LODORE.
BY THE
AUTHOR OF "FRANKENSTEIN."
In the turmoil of our lives.
Men are like politic states, or troubled seas,
Tossed up and down with several storms and tempests,
Change and variety of wrecks and fortunes;
Till, labouring to the havens of our homes,
We struggle for the calm that crowns our ends.
FORD.
IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. I.
LONDON:
RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET
(SUCCESSOR TO HENRY COLBURN.)
1835.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XV
CHAPTER XVI
CHAPTER XVII
CHAPTER XVIII
LODORE
CHAPTER I
Absent or dead, still let a friend be dear,
A sigh the absent claims, the dead a tear.
POPE.
In the flattest and least agreeable part of the county of Essex, about
five miles from the sea, is situated a village or small town, which may
be known in these pages by the name of Longfield. Longfield is distant
eight miles from any market town, but the simple inhabitants, limiting
their desires to their means of satisfying them, are scarcely aware of
the kind of desert in which they are placed. Although only fifty miles
from London, few among them have ever seen the metropolis. Some claim
that distinction from having visited cousins in Lothbury and viewed the
lions in the tower. There is a mansion belonging to a wealthy nobleman
within four miles, never inhabited, except when a parliamentary election
is going forward. No one of any pretension to consequence resided in
this secluded nook, except the honourable Mrs. Elizabeth Fitzhenry; she
ought to have been the shining star of the place, and she was only its
better angel. Benevolent, gentle, and unassuming, this fair sprig of
nobility had lived from youth to age in the abode of her forefathers,
making a part of this busy world, only through the kindliness of her
disposition, and her constant affection for one who was far away.
The mansion of the Fitzhenry family, which looked upon the village
green, was wholly incommensurate to our humblest ideas of what belongs
to nobility; yet it stood in solitary splendour, the Great House of
Longfield. From time immemorial, its possessors had been the magnates of
the village; half of it belonged to them, and the whole voted according
to their wishes. Cut off from the rest of the world, they claimed here a
consideration and a deference, which, with the moderate income of
fifteen hundred a-year, they would have vainly sought elsewhere.
There was a family tradition, that a Fitzhenry had sat in parliament;
but the time arrived, when they were to rise to greater distinction. The
father of the lady, whose name has been already introduced, enjoyed all
the privileges attendant on being an only child. Extraordinary efforts
were made for his education. He was placed with a clergyman near
Harwich, and imbibed in that neighbourhood so passionate a love for the
sea, that, though tardily and with regret, his parents at last permitted
him to pursue a naval career. He became a brave, a clever, and a lucky
officer. In a contested election, his father was the means of insuring
the success of the government candidate, and the promotion of his son
followed. Those were the glorious days of the English navy, towards the
close of the American war; and when that war terminated, and the
admiral, now advanced considerably beyond middle life, returned to the
Sabine farm, of which he had, by course of descent, become proprietor,
he returned adorned with the rank of a peer of the realm, and with
sufficient wealth to support respectably the dignity of the baronial
title.
Yet an obscure fate pursued the house of Fitzhenry, even in its ennobled
condition. The new lord was proud of his elevation, as a merited reward;
but next to the deck of his ship, he loved the tranquil precincts of his
paternal mansion, and here he spent his latter days in peace. Midway in
life, he had married the daughter of the rector of Longfield. Various
fates had attended the offspring of this union; several died, and at the
time of his being created a peer, Lord Lodore found himself a widower, with two
children. Elizabeth, who had been born twelve years before, and Henry,
whose recent birth had cost the life of his hapless and lamented mother.
But those days were long since passed away; and the first Lord Lodore, with
most of his generation, was gathered to his ancestors. To the new-sprung
race that filled up the vacant ranks, his daughter Elizabeth appeared a
somewhat ancient but most amiable maiden, whose gentle melancholy was
not (according to innumerable precedents in the traditions regarding
unmarried ladies) attributed to an ill-fated attachment, but to the
disasters that had visited her house, and still clouded the fortunes of
her family. What these misfortunes originated from, or even in what they
consisted, was not exactly known; especially at Longfield, whose
inhabitants were no adepts in the gossip of the metropolis. It was
believed that Mrs. Elizabeth's brother still lived; that some very
strange circumstances had attended his career in life, was known; but
conjecture fell lame when it tried to proceed beyond these simple facts:
it was whispered, as a wonder and a secret, that though Lord Lodore was
far away, no one knew where, his lady (as the Morning Post testified in
its lists of fashionable arrivals and fashionable parties) was a
frequent visitor to London. Once or twice the bolder gossips, male or
female, had resolved to sound (as they called it) Mrs. Elizabeth on the
subject. But the fair spinster, though innoffensive to a proverb, and
gentle beyond the wont of her gentle sex, was yet gifted with a certain
dignity of manner, and a quiet reserve, that checked these good people
at their very outset.
