The Dean's Daughter; or, the days we live in

Front matter

THE DEAN'S DAUGHTER; OS, THE DAYS WE LIVE IN. BY MRS. GORE, AUTHORES3 OF "MOTHERS AND DAUGHTERS," "MRS. ARMTTAGE," "THE BANKER'S WIFE," &C. &C. "Thus we play the fools with the time; and the spirits of the wise sit in the clouds and mock us." — Shakspeare. IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. I. LONDON: HURST AND BLACKETT, PUBLISHERS, SUCCESSORS TO HENRY COLBURN, 13, GREAT MAULBORODGH STREET. 1853. LONDON : Printed by Schulze and Co., 13, Poland Street. TO CHARLES DICKENS, ESQ., THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED, AS A SLIGHT TEIBITE OF REGARD, RESPECT, AND ADMIRATION.

Chapter I

A friend, or sister more beloved ; My playmate when we both were clothed alike. COLERIDGE. Of the nine thousand seven hundred and thirteen inhabitants of the cathedral town of R , none perhaps more popular than the Dean. The qualities which had won this universal affection were chiefly of a negative order. Early trouble and a natural deficiency of animal spirits, had endowed him with a serene gravity, highly becoming his vocation; and when, on rare occasions, he emerged from vol. I. B his stall to the pulpit, the spinster coteries of R , subdued by the charm of his high bred deportment and attenuated features, regarded his grey head as that of a saint. The indolence which estranged him from their whist-tables, and the dyspepsia which enforced abstemiousness and sobriety, passed, somewhat gratuitously, at R for Christian virtues.

But that he was mild and unassum ing, though ennobled by birth as well as a dignitary of the Church, were merits no one could dispute. Eminent, however, as was his present position, the Dean had undergone .his share of the rough visi tings of adversity. "While his elder brother, Lord Mildenhall, enjoyed an income of fifteen thousand per annum, he, Reginald Mordaunt, was one of the nine younger children who divided among them as many hundreds ; and though the army and navy, and the results of Egypt, Dunkirk, Assam, and the yellow fever, had decimated the tribe, Reginald, the best looking but puniest of the family, had been fostered in a humble berth in the Church ; that he might eventually repay him self for the cares of curatehood, by the fine family living of Mildenhall. As if covetous of the perils conceded to his martial brothers, he chose to create to himself the danger of starvation, by marrying, while still penniless and unbeneficed, a wife as high-born and poor, as delicate and helpless as himself.

To the shame of his cloth be it spoken, it was a runaway match ; and the families of both parties, having before their eyes the fear of involuntary contributions to their maintenance, resolutely disowned the young couple. After contending four years against sickness and poverty, Lady Mary Mordaunt died ; if not for want of the neces saries of life, certainly for want of its luxuries. Constitutionally consumptive, the damp at mosphere of Bassingdon Parsonage did not agree with her ; but she could not afford to change it. Airings were prescribed for the invalid ; but she had no carriage. Her bed- B room looked to the north ; but her husband's humble dwelling afforded no alternative. Robust people talk of the duty of looking such evils in the face, and conforming ourselves to the exigencies of our position in life ; and certain of Lady Mary's severely rational country neighbours hinted that the parson's wife gave way too much, that her husband spoiled her, that a little exertion would do her worlds of good.

Thus taunted, she did exert herself, poor soul ; but, having brought into the world a little girl as feeble as her two elder children were strong and promising she fell into a rapid decline, and found refuge from further suffering in an untimely grave. The censorious, though touched for a moment by pity and remorse, soon began to find as much fault with the afflicted widower, as formerly with his delicate wife. " It was really scandalous to see a minister of the gospel, like Mr Mordaunt, take on so unreasonably ! Anybody would suppose he was dissatisfied with the dispensations of Providence. Instead of saying ' God's will be done,' as became his cloth, he was always fretting. When his parishioners called on business at the Parsonage, they were sure to find him in tears ; and the sexton complained that his reverence was perpetually loitering in the church-yard, near his late lady's grave stone : a pretty example of resignation to the parish of Bassingdon !"

