Sarah Tytler

“ Miss Kingscote, who was apt to be in a muddle, and never ready for anything, was, as she described it, “slipping” into her best gown. Master Charles was out. “Oh, the dickens! the dickens! What ever is to be done?” cried Miss Kingscote to Mrs. Barlowe. “Run like a lovey, you are always as neat as though you’d been lifted out of a box, and wait on madam at the coach door. Say we’re main glad to see her, which we beant not yet awhile; but them’s the words. Help her out; take the child, and call it a pretty lamb. ”

“ Yes, you have been very kind to me, but I do not know what you mean.”
“You wouldn’t be so horn mad,” persisted Miss Kingscote, looking Lady Bell hard in the face, “as to force me to give you the back of the door, Miss Barlowe, for misbehaviour, with the small chance it would give of a rise in the world? As for them boobies of men,” added Miss Kingscote, “they are good for nought save to breed strife. They’re as blind as bats to their own goods, and as wild as tigerses when they’re crossed for their goods, and after their toys is broke, ‘trample these toys under foot’ is the order of the day.” ”

“ Sundon looked almost animated and alive—as people seldom saw him look—not beside the real prize of his life, the beautiful, witty, wealthy woman who had elected him, against all hostile representations, her husband, but only in a tavern over the last bottle, when brawls were impending and blood was ready to flow, over cards and dice, in a dog-fight or a cock-pit, on a race-ground. ”

“ But the elder lady gave way to the younger, before Lady Bell, in her agitation, could think of what she ought to do. “The place is yours, Lady Bell Trevor,” said a sweet, sonorous voice, with a shade of emphasis on the Lady Bell. Then, as if regretting even that slightly ungracious inference, Mrs. Sundon added, “I am happy to yield it to you; ladies need not quarrel though gentlemen contest seats in Parliament;” finally, she remarked with a still franker, more winning cordiality, “I think that you and I should not quarrel, Lady Bell.” ”

“ AN OLD FRIEND. The white hoar frost which had given a fairy-like beauty to the old orchard trees of Nutfield had long melted away, and was replaced by the first powdering and fluttering of green on the grey gnarled boughs.
The birds which Lady Bell had fed no longer came hopping to door and windowsill, but, independent of her bounty, and forgetful of past favours, broke off the acquaintance, and gave themselves up to satisfactory poking for worms in the soft earth, to energetic pecking at the first midges and green flies, and to the absorbing delights of pairing. ”

“ He grumbled resentfully before he looked round. “What the plague do you mean by bringing any one here at this hour, Sneyd?”
“It is your niece, Lady Bell Etheredge, squire. I thought you would like to see her at once, as Mrs. Die is not to be disturbed after supper,” answered the squire’s butler, as if he were delivering a carefully considered speech.
The squire with a little “humph!” possibly meant to be inaudible, got up and turned round. “My dear niece, I beg to welcome you to St. Bevis’s,” he said, in a voice cultivated and agreeable in spite of its slight hoarseness. ”

“ Within an hour, Lady Bell heard that the Kingscotes had been no small drink in England a mort of years before, as early as King Arthur’s time or thereabouts—when they would have thought neither Clifford nor Talbot of their brewst. What a proper young man Master Charles was, and how all the girls were pulling caps for him. How well Miss Kingscote had looked when she walked into Lumley at Assize time, in her pea-green tabinet petticoat and cherry-coloured gown. ”

“ While Miss Kingscote and Master Charles accorded their ready consent to the connection, it would be difficult to tell its preciousness to Lady Bell. It was like sunshine irradiating a dull landscape, like water springing up in a desert, like the restoration of an alien to forfeited privileges, never before held so dear.
The atmosphere of high-bred and refined society was regained. A sense of reliance in the presence of a powerful friend was experienced. The delightful tie of sisterhood, to which Lady Bell had not been born, was acquired. ”

