Robert Ainsleigh. By the author of 'Lady Audley's Secret,' etc

Front matter

ROBERT AINSLEIGH by the author of 'LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET' etc. etc. etc. IN THREE VOLUMES VOL. III. LONDON JOHN MAXWELL AND COMPANY 4 SHOE LANE, FLEET STREET 1872 [All rights reserved] LONDON : PRINTED BY WOODFALL AND KINDER, MILFURD LANE, STRAND, W.C. CONTENTS TO VOL. III. CHAP. PAGE i. Face to Face once more . . . . i II. I FIND THAT I AM NOT FORGOTTEN . • 33 in. I obtain Satisfaction . . . -54 IV. I SEEM TO BE INCONSTANT . . . -74 v. I begin Life on a new Plan . • • 95 vi. In the Shadow of Death . . .122 vii. An unexpected Ally . . . . .160 vm. I find Myself in great Peril . . .194 ix. I begin to Realize my Danger . . . 230 x. I become deeper in Debt to Margery . 253 XI. I COME INTO MY ESTATE .... 270 XII. I REGAIN MY LIBERTY 2QO XIII. I FIND A PEACEFUL HAVEN . . . .312 Appendix. Note A • • 321 Note B 323 Note C • . ■ ROBEKT AINSLEIGH.

Chapter I. Face To Face Once More

Within twenty-four hours of my interview with Mrs. Grimshaw I was again in London, a solitary stranger, with no concern but that dreary business of self-interest until such time as I could gratify man's natural desire for revenge by a meeting with Mr. Lestrange. I called in St James's Square immediately on my return ; but the gentleman was not yet back, nor expected for above a week, so I had my time on my hands for that period. I was so fortunate as to find my old chambers in Brick Court vacant : here I once more took up my abode ; and by the lonely hearth where my treacherous friend had found me, I sat and brooded over the strange destinies of betrayer and betrayed. And now I VOL. III. B became a haunter of taverns, not because I loved such places, but because I was like a foreigner in my native land, and was anxious to learn the ways of the town, and pick up any information with which strangers could furnish me about Sir Everard Lestrange.

Of this gentleman the gay young Templars, with whom I for tbe most part associated, had plenty -to tell me ; but I knew the liveliness of their fancy, and that it needed some discrimination to distinguish fact from fiction in their narratives of the baronet's doings. Some of them affected to know him intimately, but when hard pressed, owned to merely a public knowledge of him. All agreed in declaring him distinguished among the bloods of bis day by a bad eminence, and about his vices my informants were so unanimous that I could scarce doubt tbeir veracity. ' He has a rage for actresses,' said one of a somewhat reprobate party which I had joined at supper, in a comfortable but obscure tavern close to the Temple gates, where some dozen or so of young law-students had formed a club by the name of Knights-errant. ' You had better say for an actress, Tom,' answered his friend ; ' it is Mrs. Hunter he has followed for these last two years.

His passion is the talk of the town. And they say she will not listen to his suit, though he has offered to settle a handsome income on her, and sign a bond promising to marry her within six months of his present wife's death.' ■ Good heavens, what iniquity ! ' I cried. ' Pshaw ! my dear sir, since the elevation of Mr. Gay's Polly to the peerage there is a fashion for offering coronets to actresses ; and shall a beggarly baronet be punctilious A\'hen a duke can put his pride in his pocket for tbe love of a pretty face ? Why, Lady Lucretia Lovegrove ran away with an actor only the other day, and married the fellow before you could say Jack Robinson, at the very time when her friends were arranging an alliance between her ladyship and Lord Fitzpactolus, who owns half Somerset and three-quarters of Devon shire, and has half a million a year at the very least from a copper-mine in Cornwall — one of those monstrous landoAA-ners of whom it is said that England is fast becoming a heptarchy.

