Theresa Marchmont, or, the Maid of Honour Part 1

Theresa Marchmont.

by Mrs Charles Gore.

CHAPTER I.

"Take any shape but that, and my firm nerves shall never tremble. Hence horrible shadow!

Unreal mockery, hence!"--_MACBETH_

It was a gloomy evening, towards the autumn of the year 1676, and the driving blasts which wept from the sea upon Greville Cross, a dreary and exposed mansion on the coast of Lancas.h.i.+re, gave promise of a stormy night and added to the desolation which at all traces pervaded its vast and comfortless apartments.

Greville Cross had formerly been a Benedictine Monastery, and had been bestowed at the Reformation, together with its rights of Forestry upon Sir Ralph de Greville, the ancestor of its present possessor. Although that part of the building containing the chapel and refectory had been long in ruins, the remainder of the gloomy quadrangle was strongly marked with the characteristics of its monastic origin. It had never been a favourite residence of the Greville family; who were possessed of two other magnificent seats, at one of which, Silsea Castle in Kent, the present Lord Greville constantly resided; and the Cross, usually so called from a large iron cross which stood in the centre of the court-yard, and to which thousand romantic legends were attached, had received few improvements from the modernizing hand of taste. Indeed as the faults of the edifice were those of solid construction, it would have been difficult to render it less gloomy or more convenient by any change that art could affect. Its ma.s.sive walls and huge oaken beams would neither permit the enlargement of its narrow windows, nor the destruction of its maze of useless corridors; and it was therefore allowed to remain unmolested and unadorned; unless when an occasional visit from some member of the Greville family demanded an addition to its rude attempts of splendour and elegance. But it was difficult to convey the new tangled luxuries of the capital to this remote spot; and the tapestry, whose faded hues and moulding texture betrayed the influence of the sea air, had not yet given plan to richer hangings. The suite of state apartments as cold and comfortless in the extreme, but one of the chambers had been recently decorated with more than usual cost, on the arrival of Lord and Lady Greville, the latter of whom had never before visited her Northern abode. Its dimensions, which were somewhat less vast than those of the rest of the suite, rendered it fitter for modern habits of life; and it had long ensured the preference of the ladies of the House of Greville, and obtained the name of "the lady's chamber," by which it is even to this day distinguished. The walls were not inc.u.mbered by the portraits of those grim ancestors who frowned in mail, or smiled in fardingale on the walls of the adjacent galleries. The huge chimney had suffered some inhospitable contraction, and was surmounted with marble; and huge settees, glittering with gilding and satin, which in their turn would now be displaced by the hand of Gillow or Oakley, had dispossessed the tall straight backed-chairs, which in the olden times must have inflicted martyrdom on the persons of our weary forefathers.

The present visit of Lord Greville to the Cross, was supposed to originate in the dangerous illness of an old and favourite female servant, who had held undisturbed control over the household since the death of the first Lady Greville about ten years before. She had been from her infancy attached to the family service, and having married a retainer of the house, had been nurse to Lord Greville, whom she still regarded with something of a maternal affection. Her husband had died the preceding year; equally lamented by the master whom he served, and the domestics whom he ruled; and his wife was now daily declining, and threatening to follow her aged partner to the grave. It was imagined by the other members of the establishment, that the old lady had written to her master, with whom she frequently corresponded, to entreat a personal interview, in order that she might resign her "steward-s.h.i.+p" into his hands before her final release from all earthly cares and anxieties; and in consideration of the length and importance of her services, none were surprised at the readiness with which her request was granted.

Lord Greville had never visited the North since the death of his first wife, a young and beautiful woman whom he had tenderly loved, and who died and was interred at Greville Cross. She left no children, and the heir, a fine boy in the full bloom of childhood and beauty, who now accompanied Lord Greville, was the sole offspring of his second marriage.

Helen, the present Lady Greville, was by birth a Percy; and although her predecessor had been celebrated at the Court of Charles, as one of the most distinguished beauties of her time, there were many who considered her eclipsed by the lovely and gentle being who now filled her place.

She was considerably younger than her husband; but her attachment to him, and to her child, as well as her naturally domestic disposition, prevented the ill effects often resulting from disparity of years. Lord Greville, whose parents were zealous supporters of the royal cause, had himself shared the banishment of the second Charles; had fought by his side in his hour of peril, and shared the revelries of his court in his after days of prosperity. At an age when the judgement is rarely matured, unless by an untimely encounter with the dangers and adversities of the world, such as those disastrous times too often afforded, he had been employed with signal success in several foreign missions; and it was universally known that the monarch was ever prompt publicly to acknowledge the benefit he had on many occasions derived from the prudent counsels of his adherent, as well as from his valour in the field.

