A Lady in her own Right; a novel

Chapter I

A FAMILY group stood at the door of a country house in Herefordshire. The quaint picturesque house, with its many gables and projecting windows, was called Oldcourt, and gave its name to a small village which had gradually clustered around it. The group at the door consisted of a gentleman who might have turned sixty; of his wife, who had seen fewer birthdays, perhaps, by ten ; of an only son who had counted twenty-five, and whose clerical dress at once denoted his profession ; and of a young lady of nineteen. The three persons first mentioned were waving their adieux to some friends whose retreating carriage swept down the drive. The demoiselle, her eyes fixed on the ground, stood motionless, as if she had little interest in the matter. u Yet the countenance, gradually lifted as the sound of the wheels died away, was neither sullen nor unintelli gent.

The lustrous dark eyes were full of life and feeling ; the wide and finely arched brow bespoke both intellect and refinement. The elder Mr. Arundel turned to her with a grave look, which, in spite of his genial face, almost amounted to reproach. "I am going to find serious fault with you, Lady Rainford," he said. The young lady looked at him inquiringly, and saw that he was in earnest. Then, as if deprecating his censure, she laid her hand on his arm and replied, "I guess what you are going to blame me for; but indeed I can't help it, I can't alter my nature." "A very inadmissible plea, Carry; a professed inability to correct our errors simply means a desire to persist in them. Now let me say that the habitual indifference with which you treat our guests — those, for instance, who have just left us — is a very serious error.

" Dear Mr. Arundel, what can I do ? — Is it possible for me to feign a deep interest in Mrs. Marriott's hourly bulletins as to the progress of her baby's last tooth, or to go into ecstasies when Edward Thomas recites ' The spacious furmanent on high ' ? Upon my word, 1 can't do it. I know I ought to have condoled with him, like his amiable governess, when he roared so to cram himself with green currants; but I am afraid, in her place, I should simply have introduced him to the nearest birch." "Now, Lady Rainford," broke in young Ralph Arun del, "I won't hear you slander yourself by pretending to dislike children. You made a complete pet of Char lotte Marriott." " Yes, because she amused me, and liked to hear fairy tales," replied her perverse ladyship, who had often a trick of making herself out worse than she was.

" I would have been as civil to her parents if they had cared for the 'Arabian Nights,' or for the stories of King Arthur. But I could not get up a breathless interest with Mr. Marriott about the Gloucester cattle show and his prize heifer." "No one blames you," cried Ralph, smiling, "for not caring about prize heifers on their own account ; but it would do you no harm if a matter of so much interest to your neighbour had, for that reason, a little for yourself." " Besides, you may be misunderstood," said Mr. Arundel. " Your indifference may be set down to pride." " Or rudeness," laughed the culprit. "Or want of heart," observed Mrs. Arundel, patting her cheek. "A charge you would be sure to believe!" said the younger lady, twining her arm round the elder one. " Or," pursued Mr. Arundel with wicked gravity, b2 " your silence might be ascribed to shyness, or ignorance of social courtesies."

The maiden, who had seemed perfectly unconcerned by the former suppositions respecting her, was curiously, even painfully, affected by the last. By degrees her whole face was suffused by a blush so crimson that, to conceal it, she stooped for the rake that lay on the ground, and used it rather wildly in scattering the newly mown grass over the lawn. Mr. and Mrs. Arundel, and Ralph, stroll down the walk, inviting Lady Rainford to accompany them. But the latter is still too much engrossed with her rake to answer. Thus there is an opportune pause, of which we shall take advantage to say a few words touching the recent interlocutors. The elder Mr. Arundel was a man of what is termed good family. We mention this as a fact which the reader can take for what it is worth. Even in our day there are theorists who connect pure blood with noble qualities — a view which we need not dispute if its necessary converse be admitted, that wherever there are noble qualities there must be pure blood.

Mr. Arundel had inherited not only an old name but some fortune, improved in early life by fair business as a Chancery barrister. He had been the intimate friend of the late Lord Rainford's grandfather. The conduct of more than one Chancery suit had brought Mr. Arun del into close connexion with the Rainford family, and in retiring from his profession into Herefordshire, he had consented, from motives of friendship rather than of profit, to take the management of the Rainford estates which were situated in the same county. The old lord died, and his son and heir, who was at the time ill abroad of a mortal sickness, survived him but a few months, never, indeed, returning alive to England. It was then discovered, to the surprise and somewhat to the indignation of his relatives, that the new lord had married abroad, and had left a widow with two very young children.