But Mrs. Hunter is a living mystery — a virtuous actress : the rage of the town, and virtuous ! ' ' In spite of Sir Everard Lestrange ? ' b ' In spite of better men than Sir Everard Le strange,' replied the Templar, -with a rakish shrug and simper. ' Why, I have been Mrs. Hunter's declared admirer myself for the last six months, and yet the citadel stands, though I will not say it has not tottered.' • And pray wbere is this paragon to be seen, sir ? ' I asked. ' On the boards of Drury Lane, sir ; where her talents and her beauty have enchanted tbe town for the last three years. It is said Garrick picked her up in a country booth, starving on a beggarly pound a week. She is the most versatile creature in the world ; when she plays the fine lady, you would swear sbe had been born the daughter of a duke ; yet she has but to dressherself as a country wench, and every word and look and gesture smells of green fields and rustic farmyards.

Her Polly Peachum is an angel that has been reared among thieves ; her Sir Harry Wildair is as fine as Wof fington's: I haAre heard as much from those who remember that great actress in her prime. Pshaw ! gentlemen, this sounds like a lover's fooling ; but when I begin that diAine creature's panegyric, I know not how to stop.' ' And it is this bright creature Sir Everard has pledged himself to ruin ? ' ' Ay, sir ; so runs the talk of the town. Some say it is a wager, and that the baronet — who, though a profligate by the senses, is colder than ice at heart — would pursue no woman so furiously except from some great gain to himself.' ' I can believe anything of him that is mean or base,' said I ; and the remark provoked no argu ment, for, well as the baronet was known to tbe assembly by reputation, no one present appeared to have heard any good of him.

I AA-as eager to see the fair genius whose talents, or beauty, or fashion, had given her so powerful an influence over the profligate mind of my enemy ; so, early on the next evening, I seated myself on one of the foremost benches in the pit of Drury Lane, having first assured myself that Mrs. Hunter had a part in the night's performance. The play was As You Like It, with Mrs. Hunter in the part of Rosalind, and Mr. Garrick as the melancholy Jaques. Early as it was, the house was fast filling when I took my seat, and I found myself in the midst of a sort of critical club ; a little knot of playgoers Avho came to the evening's entertainment as epicures come to a feast — prepared to enjoy, but still more ready to criticise. ' I wonder Garrick cares to play so insignificant a part,' said one gentleman. ' Nay, sir,' replied a ponderous person in a shabby suit of brown ; ' Jaques is no insignificant part.

He has two of the finest orations in the whole of Shakspeare.' ' But tbe man bas nothing to do. ■ Sir, there is no part in any play where a fine actor will not find something to do. Do you think when the Greek orator talked of action he meant only furious posturings and rushings from one end of the theatre to the other ? No, sir. In that phrase Demosthenes included all those finer movements of physical nature by which a man reveals his emotion, from the hand uplifted to the gods to the faintest quiver of lip or nostril. There are characters in which any stroller can win applause ; Richard the Third, for instance, whom Shakspeare made a sublime incarnation of evil, and in whose mouth Cibber has put such claptrap fustian as can not fail to please the groundlings. But it is in such a part as Hamlet or Jaques the intellectual man can best display his powers, and I think Davy does wisely to undertake the character.

They say he is furiously jealous of this Mrs. Hunter, and that he only brought her forward to mortify Kitty Clive. Sbe has been heard to complain of his unkindness — a frivolous fault-finding spirit that would fain thwart her in every original expression of her art.' Tbe curtain rose upon the first scene, but I, who was chiefly eager to behold Mrs. Hunter, paid little attention to the Shakspearian dialogue. I bad not long to wait, for the second scene began with the entrance of two ladies, and a loud burst of applause from all the house told me that one of these was the paragon. She swept the ground in a low curtsey, and seemed, as she rose, to survey the whole audience with one bright look of gratitude and pleasure. She was indeed a lovely creature, and I think in every part of her exquisite form, in every feature of her radiant face, approached as near perfection as humanity can do.

