Lady Lodore

“ Villiers laughed at such flights. "The safe thing to do," he said, "is to take the tone of Lady Lodore. She is held back by no bashfulness—she does the thing she wishes, without hesitation or difficulty. Did she desire her lovely grown-up daughter to play a child's part towards her, she would soon contrive to bring it about. Lady Lodore is a woman of the world—she was nursed in its lessons, and piously adheres to its code; its ways are her's, and the objects of ambition which it holds out, are those which she desires to attain. ”

“ Lady Lodore never felt so kindly inclined towards hers, as now that she was about to withdraw from them. Their admiration, for its own sake, she might contemn, but she valued it as the testimony that those charms were still hers, which once had subdued the soul of him she loved—and this was no disagreeable assurance to one who was on the eve of becoming a grandmother.
Her sensibility, awakened by the considerations forced on her by her new circumstances, caused her to make more progress in the knowledge of life, and in the philosophy of its laws, than love or ambition had ever done before. ”

“ Lady Lodore had, in the very brightness of her earliest youth, selected a proud and independent position. She had refused to bend to her husband's will, or to submit to the tyranny, as she named it, which he had attempted to exercise. Youth is bold and fearless. The forked tongue of scandal, the thousand ills with which woman is threatened in society, without a guide or a protector—all the worldly considerations which might lead her to unite herself again to her husband, she had rejected with unbounded disdain. ”

“ Lady Santerre triumphed. Withering away in unhonoured age, still she appeared in the halls of the great, and played the part of Cerberus in her daughter's drawing-room. Lady Lodore, beautiful and admired, intoxicated with this sort of prosperity, untouched by passion, unharmed by the temptations that surrounded her, believed that life was spent most worthily in following the routine observed by those about her, and securing the privilege of being exclusive. ”

“ Ethel was not quite satisfied. The voice of nature was awake within, and she yearned to claim her mother's affection. Until now, she had regarded her more as a stranger; but at this time, a filial instinct stirred her heart, impelling her to some outward act—some demonstration of duty. Whenever she saw Lady Lodore, which was rarely, and at a distance, she gazed earnestly on her, and tried to read within her soul, whether Villiers was right, and her mother happy. The shining, uniform outside of a woman of fashion baffled her endeavours without convincing her. ”

“ Lady Santerre was afraid of the water, and their voyage was deferred. On the evening of the following day, Fenton arrived from Havre. Lord Lodore had sailed, the stormy waves of the Atlantic were between him and the shores of England; pursuit were vain; it would be an acknowledgment of defeat to follow him to America. Cornelia returned to Twickenham, maternal sorrow contending in her heart with mortified pride, and a keen resentful sense of injury.
Lady Lodore was nineteen; an age when youth is most arrogant, and most heedless of the feelings of others. ”

“ Never before had the elegant and fastidious Lady Lodore entered such an abode, or ascended such stairs. The servant had told her to enter the room at the head of the first flight, so she made her way by herself, and knocked at the door. The voice that told her to come in, thrilled through her, she knew not why, and she became disturbed at finding that her self-possession was failing her. Slight things act powerfully on the subtle mechanism of the human mind. ”

“ A loud knock at the street door interrupted the conversation. "One thing only I cannot endure," said the lady hastily, "to present a domestic tragedy or farce to the Opera House—we must not meet in public. I shall shut up my house and return to Paris."
Mere written words express little. Lady Lodore's expressions were nothing; but her countenance denoted a change of feeling, a violence of emotion, of which Villiers hardly believed her capable; but before he could reply, the servant threw open the door, and her brow immediately clearing, serenity descended on her face. ”

“ His demeanour towards him was morose, almost insulting. Lodore, usually so forbearing and courteous, would contradict and silence him, as if he had been a child or a menial. It required all Casimir's deference for one considerably his senior, to prevent him from resenting openly this style of treatment; it required all the fascination of Lady Lodore to persuade him to encounter it a second time. Once he had complained to her, and she remonstrated with her husband. His answer was to reprimand her for listening to the impertinence of the stripling. ”