“ It struck more home where Lady Bell was concerned.
“Murder! how comes it,” cried Miss Kingscote, not waiting to divest herself of her yellow pelisse and her hat tied down over her lappets, but sitting brandishing a whip, to the danger of Lady Bell’s eyes, on the first chair which Miss Kingscote could drop into after coming back to her own parlour, “that Nutfield should be a refuge for distressed wives? Sure Master Charles and me is neither husband nor wife, that we should draw such a lot, like honey draws flies. Our lodger to be, is parted from her husband too! ”

“ Die, sitting opposite Lady Bell in the family coach, so seldom in use, was not so inappropriate in costume as in physiognomy. The fabric of ladies’ gowns possessed in those days the advantage of lasting for generations; country fashions were not expected to change above once or twice in a lifetime. Mrs. Die’s dead-leaf coloured cut velvet, her lace, and the few jewels which, as heirlooms of the Godwins, had not been confiscated, were not amiss for an unhappy, haunted lady of quality.
Mrs. Kitty in her mode cloak and bonnet, and black satin muff, formed a creditable waiting gentlewoman. ”

“ When I come to think of it,” added Miss Kingscote, recollecting herself, and speaking with reviving spirit, “them’s the best news, if so be they’re right square, which I’ve heard for many a day; your good man beant dead, be he now?” she inquired, insinuatingly.
“No, madam; and though he has been no good man to me, I dare not, as I am a sinner, wish him sent to his account,” said Lady Bell wearily.
“No! The Lord be thanked he is to the fore,” commented Miss Kingscote devoutly, “and I ask your pardon, miss—madam, if I spoke like a crosspatch when you went to break your marriage to me. ”

“ The sense of freedom and of a new life sent a certain glow and throb of elasticity through her veins.
Lady Bell trudged on alongside the ragged hedges, and keeping by the posts which marked the king’s highway, in the broken, deeply-rutted road. She ceased to see any trace of the election, beyond a spurring messenger now and again. The few travellers were of an honest though homely description. The electioneering had done good for the moment, scoured the neighbouring country, and collected the stoutest beggars, the most rampageous tramps, into their dens in Peasmarsh. ”

“ Bevis’s; Mrs. Die had long retired from her world. The appeal to the quarter sessions remained for months the solitary episode which broke the dreary monotony of Lady Bell’s life.
But the oppression of dulness grew lightened by custom and in time, though not from Lady Bell’s acquiring rapidly country tastes, not even after sloppy mid-winter had given place to the rosy-tipped buds of spring.
Nature, though for the most part accessible to all, requires an introduction to her court, and a suit paid to her after the fashion of sovereigns, before she will bestow her rewards. ”

“ Lady Bell and Miss Kingscote never supposed that the knowledge which they had to give, might not be an insurmountable obstacle to stay Master Charles from wishing to create a closer, warmer friendship between him and Lady Bell. They never fancied that such knowledge might prove as tow to the hell-fire of an unlawful passion, let loose to devastate human nature and social life. What did good women know of unlawful passions even in a wild age? ”

“ Miss Kingscote had been still in sheer wonder and consternation far greater than those with which she herself had lately filled Lady Bell.
“Lord ha’ mercy! You don’t go for to say it,” she exclaimed at last, “that you are a lost woman already, and you a mere chit of a girl? Why did Madam Siddons take me in vilely?—though it might have been looked for from a play-actress. What company for Master Charles to have been tricked into!” ”

“ Bevis’s, there had hovered always the bright sweet hope of deliverance and a deliverer.
In Lady Lucie’s set Lady Bell had not been without hearing of the young loves, consecrated by tragedy, of such a couple as Lord and Lady Tavistock. She had witnessed with her own eyes “proper” young pairs rejoicing in their real union, entering on life with every assurance of the closest friendship, the tenderest intimacy till death should them part. ”

“ Lady Bell, a little girl, not a “fine figure” any more than a “fine fortune,” to her grand-aunt’s open mortification, was like a budding tuberose from the Chelsea gardens, spangled with a finer kind of dew than falls to the lot of ordinary roses, and invested with a rarer and more irresistible charm.
“Here comes Princess Emily to wait upon her royal niece. Be ready with your curtsey, Bell; she has eyes for every hole and corner and every new-comer. Perhaps she will stop and ask who you are. ”