Upon me those flashing eyes shone with a familiar light, those rosy lips discoursed a well remembered music. I sat dumbfounded, staring in amazement ; for this wonder and divinity of all the town was the woman with whom I bad roved hand in hand beneath the oaks of Hauteville near twenty years ago. The odour of fallen leaves, the' aromatic scent of pine-woods, came back to me as I looked at her. This untutored genius, whom the town had elevated into a goddess, was my foster-sister Mar gery ! Paralyzed by surprise, I sat through three acts of the play gazing at her, fixed as a statue, un conscious of surrounding objects as a sleep-walker. Her acting, like her beauty, seemed to me to be simple perfection. There was a freshness and innocence in her manner I have never since seen in any other actress.

Every look, every action, seemed spontaneous as the singing of a bird. I think, indeed, that she had just the same delight in acting as a skylark has in his rapturous carollings when he soars into that upper heaven almost beyond our ken. For her to act was an intoxica tion ; and once she had entered on the life of the banished duke's daughter, all the cares and memo ries of Mrs. Margery Hunter were blotted from the tablet of her brain, and she had neither griefs nor joys that were not Rosalind's. This she has told me long since that night ; and Mr. Garrick himself has confessed that, although he found her a strolling player in a barn, beyond the rudiments and veriest mechanism of her art he has never been able to teach her anything. All the rest was natural to her, and tbis great man was quick to recognize in her a genius as perfect and innate as his own.

The third act was finished before I stirred from my seat. I had seen Mistress Rosalind in her boyish dress, which was all that womanly coquetry could invent for man's bewitchment, and yet in no smallest detail sinned against feminine modesty. At last I roused myself by an effort from the spell which surprise had cast upon me, and made my way out of the theatre amid all the bustle of a full house, noisy with the bawling of orange-girls and the chatter of the audience, who were pleased to find their tongues at liberty, and made good use of the interval between the acts of the play. Outside the house I inquired my way to the stage door, and here I asked if it would be possible for an old friend to obtain speech with Mrs. Hunter before she left the theatre. ' Not till the play is done, were you her nearest relation,' answered the man in charge of the players' entrance ; ' for Mrs. Hunter will speak to no one while she is acting.

But she sometimes receives company in her dressing-room before leaving the theatre, and if you will tell me your name, I will let her woman know that you desire to see her.' ' It would be better for me to write a note,' I said, ' if you can give me pen, ink, and paper.' This the man was unable to do, so great was the bustle and confusion of people hurrying in and out, and I wondered to discover how many unseen workers were necessary to the production of a play. Finding the man unable to assist me, I ran across to a tavern on the other side of the street, where I wrote a few hasty lines to my foster-sister, entreating her to see me after the play. This I gave to the man, with a crown-piece, and he promised it should be defi\-ered immediately. I was assured he had kept his promise when Mrs. Hunter came on the stage in the scene that followed my return to the house, for tbere was a startled look on her face, and she gazed around tbe auditory in a way she had not done before.

For the moment she had ceased to be Rosalind, and was occupied with her own emotions. I Avas not able to regain my old place among the critics in the centre of the pit, and could get only standing-room in a corner, where I found myself close against a stage-box. While I was gazing at the fair creature on the stage, who, I doubted not, was looking for me among tbe spectators, a voice sounded close at hand that sent a shot through me. It was the voice of my enemy, and it came from the stage-box. 'Who is Mrs. Hunter looking for to-night?' cried Sir Everard Lestrange ; ' I thought she always minded her book, and she tripped twice in that last speech. Who is there in the house to attract the lady's brown eyes ? Tbere sits Horry Walpole grinning at tbe audience. What a dried anatomy it is ! He has begun patching-up some gothic mon strosity at TAvit'nam, and is trying to twist a very decent cottage, in which a man might five, into a compound of Westminster Abbey and his Castle of Otranto, which is only fit for a scene in a pantomime.