“ He mounted his horse and took a solitary ride, meditating on these things—his imagination became heated, his soul on fire. He pictured Lady Lodore in solitude and desertion, and his heart boiled within him. Was she sick, and none near her?—was she dead, and her grave unvisited and unknown? A lover's fancy is as creative as a poet's and when once it takes hold of any idea, it clings to it tenaciously. If it is thus even with ordinary minds, how much more with Saville, with all energy which was his characteristic, and the latent fire of love burning in his heart. ”

“ Fanny at length took her leave, and Lady Lodore was again alone. She took up the newspaper—hastily she read again the tidings; she sunk on the sofa, burying her face in the pillow, trying not to think, while she was indeed the prey to the wildest thoughts.
"Yes," thus ran her reflections, "he is free—he is no longer married! Fool, fool! he is still lost to you!—an outcast and a beggar, shall I solicit his love! which he believes that I rejected when prosperous. Rather never, never, let me see him again. My beauty is tarnished, my youth flown ”

“ Lady Lodore's imagination refused to image her child in the tall, elegant, full-formed girl she had seen, and she said, "Was Ethel with you? I did not see her—probably she went home before the opera was over, and I only perceived your party in the crush-room—you appear already intimate."
"It is impossible to see Miss Fitzhenry and not to wish to be intimate," replied Villiers with his usual frankness. "I, at least, cannot help being deeply interested in every thing that relates to her." ”

“ They have not been taught always to look up to others, and to do nothing for themselves; so that business becomes a matter of heroism to a woman, when conducted in the most common-place way; but when it is accompanied by mystery, she feels herself transported from her fitting place, and as if about to encounter shame and contumely. Lady Lodore had never been conversant with any mode of life, except that of being waited on and watched over. In the poverty of her early girlhood, her mother had been constantly at her side. ”

“ Meanwhile, Ethel had been enchanted by her mother's visit, and spoke of it to Villiers as a proof of the real goodness of her heart, insisting that she was judged harshly and falsely. Villiers smiled incredulously. "She gains your esteem at an easy rate," he observed; "cultivate it, if it makes you happier. It will need more than a mere act of ordinary courtesy—more than a slight invitation to her house, to persuade me that Lady Lodore is not—what she is—a worshipper of the world, a frivolous, unfeeling woman. ”

“ Cornelia listened, and was persuaded. Above all, Lady Santerre tried to impress upon her mind, that Lodore, finding her firm, would give up his rash schemes, and remain in Europe; that even he had, probably, never really contemplated crossing the Atlantic. At all events, that she must not be guided by the resolves, changeable as the moon, of a man governed by no sane purpose; but that, by showing herself determined, he would be brought to bend to her will. In this spirit Lady Lodore replied to her husband's letter. ”

“ It might be the gas, which shadows so unbecomingly the fair audience at the King's Theatre; it might be the consequences of raking, for Lady Lodore was out every night; but Ethel thought that she saw a change; she was less brilliant, her person thinner, and had lost some of its exquisite roundness. Still, as her daughter gazed, she thought, She is not happy. Yet what could she do? How pour sweetness into the bitter stream of life? As Villiers had said, any advance of hers might spoil all. The sister of the nobleman he had mentioned, was her companion at the opera. ”

“ She is mysterious, and there is never any good in mystery. Who knows what she may have to conceal?" Mrs. Elizabeth got in her carriage, and each step of the horses took her farther from the web of enchantment which Cornelia had thrown over her. "She is always strange,"—thus ran her meditations; "and how am I to see her, and no one find it out? and what a story for Longfield, that Lady Lodore should be living in poverty in dame Nixon's cottage. ”