A little later, and they accused him not only of rebellion against Providence, but of ingra titude towards his august mother-in-law, the Countess of Bournemouth; who condescended to relieve his hands of his sickly infant, by removing it to all the luxury and watchfulness of her dowager residence at Hephanger Hall. It was not for them to interpret Reginald Mordaunt's bitter reflection, that the tardy mercy vouchsafed by his wife's family to her child, might, if accorded to herself, have rescued her from a bed of sickness — an early grave. And though it was something to have his little motherless girl well tended and provided for, he would have been better pleased to part with the two noisy boys, whose health and spirits were almost too much for his careworn mind. Mordaunt was really an invalid ; really unable to bear at all times the companionship of children.

But a bad education had found and left him selfish and inert; and with the plea of domestic grief to sanctify his habits of indolence, he soon became a confirmed vale tudinarian. Sorrow and sloth mutually nou rished each other ; and though a kind-hearted man, the curate was often peevish, even with his boys, when their sports disturbed his occupations. By the time he bad brooded five years over his affliction and the fate he accused himself of having inflicted on his lovely young wife, Lady Mary would have had a sorry time of it, could she have returned to earth, a second Eurydice, to listen to his murmurs, and contemplate his nervous head-aches. The widower of Bassingdon Parsonage was, however, fond of the two boys, whose pastimes molested him, and who were beginning to suffer from his neglect.

Though little Reginald had attained his ninth year and Willy his eighth, he would not hear of sending them to school; and while he solaced himself with green tea and sal-volatile, his elder son was usually to be found ravaging some tall tree in the orchard ; while Willy, of a more sociable turn, was en joying a game at hop-scotch with the village ragamuffins. In spite of these clandestine exploits, their life was a weary one. The daily lessons be stowed on them by their father fell as heavy on their young minds as is usually the case where teacher and pupil are equally reluctant. They saw that the close of the task was as great a relief to him as to themselves ; and in such deference to his infirmities had they been reared, that when once he retired to his own room to enjoy one of his habitual fits of poorli ness, no act of tyranny practised on them by the servants was a sufficient plea for intrusion.

Papa's sanctum was sacred. The elder boy had more than once betaken himself a truant to the woods, and been lost and found again, without any one having dared disturb, on his account, the parent who had found refuge from the cares of life in the mysteries of a patent medicine chest. Time passed on ; till one summer day, some seven years after the death of Lady Mary, the two boys were preparing to enjoy a holiday, produced by their father's absence from home on compulsory business with the bishop of his diocese. On the threadbare carpet of the un tidy parlour lay Reginald, arranging flies and hooks in the sheet of waste paper which served him for fishing-book ; while Willy, tiptoe on a rickety chair, was searching the bookshelves which contained their shabby juvenile library, for a volume less thumbed and familiar than the rest, to beguile a day in the woods, between the sports of bird's-nesting and squirrel-snaring.

When lo ! the sound of wheels, and a carriage rolled to the door. Not the rattling dog-cart of the tax-gatherer, — not the one-horse chaise of a neighbouring curate, — not the family coach of the squire of the parish ; but a handsome travelling chariot, with posters, and a scarcely perceptible coronet on the rail. In a moment all the curs in the stable-yard were on the bark, and the two equally shaggy boys on the qui vive. Leaning on each other's shoulders, then bright sunburnt faces close together, like two over-ripe hazel-nuts in a tawny husk, they peered anxiously from the window ; awaiting the result of their slovenly servant maid's declaration that " Master was out for the day." The voluminous old lady to whom the information was addressed, bustled, notwithstanding, out of the carriage ; followed by the tripsome figure of a richly-dressed little girl.

Defying all remonstrances, the self-constituted guest per sisted in paying off the post-boy, who, at her bidding, had already conveyed into the entry a chaise-seat and other encumbrances ; and now undertook to deposit at the village-inn the carriage for which there was no room in the parsonic chaise-house. And all this was accomplished before the two astonished lads could be half made to understand that the fussy old lady was their quondam nurse, Mrs. Hatley ; and the be-frilled little girl their sister, Margaret Mordaunt. The little stranger had no share in their thoughts or recollections. They had sel dom heard her name. Of the mother who was with their Father in Heaven, or the sister who was in consequence estranged from them, Mr. Mordaunt had never nerved his courage to talk to the boys.