And he leads that wretched Richard Bentley the life of a dog, collecting marbles and pictures for him, which, when collected, rarely please his virtuosoship either in price or in quality, for he is as mean as be is critical. Is that Chesterfield yonder ? Good heavens, how old the man is getting ! He must be close upon seventy, and is growing deaf, I hear, into the bargain. That sort of spectacle should be kept at home, Avrapped in flannels and fed with gruel ; it is a reminder as unpleasant as the skull at the Egyptians' feasts. Gad, Vernon, is she not lovely? Had Diana a more perfect form, or Venus a diviner face?' This outburst of rapture and the remarks that had preceded it were spoken in that languid courtly voice which EA-erard Lestrange had always adopted, and were too low to offend the audience.

The curtain presently fell on the fourth act, and I had leisure to observe the gentleman with whom I was so eager for a reckoning. ' I will go straight to his box,' I said to myself; but then it struck me that it would be wiser first to see my foster-sister, and hear all she could tell me about the career of her betrayer. To find the seducer now the avowed and unsuc cessful suitor of his cast-off mistress was a transformation which I should have believed impossible ; and I knew not to what cause I could attribute so marvellous an effect. Was it the spirit of contradic tion that had Avorked this miracle in a bad man's soul ? Was it wounded vanity — the macaroni's base worship of fashion ? I had afterwards reason to know it was a compound of these feelings, a, vile amalgam of obstinacy, conceit, and the fribble's slavish deference to the world's opinion.

The country-girl whom Everard Lestrange lured from her home had soon tired so fine a gentleman ; but the gifted woman whose perfections were the town-talk was a creature he languished to conquer. He had told people that she had been his mistress, and that he had wearied of her and cast her off; but unfor tunately, lying on these subjects was so much the order of the day, that no one could be made to believe the truthful boaster. The curtain once down, the gentlemen in the stage-box gave loose to their tongues ; but as a fashionable profligate's conversation is of all dis courses the least edifying, I will not trouble myself to record it here. I had heard enough to be sure tbat Sir Everard Lestrange was a faithless husband, and that he had pursued, and intended still to pursue, my foster-sister with a resolution that bad more of hate than love. ' I had her in the dust at my feet once, Vernon,' he said, ' and I'll have her there again, and win my wager. ' Faith, it is a wager worth winning, and will make up to you for your losses to Staindale at White's last Aveek.

Was it seven or nine thousand he won from you at a coup ? ' ' Upon my life I think it was but seven. We had been doubling our stakes since dinner, and towards supper-time the play was getting high.' These fine gentlemen were quiet enough during the last act, throughout which Sir Everard Lestrange lolled upon the cushion of his box with folded arms, regarding Mrs. Hunter with a fixed stare that was in itself sufficient to compromise an honest woman. Though he was near enough to the stage to render his presence obrious to her, she betrayed no con sciousness of his existence, but played her part with the most lively, unembarrassed air possible, speaking a very foolish epilogue with enchanting grace and naivete. No sooner had the curtain fallen than I hurried to the stage-door, where I found tbe porter as eager as be bad before been indifferent.

I was to be pleased to go immediately to Mrs. Hunter's dressing room, and a hanger-on of the playhouse was in readiness to conduct me thither. I followed this man with alacrity, by numerous darksome and narrow passages that smelt strongly of tallow and lamp-oil. Alas, poor Margery, under what strange circumstances had we last met and parted ! I had seen her kneeling at my feet, piteous, with clasped hands beseeching my mercy, in that miserable hour of my betrayal, and had hated and spurned the innocent instrument of my undoing. Now, I approached the idol of the town, a peerless brilliant creature, whom every admirer of genius must needs delight to honour. My conductor stopped at a little door in a narrow passage, wiiich seemed to me about on a level with the footman' s gallery, opened it, and introduced me into a small chamber, where I beheld the Rosalind of tbe eA'ening, dressed as she had left the stage, and seated before a toilet-table ligbted witb wax candles, and carelessly bestrewn with a heterogeneous collection of combs, brushes, rouge-pots, false hair, pomanders and pouncet-boxes, poAvdering-machines, and masks to be worn during tbe powdering process, ribbons, fans, laces, feathers, and trinkets of every kind.