“ Saville heard of her beauty and her sufferings; the injustice with which she had been treated—of her magnanimity and desolate condition; he heard of her talents, her powers of conversation, her fashion. He figured to himself (as we are apt to incarnate to our imagination the various qualities of a human being, of whom we hear much) a woman, brilliant, but rather masculine, majestic in figure, with wild dark eyes, and a very determined manner. Lady Lodore came: she entered the room where he was sitting, and the fabric of his fancy was at once destroyed. ”

“ In human life, one act is born of another, so that any one that disjoins itself from the rest, instantly gives rise to curiosity and inquiry. Lady Lodore, though fertile in expedients, was almost foiled: the eligibility of having one confidant pressed itself upon her. She thought of Fanny Derham; but her extreme youth, and her intimacy with Mrs. Villiers, which would have necessitated many falsehoods, so to preserve the secret, deterred her: she determined at last to trust to herself alone. ”

“ God grant that you choose wisely and well! Adieu."
The heart of Lady Lodore burnt within her bosom as she read these lines. Haughty and proud, was she to be dictated to thus? and to follow, an obedient slave, the master that deigned to recall her to his presence, after he had (so she termed his abrupt departure) deserted her? Her mother sate by, looking at her with an anxious and inquiring glance, as she read the letter. She saw the changes of her countenance, as it expressed anger, scorn, and bitter indignation. ”

“ He had given no intimation of his proceedings to his cousin, and they were unaware that his journey was connected with Lady Lodore. He had a lover's wish to find her himself—himself to be the only source of consolation—the only mediator to restore her to her daughter and to happiness. But his fruitless attempts at discovery made him see that his wishes were not to be effected easily. He felt that he ought to communicate all he knew to his cousins, and even to ensure their assistance in his researches. Before going abroad, therefore, he returned to Maristow Castle. ”

“ He had failed to bring her good qualities to light, but time and events might have played the tutor better, and it merely required perhaps a seasonable interference, a fortunate circumstance, to prove the truth of his opinion, and to show Lady Lodore as generous, magnanimous, and devoted, as before she had appeared proud, selfish, and cold.
How few there are possessed of any sensibility, who mingle with, and are crushed by the jostling interests of the world, who do not ever and anon exclaim with the Psalmist, "O for the wings of a dove, that I might flee away and be at rest!" ”

“ Days, months sped on, and nothing reminded him of his relative wealth or poverty in a way to annoy him, till he knew Ethel. He had been interested for her in America—he had seen her, young and lovely, drowned in grief—sorrowing with the heart's first prodigal sorrow for her adored father. He had left her, and thought of her no more—except, as a passing reflection, that in the natural course of things, she was now to become the pupil of Lady Lodore, and consequently, that her unsophisticated feelings and affectionate heart would speedily be tarnished and hardened under her influence. ”

“ How mysterious a thing is the action of repentance in the human mind! We will not dive into the debasing secrets of remorse for guilt. Lady Lodore could accuse herself of none. Yet when she looked back, a new light shone on the tedious maze in which she had been lost; a light—and she blessed it—that showed her a pathway out of tempest and confusion into serenity and peace. ”

“ Lady Lodore started. The image he presented was too detestable. She repressed her emotions, and assuming that air of disdain, which we are so apt to adopt to colour more painful feelings, she said, "This sounds very like a German tragedy, being at once disagreeable and inexplicable."
"It is a tragedy," he replied; "a tragedy brought now to its last dark catastrophe. Casimir is my son. We may neither of us murder the other; nor will I, if again brought into contact with him, do other than chastise the insolent boy. The tiger is roused within me. ”

“ Lady Lodore smiled, and went on. "You think this is a strange place for me to live in: whether here or elsewhere, I shall never live in any better: I shall be fortunate if I find myself as well off when I leave Essex, for the people here are good and honest, and the poor girl loves me,—it is always pleasant to be loved."
A tear again filled Cornelia's eyes—she tried to animate herself to smile. "I have nothing to love in all the wide world except Ethel; I do love her; every one must love her—she is so gentle—so kind—so warm-hearted and beautiful,—I love her more than my own heart's blood ”