Of these the elder, who now succeeded to the Rain ford title and estates, was a boy of three. Caroline, his infant sister, was a weak and ailing child, and the affections of the widowed Lady Rainford were centred in her bright and healthy boy. Her husband had died intestate, but at her request Mr. Arundel continued to manage the Rainford property. Lady Rainford loved travel and the life of capitals, and it was not eventually difficult for Mr. Arundel to persuade her to resign the Honourable Caroline Faulkner (Faulkner was the family name of the Rainfords) to his wife's care for the greater part of every year. Country air and quiet, he urged, were most desirable for the delicate child ; so the woman of the world at once indulged her inclinations, and flattered herself that by doing so she exhibited her maternal solicitude.

The consequence was that, with the exception of the winter months, when the young widow resided at the family seat in Herefordshire, mother and daughter spent their lives apart. Still more restricted was the inter course between Caroline and her brother. The latter was his mother's inseparable companion in London or on her continental tours, until he was dismissed by his tutor to Eton, which seat of juvenile learning he quitted in due time for the university. At Oxford a malignant fever, either aggravated or induced by bathing after exhausting efforts in a boat race, suddenly closed the young nobleman's career. The shock of this event was almost fatal to Lady Rainford, who was at the time in Germany. After a brief visit to Rainford, which was now become insup portable to her, Lady Rainford, refusing the society of her daughter, again repaired to the continent for a season.

This calamity had occurred more than a year before the opening of our narrative. The grief of Caroline for the loss of her brother, though sincere, was necessarily less keen and lasting than it would have been had the ties of nature been drawn closer by companionship. As it was, she could not to the full extent realise her bereavement ; but she idealised it. The ill-starred heir of Rainford became a sort of poetic hero in his sister's fancy, and in thinking of him, she mourned rather for the creation of her own romance than for an actual being. It will not be surprising, then, that her sorrow had gradually subsided into a gentle and somewhat vague regret. The young lady's health, too, so long preca rious, had suddenly improved within the last two years, and she could not but feel the renovation of spirit derived from a blessing so long withheld from her.

The worldly position of Caroline Faulkner had been greatly altered by her brother's death. The Rainford peerage had originally been granted as the reward of signal military services to the House of Lancaster. In default of male heirs in the direct line, the title de scended to direct female issue before collateral branches or their offspring could inherit. It had been the design of the Crown by this provision to prevent, if possible, the succession of the first Lord Rainford's younger son, who was a partisan of the House of York. At the time of our narrative there was no male claimant in the direct line surviving. Thus it fell, that on her brother's death Caroline exchanged the importance attached to very moderate expectations from her mother, for a rent-roll of something less than twenty thousand per annum, and the dignity of baroness in her own right.

For an education, which, on account of her delicate health, had been necessarily wanting in continuity and method, the baroness was indebted to Mrs. Arundel and to such masters as the town of Hereford, which was not far distant, could supply. Her formal education, however, was far less influential on her character than those tastes and modes of thinking which she had insensibly acquired from her favourite authors. To say the truth, the hours of the young invalid had been whiled away by a course of reading only too free and desultory. Without any desire to disparage that imaginative culture wanting which no character is, in the noblest sense, either wise or practical, it must be owned that in this case an overdeveloped imagination needed the correctives of matter-of-fact acquirements and a larger knowledge of real persons and circumstances.

Unbounded generosity, chivalrous honour, and external grace — the attributes which her pure but exacting mind had drawn from the heroes of song or fiction — formed the ideal standard by which the lady tried all who approached her. Of imagination's two lessons she had only studied that which bids us aspire to, and demand the perfect. She lacked the teaching, perhaps still more precious, which discloses to us the germs of what is noble under common or even uncouth forms. Thus, while her heart would thrill at a deed of heroism, self-sacrifice, or kindness, her appreciation of the doer would be instantly chilled by faults which were merely on the surface. Mrs. Marriott, for instance, in her liberal benefactions to the poor, would sometimes take a tone of authority and patronage quite opposed to Lady Rainford's simple delicacy under the like circumstances ; and she was apt at once to forget Mrs. HEE OWN RIGHT. 9 Marriott's warm heart, and to remember only her osten tatious manner.

This morbid sense of outward grace was beginning to make the young lady keenly alive to what was unbecoming or absurd in others, to rob her of a forbearing charity, and to make her the slave of that fastidious taste which she so much indulged. It was the more pity, because the young patrician had really a heart to spoil. She might not be generally popular with Mr. Arundel's guests ; but if you could have gone into the village of Oldcourt, or looked in at the school-house, you might have counted every hand in her favour. Of course, she never dreamed of being fastidious with the poor. Every call of suffering had from her a quick and helpful answer. Sickness found her with comforts and sympathy by the lowly bed-side. Misfortune trusted to her for advocacy and aid. Very proud was the cottage matron when " my lady " took baby into her arms, or cut out paper horses and cows for the little ones while she chatted with the parents.