An honest-faced Avaiting-woman was folding a brocaded petticoat, while her mistress sat idle, with her face turned towards the door. She sprang to her feet as I entered the room ' Oh, Robert,' she cried, ' what happiness to see you again ! — Leave us, Molly ; this gentleman is my brother ; you can come back in half an hour to dress me.' The woman dropped a curtsey and vanished, leaving me face to face with the loveliest woman I ever looked upon. Yes, I say this, — I, who never loved but one woman, yet could but acknowledge the superior brilliance of this peasant-born beauty to my own pale flower. I loved Dorothea, but from tbis woman I could not withhold the admiration AA'hich is man's natural tribute to perfect beauty. ' My brother,' repeated Margery, with both hands extended to me, as the door closed on the waiting woman ; ' my brother only ! oh, for pity's sake, say I am forgiven !

I was but an instrument in their hands, Robert, an ignorant country-girl, who be lieved again and again, and consented to be deluded anew after every fresh deception. On my soul, Robert, I believed it was your wish to marry me, shameful creature as I was ! He told me so, and I believed him, though he had lied to me a hundred times before.' ' But were you free to marry ? Had there been no previous marriage ? ' ' What! you know of that?' she cried, surprised. ' Of the marriage at the French embassy, yes, Margery.' ' Oh, what a catalogue of infamies I must confess, if I tell you all ! ' she exclaimed. ' He lured me from my home with the most solemn promises— yes, Robert, the most solemn pledges — that I should be his wife. Nothing but that certainty would have tempted^ me, for I never loved him as other women love the men to whom they trust their honour.

I had not tbe excuse that others have. I never really loved him, Robert, — and I had loved another.' This was said in a lower voice, and with infinite tenderness. Then her tone changed to one that expressed only scorn, — scorn of her betrayer, scorn of herself. ' It was my own vanity betrayed me, Robert, aided by bis deceitful tongue. His artful compli ments set me thinking of my own merits. He made whatever beauty God gave me for a blessing, an instrument for my destruction. He worked upon every weakness of my nature — is the devil himself so perfect in the art of temptation?— until he made me discontented with my peaceful innocent life, and eager to be a lady. And when he had fully succeeded in poisoning my mind thus, he swore, as if vol. ni. c reluctantly, in a kind of desperate passion of love and devotion for me, that, sooner than lose me, he would seal his OAvn ruin in the world by making me his wife.

Robert, as I have a soul to be saved, I had resisted every dishonourable proposal. But when he swore this, under circumstances that would have deceived any ignorant creature like me, I belieA-ed and trusted him. David Garrick .himself is no better actor. I will not pause to tell you tbe story of my flight. I had scarce reached London when I found myself in the hands of AA'retches of my own sex, and they, by arts too vile for these lips to describe, compassed my undoing ; and then they and he, the arch-deceiver, told me to be happy. They swore there was scarce a lady of quality in the toAvn more honest than I, and asked, derisively, if I wanted to be more innocent tban my betters. Mr. Lestrange took me to France, and gave me the seducer's common recompense to his victim, in the shape of trinkets and fine clothes, masquerades and suppers.

I was introduced into a Avorld as wicked — I dare venture to declare — as tbat on which Heaven rained fire and brimstone ; and when I was bold enough to declare my hatred of tbis garish hell, my master told me I was no mate for a gentleman. Whatever charm he had once seen in me was washed from my face by repentant tears, and he wearied of me in less than a month, then tried to sell me to an elderly libertine of his acquaintance — it was the custom of the country, he said — and finding his slave rebellious, told me I must go back to the home I had abandoned, and tbat as a reward my folly and peevishness had ill deserved, I should return thither an honest woman, the wife of his led-captain. The marriage was to be only a form. Mr. Hay wanted no wife, but was willing to sell his name for a twenty-pound note.