“ Was it not sufficient that the wretched woman, older than Lady Bell’s mother would have been had she been alive, believed that she was the object of an unscrupulous passion?
Doubtless, Mrs. Kitty made a feint of agreeing with Mrs. Die, to flatter and coax her, as mad people, who were not locked up and chained, were coaxed.
“For certain, Mrs. Die looks as old and as horrid as the hills,” reflected Lady Bell hastily, “with those sticking-out bones and ploughed furrows in her cheeks. She must be many a long day past love and lovers. ”

“ Sundon had hope and heart in her youth and beauty as she shared and enjoyed life with her comely and elegant young husband, whose listlessness and haggardness even had a charm, by force of contrast, in Lady Bell’s eyes. ”

“ There were other good couples more gracefully drawn and tenderly tinted than the royal couple at the drawing-room, though Lady Bell, dazzled and enchanted by the first childish contact with royalty, could not see any pair equal to the king and queen.
It is reserved for those who gaze wistfully back through the mists of years, and by the commentary of long-told histories, to dwell with a sense of refreshment, whether pensive or cheerful, on heroes and heroines a shade humbler in rank. ”

“ Lady Bell, if she had been shrewd beyond her years and knowledge of the world, might have suspected that there was something anomalous in the presence of so superior an upper servant in a house like Squire Godwin’s. Lady Bell might even have been observant enough to detect that Mrs. Kitty’s accent on the whole was that of an educated woman habitually in better society than even an upper servant could then boast. ”

“ Now her invention was quickened into the liveliest exercise by the urgent necessity of others besides herself. The Sundons—wife and husband—and not Lady Bell alone, were at stake; and if she aided them, there was no choice of evils left her, no deadly dulness of dutiful respectability as opposed to mad defiance and destitution. In her youthful simplicity she honestly believed that she must flee for her life from the aroused fury of Squire Trevor. If there existed a purpose of sacrificing Mr. Sundon, ten times more would she be sacrificed. ”

“ Siddons urged the plea as if it admitted of no contradiction. She urged the same plea many a time from youth to age, in trampling down generosity, and even justice, till the very world that worshipped her genius, was outraged by her family selfishness. In like manner, women urge it still, without doubt or stay, as if family selfishness becomes a divine right in the breasts of mothers. ”

“ The whole building had a cheerless and spectral air to Lady Bell. There was no want of life in it, however, such as it was. A troop of men, most of them in stable-boy’s jackets or country frocks, one or two in tarnished livery, rushed out at the sound of wheels to hail the chaise, and shout for news before the travellers had time to alight. ”

“ Sukey speedily recovered herself, and showed Lady Bell into a low-roofed room belonging to the older part of the house, which, like the squire’s room, was so far prepared for occupants, that it was matted, furnished with rush-bottomed chairs, had a table laid for breakfast, and a fire, lately kindled, smoking in the grate. But except that there were both antique china and plate—alike so valuable that they were heirlooms—on the breakfast-table, this was all that could be said for Mrs. Die’s parlour. ”

“ He conducted her into a dreary unfurnished hall on a vast scale, paused a moment, laid a flabby finger on his forehead, scratched his head under his wig, spoke to himself, but yet as it sounded in confidence to Lady Bell. “Curse me if I know where I had better take her first. Mrs. Die is not to be seen at this hour, or it will be the worse for the person who sees her. Mrs. Kitty won’t leave Mrs. Die’s room to do the honours; I think I had better take his niece to the squire himself, though we do interrupt his game.” ”

“ Sneyd, the butler, in his unencouraged essays at conversation the night before, had made Lady Bell acquainted with the habits of the family. The squire was never down in the morning till it was late, when he was at home, and that was but seldom, as he attended all the races. Lady Bell need not fear to stumble on her uncle, and be frozen to stone by his distant greeting. ”