Living in selfish dread of painful emotions, as fatal to his precarious health, he allowed them to grow up in utter ignorance of their family connections. Indignant at the coolness of her reception, and disgusted by the aspect of the mean room and staring, rough-looking boys, the little girl insisted on rushing back into the carriage. " I want to go back to Hephanger, Hatley. I won't stay here. I want to go home !" cried the disappointed child. " But you are at home, my dear," remonstrated the nurse, after various useless endea vours to propitiate her refractory charge. " No ! this can't be my papa's house !" per sisted the child, angrily resisting Mrs. Hatley's attempts to untie her bonnet-strings. " Didn't you hear me tell the post-boy, my darling, to drive to Bassingdon Parsonage ? And here we are at Bassingdon; and these two young gentlemen is your dear little brothers, Master Regy and Master Willy, whom you've heerd me tell of, hundreds and hundreds of times ; and your dear papa, please God, will be here afore night."

The pampered child eyed the " dear little brothers " askance, as if strongly inclined to disown the relationship : the two shy, shabby boys being quite as unaccordant with her pre conceived notions of life and manners, as the Parsonage parlour. Regy and Willy appeared to her eyes to lack only hurdy-gurdys and white mice, to resemble the ragged Savoyards of the London streets, occasionally relieved with sixpences by grandma. She still insisted on immediate departure; till her childish resent ments ended in a burst of tears. After sundry angry glances at the crying child, as though he longed to silence her as he would have done some village brat, by a good pummelling, Reginald gathered up his flies, and sulked off to his solitary sport. But Willy was moved to sympathy by the tears that deluged those waxen cheeks and soiled those silken curls ; and as soon as the haughty little lady could be prevailed on to disengage her face from Mrs. Hatley's lap, in which she had been stifling her sobs, she found her swarthy brother endeavouring to pacify her by the offer of his toys ; a torn picture-book, and a few mis matched marbles.

At sight of these humble treasures, the pompous nurse upraised her eyes and hands to Heaven. While drying the eyes of her spoiled nursUng, she could not refrain from blessing the dear little heart of Master Willy — in former days her favourite in the Bassingdon nursery. But her benediction was not unaccompanied by mutterings that " it was unackiountable no preparation should have been made to receive them ; or that Mr. Mordaunt should not so much as have announced their coming. Still more unackiountable that the dear young gentle men should be so neglected. — Well, well, — poor dear Lady Mary was after all, mayhap, taken from evil to come !"

Chapter II

Like sportive deer, they chased about And shouted as they ran ; Turning to mirth the things of earth As only boyhood can. THOMAS HOOD The fact was that the hypochondriac of Bassingdon — sorrow-stricken, sickness-stricken, and poverty-stricken — had reduced himself to so miserable a state of mental prostration, that he scarcely dared to open a letter, or act, or speak, or write, lest his selfish sensitiveness should experience some new torture. When his mother-in-law, the Dowager Coun tess of Bournemouth, first intimated, by the hand of her prim maiden daughter, Lady Milicent Bourne, that she was desirous of placing her little grand-daughter under his pro tection for a few weeks, during a sojourn she intended to make at the German Spas, he despatched in reply the indispensable assent ; but postponed the task of alluding to the subject in his own household.

Sufficient unto the day of her coming, would be the shock of Httle Margaret's arrival. The disastrous circum stances of her birth connected themselves so painfully with the loss of his beloved wife, that she seemed far more intimately united in his mind with the Mary whom he still mourned, than the boys, who were no less her children. On his return home to dinner, on the even ing of her arrival, the sight of one so sadly recalling the fair and delicate being who had given her birth, completely overcame him. Even the nurse who had ministered to the death-bed of his wife, and placed her in her coffin, was an object sacred in his sight ; and little Margaret, strained in his arms, was terrified by the emotions of the pale, black-coated, gray-haired stranger, whom she was bidden to embrace and honour.

