The family were well to do, but
had no ready money to lay out on a passage across the Atlantic. Nor
would Hester wait. She had persuaded herself that a letter would be
suppressed, even if she had known how to address it; but to claim her
son's rights, and make an earl of him, had become her fixed idea, and
she began laying aside every farthing in her power.
In this she was encouraged, not by the lawyer who had made the
will--and who, considering that poor Faith's witnesses had been
destroyed, and her certificate and her wedding ring taken from her by
the Indians, thought that the marriage could not be substantiated--but
by a clever young clerk, who had managed to find out the state of
things; a man named Perrault, who used to come to the farm, always when
Lea was out, and talk her into a further state of excitement about her
child's expectations, and the injuries she was suffering. It was her
one idea. She says she really believes she should have gone mad if the
saving had not occupied her; and a very dreary life poor Joel must have
had whilst she was scraping together the passage-money. He still
steadily and sternly disapproved the whole, and when at two years' end
she had put together enough to bring her and her boy home, and maintain
them there for a few weeks, he still refused to go with her. The last
thing he said was, "Remember, Hester, what was the price of all the
kingdoms of the world! Thou wilt have it, then! Would that I could
say, my blessing go with thee." And he took his child, and held him
long in his arms, and never spoke one word over him but, "My poor boy!"