But notwithstanding the bond of union subsisting between them, from the period of his first marriage, which had taken place under the Royal auspices, Greville had retired to Silsea Castle; and resisting equally the invitations of his condescending master, and the entreaties of his former gay companions, he had never again joined the amus.e.m.e.nts of the court. Whether this retirement originated in some disgust occasioned by the licentious habits and insolent companions of Charles, whose present mode of life was peculiarly unfitted to the purer taste, and intellectual character of Lord Greville; or, whether it arose solely from his natural distaste for the parasitical existence of a courtier, was uncertain; but it was undeniable that he had faithfully followed the fortunes of the expatriate king, and even supplied his necessities from his own resources; and had only withdrawn his services when they were no longer required.

After the death of Lady Greville, his secluded habits seemed more than ever confirmed; but when he again became possessed of a bride, whose youth, beauty, and rank in society, appeared to demand an introduction to those pleasures which her age had hitherto prevented her from sharing; it was a matter of no small mortification to Lord and Lady Percy, to perceive that their son-in-law evinced no disposition to profit by the Royal favour, or to relinquish the solitude of Silsea, for the splendours of the Capital. But Helen shared not in their regrets.

She had been educated in retirement; she knew but by report the licentious, but seductive gaieties of the Court of Charles, and she had not the slightest wish to increase her knowledge of such dangerous pleasures. Content with loving, and being beloved by a husband whom she regarded with profound veneration, her happiness was not disturbed by a restless search after new enjoyments; and her delighted parents soon forgot their disappointment in witnessing the contentment of their child.

For some years succeeding her marriage, they perceived no change in the state of her feelings, but at length the anxiety of parental love led them to form surmises, which renewed their former disapprobation of the conduct of Greville. During their frequent visits to Silsea, they observed that his love of study and retirement had deepened almost to moroseness; that his address, always cold and reserved, was becoming offensively distant; and that he was subject to fits of abstraction, and at other times to a peevish discontent, which materially threatened the happiness of their daughter. They also discovered that Helen, whose playful humour and gaiety of heart had been their solace and amus.e.m.e.nt, even from her infancy, was now pensive and dispirited. By degrees the bright expression of her countenance had lost all that becoming joyousness of youth, which had been its great attraction, and though still

"Sphered in the stillness of those heaven-blue eyes, The soul sate beautiful,"

it was the soul of melancholy beauty.

Alarmed and unhappy, Lady Percy wearied her daughter with inquiries as to the cause of this inauspicious change; but in vain. Helen denied that any alteration had taken place in her feelings; and declared that the new and serious tone of her character arose naturally from her advance in life, and from the duties devolving upon her as a wife and mother.

"Be satisfied, dear madam," said she, "that I am still a happy and adoring wife. You well know that my affections were not won by an outward show of splendour and gay accomplishments, nor by the common attraction of an idle gallantry. It was on Greville's high reputation for just and honourable principles, and on his manly and n.o.ble nature, that my love was founded, and these will never change;--and if, at times, unpleasant circ.u.mstances should arise, into which my s.e.x and age unfit me to inquire to throw a cloud over his features, or a transient peevishness into his humour, it would ill become me--in short,"

continued she in a trembling voice, and throwing her arms around Lady Percy's neck, to conceal her tears, "in short, dear Madam, you must remember that dearly, tenderly, dutifully, as Helen loves her mother, the wife of Greville can have no complaints to make to the Countess of Percy*."

*[See "The family Legend"]

But however well the suffering wife might succeed in disguising the bitterness of wounded affection from her inquiring family, she could not conceal it from herself. She had devoted herself, in the pride of youthful beauty, to the most secluded retirement, through romantic attachment for one who had appeared to return her love with at least an equal fervour. Her father's house--her own opening and brilliant prospects--her numerous family connexions and "troops of friends,"--she had deserted all for him, in her generous confidence in his future kindness. "His people had become her people, and his G.o.d, her G.o.d!" She had fondly expected that his society would atone for every loss, and compensate every sacrifice; that in the retirements she shared with him, he would devote some part of his time to the improvement of her mind, and the development of her character, and that in return for her self devotion, he would cheerfully grant her his confidence and affection.