" You must not be afraid of papa," whispered Willy, when he led her back into the corner where his shattered playthings had previously begun to engage her attention ; "I never saw him so before. He never kisses, or cries over ms. Most likely he will soon notice you as little as he does Regy and my self." The boy was mistaken. Papa seemed never weary of admiring the grace and elegance of the little fairy, who so strikingly recalled the idol wrested from his arms. Her coming was as an angel visit, vouchsafed from above ; the blooming of a choice flower in his dreary desert. Severely did he tax his narrow means to pro cure for little Margaret the luxuries to which she was accustomed. Even the fussy, palaver ing Mrs. Hatley was to be conciliated for her sake ; and the anxious father was almost grateful to Willy for the tenderness of his endeavours to temper the wind of adversity to their shorn lamb.

Reginald, indeed, still continued to regard the intruder with the eye of a Cain. " Why was the girl to be treated as a princess, pray, and they as paupers ? Why couldn't she stay at Hephanger during their grandmother's ab sence, if she was too good and great to share their hard fare ?" But though Willy had nothing to urge in reply, a natural instinct prompted him to vie with his father in ministering to the comfort of one who seemed strangely superior to their common fate. Till he beheld his little aristocratic sister, he had not supposed that a being so beautiful existed on earth. Accustomed only to the dirt and uncouthness of the village clodhoppers, the high-bred delicacy of Margaret's features and complexion appeared supernatural. Her light step, her musical intonation, her thrilling laugh (and, reconciled to the parsonage by her father's idolatry and Willy's submission to her vol. i. c whims, that laugh was not unfrequent) seemed to endow her with more than mortal attraction.

If she sometimes bewildered her rustic com panion by descriptions of the grandeur of Hephanger, its ponies, aviaries, graperies, and tennis-court, she imparted far less charm to those remote regions than to the morsel of rough lawn attached to the parsonage ; or the stream in whose crazy boat they shared their breakfast, and their " Robinson Crusoe." " Chassez le naturel," says a great writer ; " il revient au galop." The shabby and torn books containing the histories of " Philip Quarll" and " Goody Two Shoes," soon be came more precious to little Margaret than the morocco-bound volumes which inculcated at Hephanger the lessons of demurer teachers. And when recalled to her adopted home, at the close of two happy months, by the return of Lady Bournemouth, she deeply regretted the quiet Parsonage, which her departure, for two of its inmates at least, reconverted into a wilderness.

Amid the softer scenery of Hephanger, the child could not forget her kind father, or her loving, sunny-faced brother. From morning till night, Lady Bournemouth was fated to hear of nothing but " darling Willy," and his good qualities ; and it needed all the counter evidence of Nurse Hatley, to convince the perplexed dowager that she was not grand mother to an angel. " I'm sure, my lady, it would go to your ladyship's heart to see them two dear boys, that is those two poor young gentlemen, so shamefully neglected !" was the nurse's version of the Bassingdon memoirs. " Poor Mr. Mor daunt's so wrapped up in his troubles, as one may say, my lady, that he sees to nothing. The housekeeping is all at sixes and sevens ; and I'm sure I never expected to see my late dear lady's sons a wearing ragged shirts as coarse as hopsack; or a adding up their sums on a bit of slate, for all the world like parish children.

But that's not the worst. Master Regy's language, my lady, is a scandal c to listen to; and even his brother, though better spoken, has took up the 'orrid lower-class principles of the village scapegraces he's allowed to consort with." The cautious dowager, whom resentment of her daughter's wilful marriage had prevented from soothing with kindness and creature comforts the last days of her favourite child, considered perhaps that she had done enough for the widower by relieving him of a third of his domestic burthen ; and for some time, she turned a deaf ear to the testimony of the nurse. But Mrs. Hatley knew how to reach a vulnerable point. " As sure as you're alive, my lady," she resumed, " them young gentlemen, if not better looked after, will grow from bad to worse, and bring disgrace upon their family, my lady; and 'specially their poor, dear, blessed, innercent little sister, Miss Margaret, whom your ladyship's so proud on."