Henry Fitzhenry was spoken of by a few of the last generation, as having
been a fine, bold, handsome boy--generous, proud, and daring; he was
remembered, when as a youth he departed for the continent, as riding
fearlessly the best hunter in the field, and attracting the admiration
of the village maidens at church by his tall elegant figure and dark
eyes; or, when he chanced to accost them, by a nameless fascination of
manner, joined to a voice whose thrilling silver tones stirred the
listener's heart unaware. He left them like a dream, nor appeared again
till after his father's death, when he paid his sister a brief visit.
There was then something singularly grave and abstracted about him. When
he rode, it was not among the hunters, though it was soft February
weather, but in the solitary lanes, or with lightning speed over the
moors, when the sun was setting and shadows gathered round the
landscape.
Again, some years after, he had appeared among them. He was then married,
and Lady Lodore accompanied him. They stayed but three days. There was
something of fiction in the way in which the appearance of the lady was
recorded. An angel bright with celestial hues, breathing heaven, and
spreading a halo of calm and light around, as it winged swift way amidst
the dusky children of earth: such ideas seemed to appertain to the
beautiful apparition, remembered as Lord Lodore's wife. She was so
young, that time played with her as a favourite child; so etherial in
look, that the language of flowers could alone express the delicate
fairness of her skin, or the tints that sat upon her cheek: so light in
motion, and so graceful. To talk of eye or lip, of height or form, or
even of the colour of her hair, the villagers could not, for they had
been dazzled by an assemblage of charms before undreamt of by them. Her
voice won adoration, and her smile was as the sudden withdrawing of a
curtain displaying paradise upon earth. Her lord's tall, manly figure,
was recollected but as a back-ground--a fitting one--and that was all
they would allow to him--for this resplendent image. Nor was it
remembered that any excessive attachment was exhibited between them. She
had appeared indeed but as a vision--a creature from another sphere,
hastily gazing on an unknown world, and lost before they could mark more
than that void came again, and she was gone.
Since that time, Lord Lodore had been lost to Longfield. Some few months
after Mrs. Elizabeth visited London on occasion of a christening, and then
after a long interval, it was observed, that she never mentioned her
brother, and that the name of his wife acted as a spell, to bring an
expression of pain over her sedate features. Much talk circulated, and
many blundering rumours went their course through the village, and then
faded like smoke in the clear air. Some mystery there was--Lodore was
gone--his place vacant: he lived; yet his name, like those of the dead,
haunted only the memories of men, and was allied to no act or
circumstance of present existence. He was forgotten, and the inhabitants
of Longfield, returning to their obscurity, proceeded in their daily
course, almost as happy as if they had had their lord among them, to
vary the incidents of their quiet existence with the proceedings of the
"Great House."
Yet his sister remembered him. In her heart his image was traced
indelibly--limned in the colours of life. His form visited her dreams,
and was the unseen, yet not mute, companion of her solitary musings.
Years stole on, casting their clouding shadows on her cheek, and
stealing the colour from her hair, but Henry, but Lodore, was before her in
bright youth--her brother--her pride--her hope. To muse on the
possibility of his return, to read the few letters that reached her from
him, till their brief sentences seemed to imply volumes of meaning, was
the employment that made winter nights short, summer days swift in their
progress. This dreamy kind of existence, added to the old-fashioned
habits which a recluse who lives in a state of singleness is sure to
acquire, made her singularly unlike the rest of the world--causing her
to be a child in its ways, and inexpert to detect the craftiness of
others.
Lodore, in exile and obscurity, was in her eyes, the first of human beings;
she looked forward to the hour, when he would blaze upon the world with
renewed effulgence, as to a religious promise. How well did she
remember, how in grace of person, how in expression of countenance, and
dignity of manner, he transcended all those whom she saw during her
visit to London, on occasion of the memorable christening: that from
year to year this return was deferred, did not tire her patience, nor
diminish her regrets. He never grew old to her--never lost the lustre of
early manhood; and when the boyish caprice which kept him afar was
sobered, so she framed her thoughts, by the wisdom of time, he would
return again to bless her and to adorn the world. The lapse of twelve
years did not change this notion, nor the fact that, if she had cast up
an easy sum in arithmetic, the parish register would have testified, her
brother had now reached the mature age of fifty.