But there--"there where she had garnered up her heart,"--she was doomed to bear the bitterest disappointment. She found herself, on awaking from her early dream of unqualified mutual affection, treated with negligence, and at times with unkindness, and though gleams of his former tenderness would sometimes break through the sullen darkness of his present disposition, he continually manifested towards both her child and herself, a discontented and peevish sternness, which wounded her deeply, and filled her with inquietude. She retained, however, too deep a veneration for her husband, too strong a sense of his superiority, to permit her to resent, by the most trifling show of displeasure, the alteration in his conduct. She forbore to indulge even in the

"Silence that chides, and woundings of the eye."

Helen's was no common character. Young, gentle, timid as she was, the texture of her mind was framed of "sterner stuff;" and she nourished an intensity of wife-like devotion and endurance, which no unkindness could tire, and a fixedness of resolve, and high sense of moral rect.i.tude, which no meaner feeling had yet obtained the power to blemish.

"Let him be as cold and stern as he will," said she to herself in her patient affliction, "he is my husband--the husband of my free choice--and by that I must abide. He may have crosses and sorrows of which I know not; and is it fitting that I should pry into the secrets of a mind devoted to pursuits and studies in which I am incapable of sharing? There was a time when I fondly trusted he would seek to qualify me for his companion and friend; but the enchantment which sealed my eyes is over, and I must meet the common fate of woman, distrust and neglect, as best I may."

Anxious to escape the observation of her family, she earnestly requested Lord Greville's permission to accompany him with her son, when he suddenly announced his intention of visiting Greville Cross. Her pet.i.tion was at first met with a cold negative; but when she ventured to plead the advice she had received recently from several physicians, to remove to the sea coast, and reminded him of her frequent indispositions, and present feebleness of const.i.tution, he looked at her for a time with astonishment at the circ.u.mstance of her thus exhibiting so unusual an opposition to his will, and afterwards with sincere and evident distress at the confirmation borne by her faded countenance to the truth of her representation.

"Thou art so patient a sufferer," he replied "that I am somewhat too p.r.o.ne to forget the weakness of thy frame--but be content--I must be alone in this long and tedious journey."

The tears which rose in her eyes were her only remonstrance, and her husband stood regarding her for some minutes in silence, but with the most apparent signs of mental agitation on his countenance.

"Helen," said he at length, in a low, earnest tone, "Helen, thou wert worthy of a better fate than to be linked to the endurance of my waywardness; but G.o.d who sees thine unmurmuring patience, will give thee strength to meet thy destiny. Thou hast scarcely enough of womanly weakness in thee to shrink from idle terrors, or I might strive to appall thee," he added faintly smiling, "with a description of the gloom and discomfort of thine unknown northern mansion; but if thou art willing to bear with its scanty means of accommodation, as well as with thy husband's variable temper, come with him to the Cross."

Helen longed to throw herself into his arms as in happier days, when he granted her pet.i.tion, but she had been more than once repulsed from his bosom, and she therefore contented herself with thanking him respectfully; and in another week, they became inmates of Greville Cross.

The evening whose stormy and endless commencement I have before described, was the fourth after her arrival in the North; and notwithstanding the anxiety she had felt for a change of habitation, she could not disguise from herself that there was an air of desolation, a general aspect of dreariness about her new abode which justified the description afforded by her husband. As she crossed the portal, a sensation of terror ill-defined, but painful and overwhelming, smote upon her heart, such as we feel in the presence of a secret enemy, and Lord Greville's increasing uneasiness and abstraction since he had returned to the mansion of his forefathers, did not tend to enliven its gloomy precincts. The wind beat wildly against the cas.e.m.e.nt of the apartment in which they sat, and which although named "the lady's chamber," afforded none of those feminine luxuries, which are now to be found in the most remote parts of England, in the dwellings of the n.o.ble and wealthy. By the side of a huge hearth, where the crackling and blazing logs imparted the only cheerful sound or sight in the apartment, in a richly-carved oaken chair emblazoned with the armorial bearings of his house, sat Lord Greville, lost in silent contemplation. A chased goblet of wine with which he occasionally moistened his lips, stood on a table beside him, on which an elegantly-fretted silver lamp was burning; and while it only emitted sufficient light to render the gloom of the s.p.a.cious chamber still more apparent, it threw a strong glare upon his expressive countenance and n.o.ble figure, and rendered conspicuous that richness of attire which the fas.h.i.+on of those stately days demanded from "the magnates of the land;" and which we now only admire amid the mummeries of theatrical pageant, or on the glowing canvas of Vandyck.