Such a denunciation startled even the im perturbable Lady Bournemouth. She had been sufficiently shamed by the elopement of one of her two rigidly-reared daughters. It was time that something should be done to arrest the delinquency of the new generation. She had allowed her daughter to become a victim : she would at least prevent her grandsons from becoming scamps. Her limited jointure, (she assured herself, and Lady Milicent strongly confirmed the opinion,) did not admit of her placing them at a suitable school. But she would use her best exertions in their behalf. Since their poor inert father did not choose to attend to his duties, she would write to his brother, Lord Mildenhall ; and represent to him that the boy who was presumptive heir to his title and estates was likely, in the interim, to become a rogue and a vagabond.

Write she did ; just such a letter as long winded dowagers indite out of the abundance of their arid natures ; prolix, obscure, and emi nently calculated to defeat its own object. After working his way through its four diffuse pages, Lord Mildenhall had some right to consider himself accused of starving his brother, and teaching his nephews to curse, swear, and play at hop-scotch. It was clearly made out to be his fault that the present in cumbent of his best living — a living so fat that, from generation to generation, a son of the House of Mordaunt, talis qualis, was educated for the Church — possessed so hale a constitution. It was clearly made out to be his fault that the Honourable and Reverend Reginald, who, by the will of the late Lord Mildenhall, was to succeed him, still grovelled on, a curate.

The Viscount was exceeding wroth ; not (to do him justice) with the unoffending Reginald, but with the meddling dowager. To her, he addressed one of his stiffest, presenting-com pliments letters ; stating that, " having received no application from his brother for pecuniary assistance, he had no reason to suppose him in necessitous circumstances." But the same post which conveyed this haughty reply, enlisted the services of a third person in behalf of poor Reginald and his boys. Lord Mildenhall, if as wanting as his brother in energy and knowledge of the world, had found his deficiences more strongly forced upon his admission by his responsibilities in life ; and he was consequently one of those members of the highest class of society, who never act without the advice of a man of business.

His solicitor, the keeper of his conscience as well as of his title-deeds, felt for him as well as thought for him. Whether to draw out a lease, issue an ejectment, or decide on the dowry of his daughters or pin-money of his Viscountess, the family solicitor was his unfailing authority. If he had preferment to give away, money to invest, or a ministerial appeal to evade, Wraxley and Lumm were to be consulted ; or rather Wraxley by himself Wraxley ; for the Co. of the concern in Gray's Inn had no existence for the Viscount. Wraxley, in short, was the master who had predominated over him from the day of their obtaining probate of the will of the late Viscount, to that in which his lord ship now appealed to him for advice touching the best and speediest method of affording relief to his brother.

The solicitor perfectly understood that by the "best," his noble client meant the cheapest. For he was a man who justified the confidence of his patron, by cautious care over the family resources ; and though incapable of suggesting any measure obnoxious to the laws of the realm, or indeed of what is called " propriety," his notions were, perhaps, more strictly prudential than altogether became the coronet of his em ployer. Such a man knew better than to propose granting an allowance, or even a gratuity, to the brother so inconveniently poor and absurdly prolific. Though the Mordaunt family had been pruned of its junior branches by climate and casualties, so that only two remained extant, he remarked that any undue act of liberality on the part of the Viscount might establish a dangerous precedent.

He added, however, an extenuating alternative. " Mr. Mordaunt," he suggested, " having expiated by much privation the imprudence of his early marriage in opposition to the advice of the best of brothers, and his precarious health and circumstances appear ing to render urgent an extension of his income, he, Lord Mildenhall's humble adviser, presumed to suppose that an application to the Govern ment so long supported in both the Upper and Lower House by his lordship's vote and in fluence, could not fail to procure for the curate of Bassingdon some profitable advancement in his profession." No time was lost in acting upon advice so thoughtful; and a grateful Administration fully justified the solicitor's good opinion, by doing all, and more than all it was requested. The astonished Mordaunt was almost aghast at finding preferment steal upon him like a thief in the night ; and lo ! the two boys were forth with invested in broadcloth and despatched to Eton, and the compunctions of the old nurse and the dowager set at rest.

Lady Bournemouth, indeed, went so far as to whisper to her daughter that it would not much signify if the reverend rector of Milden hall survived a few years longer. His successor presumptive was now amply provided for, and in circumstances to indulge in half a dozen new ailments.