I wanted to go home, Robert ; and it would have been something to call myself a wife, and to have a certificate of marriage, so I consented to this shameful proposal, and the ceremony took place. Alas ! it availed me nothing ; my tormentor was now seized with a fancy for detaining me in his grasp, and I was carried hither and thither at the will of a profligate tyrant. And so I was at last brought to a lodging near Covent Garden, to be again in the power of those female wretches whose tyranny was even worse than his, for it was coarser. If I did not sink to the veriest infamy and become like tfiem, a wretch for hire, I have to thank God, not Everard Lestrange. From this hell upon earth c one way of escape was offered me. . I was told that my marriage with Mr. Hay was no marriage, for be had half a dozen wives in as many countries, but that you were willing to marry me — you had been told my true story, and were yet willing.

The reprobate Roderick Ainsleigh's son could stoop to a baseness impossible for Mr. Lestrange. This is what my destroyer told me. Oh, Robert, forgive me, forgive me ! I believed him, and lent myself to his villanous plot. My eyes were opened when you spurned me — still more fully opened when I saw you seized by those ruffians. Then came a pause — a long oblivion of fever and delirium — and I woke in a garret in that thrice-cursed house by Covent Garden, to find myself watched by one poor creature Avho had always pitied me. She was not an honest Avoman, but sbe had what those other harpies had not — a heart. She had been bred among strolling players, bad come to London to play small parts in one of tbe patent theatres, and, being dismissed for incompetency, had fallen into the shameful ways of the wretches with whom I found her.

What time she lived with them I know not, but she was no longer young. They were tired of her, she of them ; she was the drudge of the house ; and knowing my desire to escape, she offered to depart with me, and to put me in a way of earning my living among her old friends the country players. I thanked and blessed her for the thought ; and one night Ave stole away unquestioned, while the noisy inmates of tbat place of infamy were carousing. My friend kept her promise. She put me in the way of earning a living — such a living, Robert ! — but it was something for so forlorn a creature as I to live honestly. For a long time I was the most mechanical drudge that ever slaved at a master's bidding. But one day I awoke to a sudden pleasure in my art ; I, the tragedy-queen of a booth, I heard of Mrs. Yates and Mrs. Pritcbard, Mrs. Woffington and Mrs. Clive ; and the thought came to me like an inspiration, that I might win a name like theirs — I, the castaway, might become more famous tban the ambassador's son who had flung me into the gutter.

With tbis fancy came a new pleasure in my art ; life was changed for me. I no longer brooded on my own miseries. I thought of Juliet's sorrows and Lady Macbeth's ambition, the madness of Constance, the shame of Jane Shore. From that hour, I suppose, I began to be an actress. It was not till two years afterwards that Mr. Garrick saw me, and brought me to London. Perhaps you know the rest.' • Yes, Margery, I know that you are now the most famous woman in London, and that the name under which you have won renown is stainless.' ' That name, yes, Robert ; but not the name of my mother's daughter. Tbere are grand houses open to receive me in London, fine ladies eager to shower favours on me in the caprice of an idle moment ; but the cottage in which I was born is shut against me. How shall I repay Sir Everard Lestrange for tbe misery of my youth, the bitter remorse of my womanhood !

Do you think I for give or forget, Robert, or that I do not hunger for revenge ? ' ' Leave that to me, Margery. I have a catalogue of wrongs that only blood can blot out ; and you have your revenge in this scoundrel's public pursuit of you, which must end in his public mortifi cation.' ' What ! you know of that too, Robert ? Yes ; Everard Lestrange bas done his utmost to dishonour tbe name I now bear, as he dishonoured that which I inherited from my father. You could never imagine tbe obstinacy of his pursuit — it is an unrelenting persecution. They even tell me he has laid a wager that he will make me his avowed mistress be fore this year is over. And do you think he loves me, even with the libertine's base passion? No, Robert, his passion is a mixture of vanity and malice. I was once his slave, and although he cast me off, he cannot forgive me for having escaped him.