His head rested on his hand, and while Lady Greville who was seated on an opposite couch, was apparently engrossed by the embroidery-frame over which she leant, his attention was equally occupied by his son, who stood at her knee, interrupting her progress by twining his little hands in the slender ringlets which profusely overhung her work, and by questions which betrayed the unsuspicious sportiveness of his age.

"Mother," said the boy, "are we to remain all winter in this ruinous den? Do you know Margaret says, that some of these northern sea winds will shake it down over our heads one stormy night; and that she would as soon lie under the ruins, as be buried alive in its walls. Now I must own I would rather return to Silsea, and visit my hawks, and Caesar, and--"

"Hus.h.!.+ sir, you prate something too wildly; nor do I wish to hear you repeat Margaret's idle observations."

"But mother, I know you long yourself to walk once again in your own dear suns.h.i.+ny orangery?"

"My Hugh," said Lady Greville without attending to his question, "has Margaret shewn you the descent to the walk below the cliffs, and have you brought me the sh.e.l.ls you promised to gather?"

"How? with the spring tide beating the foot of the rocks, and the sea raging so furiously that the very gulls dared not take their delicious perch upon the waves. Tomorrow perhaps--"

"What now, my Hugh, afraid to venture? When I walked on the sands at noon, there was a bowshot spare."

"No! mother, no, not afraid, not afraid to venture a fall, or meet a sprinkling of sea spray, and good truth I have enough to do with fears in doors, here in this grim old mansion, without--"

"Fears?"--

"Yes, fears, dear mother," said the boy, looking archly round at his attendant, who waited in the back ground, and who vainly sought by signs to silence her unruly charge.

"Do you know that the figure of King Herod, cruel Herod, the murderer of his wife, and the slayer of the innocents, stalks down every night from the tapestry in my sleeping room and wanders through the galleries at midnight; and than the cross, where the three Jews were executed a long, long time ago, in the reign of King John I think; they say that it drops blood on the morning of the Holy Friday;--and then mother, and this is really true," continued the child, changing from his playful manner to a tone of great earnestness, "there is the figure of a lady in rich attire, but pale, very pale, who glides through the apartments--yes; Herbert and Richard and several of the serving men have seen it; and mistress Alice, poor old soul once was seen to address it, but she would allow no one to question her on the subject; and they say it was her doom, and that she must therefore die of her present sickness. Ay: 'twas in this very room too--the lady's chamber."

"Boy," interrupted Lord Greville sternly, "if thou canst find no better subject for thy prate, than these unbecoming fooleries, be silent--Helen! why should you encourage his forwardness, and girlish love of babbling? Go hence, sirrah! take thyself to rest; and you, Margaret," added he, turning angrily to the woman, "remember that from this hour I hear no more insolent remarks, on any dwelling it may suit your betters to inhabit, nor of this imp's cowardly apprehensions."

Margaret led her young charge from the room; who, however sad his heart at being thus abruptly dismissed, walked proud and erect with all the welling consciousness of wounded pride. Helen followed him to the door with her eyes; and when they fell again upon her work, they were too dim with tears to distinguish the colours of the flowers she was weaving.

Lord Greville had again relapsed into silent musing; and as she occasionally stole a glance towards him, she perceived traces of a severe mental struggle on his countenance; the muscles of his fine throat worked convulsively, his lips quivered, yet still he spoke not.

At length his eyes closed, and he seemed as if seeking to lose his own reflections in sleep.

"I will try the spell which drove the evil spirit from the mind of the King of Israel," thought the sad and terrified wife; "music hath often power to soothe the darkness of the soul;" and she tuned her lute, and brought forth the softest of its tones. At length her charm was successful; Lord Greville slept; and while she watched with all the intense anxiety of alarmed affection, the unquiet slumbers which distorted one of the finest countenances that sculptor or painter ever conceived, she affected to occupy herself with her instrument lest he should awake, and be displeased to find her attention fixed on himself.

With the sweetest notes of a "voice ever soft and low, an excelling thing in woman," she murmured the following song, which was recorded in her family to have been composed by her elder brother, on parting from a lady to whom he was attached, previous to embarkment on the expedition in which he fell, and to which it alludes:

Parte la nave Spiegan le vele Vento crudele Mi fa partir.

Addio Teresa, Teresa, addio!

Piacendo a Dio Ti rivedr.

Non pianger bella, Non pianger, No!-- Che al mio ritorno Ti sposer.

Il Capitano Mi chiama a bordo; Io faccio il sordo Per non partir!