Chapter III

Sa nature, tendre et faible, n'avait d'autre force que celle d'inertie. II n'opposa aucune resistance dans la lutte avec ses malheurs ; et laissa lachement la vague passer sur lui. — lebegue. Seven years of apprenticeship to good for tune now elapsed, without affecting any further change in the destinies of Lord Mildenhall's brother, save that of converting a melancholy prebendary into a grave archdeacon, and a grave archdeacon into a still graver dean. But even this aggrandisement did not render him a contented man. The chains of care had been worn, till they had corroded his very nature. In spite of the blessings he enjoyed, Dr. Mordaunt still seemed to fancy himself the creditor of Providence. On quitting Bassingdon, a spot replete with painful associations, he chose to believe that he could be happy in no other home ; and when his brother made it a condition of their recon ciliation that the boys should be sent to a public school, Mordaunt, to whom their company had been as a millstone round his neck, complained fretfully of their loss.

" Poor fellows ! they had never been parted from him. He had taught them all they knew. He did not know how he should do without them." Even after his removal from his cheerless parsonage, to the savoury dinners and chirruping tea-parties of R , where he was welcomed as became the brother of a viscount, and a well looking widower, (little more than five and forty years of age, though in temperament and feelings threescore) , he led almost as retired a life as in his obscure village. Camomile tea was a beverage dearer to his digestion than the best of claret ; and in the course of a year or two, he resigned himself and his dyspepsia into the hands of a solemn jesuitical-looking butler, who took care to bring on a fit of the gout when ever his Very Reverend master talked of a visit to Mildenhall Rectory, to which he had by this time succeeded ; but where a highly-trust worthy curate ministered efficiently in his stead.

Even among those who believed in the infirmity of health proclaimed by the Dean and attested by the stillness and soberness of his habits of life, there were some who ex pressed surprise that his daughter, now a charming girl of seventeen, was not recalled from Hephanger to preside at the Deanery. But excuses were readily found. Dr. Mor daunt was far too great an invalid to undertake the duty of introducing her into society ; while Lady Bournemouth was of an age and temper to dislike any change in her establishment. Nor was Lady Milicent sorry to have her attendance on the peevish dowager lightened by the company of the kind, pleasant-tempered girl, into which Margaret had progressed. There was every reason, in short, why the young lady should remain quiet at Hephanger, and her father still quieter at the Deanery : every reason, except that Margaret herself was pining after the sympathies of younger companionship than a querimonious grand mother, and cross-grained aunt ; and that the Dean, though still personating to himself the part of chief mourner for the wife he had so long survived, was gradually losing all sense of paternal responsibility.

The tears shed over the memory of Lady Mary had produced, like the drippings of the Knaresborough well, a fine petrifaction. His eldest son, meanwhile, progressed slowly, at Eton, from a sullen fag into a tyrannic master ; and from the bully of a public school into an insolent fellow-commoner. Overgrown and athletic, many of those who mistake sullenness for dignity, pronounced him to be a fine young man; and among them, luckily for himself, was his uncle Lord Milden hall ; who, when he found that nothing further was required of him in behalf of his nephews, called upon them one day at Eton, and received a high character of his elder nephew (who, as a sap, was a favourite with the head-master,) and to recognise in him a sac simile of the ungainly Mordaunt race. From that day, he adopted him as a favourite, and invited him frequently to the Abbey.

The Mildenhalls were advanced in years. The three daughters, of whom their family consisted, of whom one only remained single, were to divide between them the unentailed estates ; while the honours and Mildenhall Abbey must des cend to the Dean of R and his issue male ; so that there was every reason for rejoicing that Reginald would represent them worthily in those moral and physical defects, which, at Mildenhall, passed for family features. Thus estranged from the Deanery, and strengthening his worst quabties by companionship with a proud, cold, selfish race, the elder son gradually lost sight of his father and brother. He was perfectly satisfied so to do. He preferred a spot where he was made more of than at R . Nor was there a grain of sympathy, beyond the natural instincts of brotherhood, between him and Willy ; who had been justly described to Lord Mildenhall on his memorable visit to Eton, as an idle, careless scapegrace, likely to prove a source of much anxiety to his friends.