And when in the hamlet some little voice had been silenced which was the music of a household, the mother's tears have grown less bitter, because the eyes of " my lady " were also dim, while her faltering lips gently whispered of higher solace than earth can yield. Soon after the conversation which we have related above, Caroline — though she is of course the Lady Rainford, we shall chiefly use her Christian name, in order to distinguish her from her mother the dowager — Caroline, then, portfolio in hand, took her way through the avenue, passed through Mr. Arundel's gate, and, crossing the road, scaled with light foot the opposite bank, which bordered an extensive plantation of firs. Penetrating far into the wood, she at last gained an eminence from which the thinned trees admitted a noble view of the Wye.

The river made a bend at this point, and, freeing itself from a sombre wall of rock on the further shore, burst gladly into the tract of open country beyond. The young lady seated herself, and, anxious to catch the effect of light on a ruin that crowned the rocky barrier opposite, began to sketch rapidly. Her task accomplished, she dwelt with dreamy eyes on the old pile, until the lords of Escourt Tower seemed to pass in procession before her, from the crusader, terrible to the infidel and yet vieing in noble courtesy with Saladin himself, down to the fair-haired scion, a mere boy, who made his body a bulwark for the fugitive Charles at Worcester. She beheld them in the soft moon-light of the past, and free from all those specks and flaws which the common day of the present reveals in living heroes.

" Why is it," mused the fair dreamer, " that the beings whom I could venerate exist for me only in story, or at best but in the report of others '? I do not, of course, expect to meet my heroes in chain-armour, or in slashed doublets, but the brave and self-sacrificing heart, the princely grace — have these, indeed, vanished for ever with the forms of chivalry ? Is the soul of Bayard dead ? " Why is it, that those whom I meet are for the most part lost in petty interests — that no ray of high purpose ever gleams through the cloudy insipidity of their lives ? Were they ever like me ? Shall I ever be like them ? " Let us say, in justice to Caroline, that she never thought of including in her censure Mr. or Mrs. Arun del, or even Ralph, whose downrightness, sometimes amounting to bluntness, it might have been thought would have jarred greatly on her sense of the becoming.

But for some cause, possibly because she had been so long used to them, Ralph's peculiarities seldom offended her. Though often separated from her, he had been more or less her companion from her childhood upwards. As she is preparing for another sketch, we will leave her for a while, and go in quest of Ralph.

Chapter II

Ralph has been some months ordained, and is shortly to proceed to his first curacy, a sea-port in Wales. Mr. Arundel's influence could soon gain preferment for his son and enable him to enjoy the otium cum dignitate of a country rector. But this is what neither of them want. Ralph, especially, desires the self-education that is only to be got by hard work. In a physical sense, at least, it seems as if he would be equal to it. This evening he is on his way home from a cricket match, not being too much of a divine to shun those social sports which so often unite people of various classes, and thus develop moral as well as bodily health. Tall and robust, swinging his bat to and fro in order to get a vent for his energy, he has an air of honest elation proper to the man whose runs have secured the triumph of his party.

There is strength, too, though perhaps of another kind, in the frank daring face — in the mouth and chin parti cularly — which might at first seem more suited to the soldier than to the priest. You must look to the delicate moulding of Ralph's ample forehead, and, above all, you must see him smile, before you can guess of how much sweetness that bold face is capable. Moods of abstraction, while walking, were not un common with Ralph. He was now interrupted in one of those by a decent labouring man. ''Your zarvant, Measter Ralph ! " " What— is't you, Fletcher?" " Yees, zur. I've had it above a bit on my mind to ha' my zay out wi' ye about my lad George. You knaws as how I've allast paid rent regular, worked hard, and kep' my head up. I did think, and zo did my missis, when Jim Byers giv' up his place as groom at t'house, as our George might ha' gotten it.

Zo we made bold to ax." " I was never more sorry for anything, Fletcher, than that my father was obliged to refuse you." " But they zay as it were along o' your advoice that Squoire did it." " Well, they say right there." " Then you give my lad the go-by to put in young Tim Andrews, whose fayther's allast at the beer-shop when so be he can beg or borrow." " Just for that reason Mr. Arundel took Tim. His father was worse than none, and would have tried to make Tim as bad as himself. You're an honest man, and your lad has many chances — Tim had hardly one, his father's name was so against him." " What's the good, then, of being honest and sober?" " Why, in being honest and sober, to be sure," says Ralph rather sternly. " You don't mean to say that it's of no good to you to feel yourself a true right-acting man — no good to be unlike that sot Andrews ?"

" I bean't meaning that ; but still them as dezarves should be helped." " That's true, Fletcher ; but at times there are better things for a man to do than to stand upon his deserv ings. Now, you've been a good friend to John Mit cham, and quite deserved that he should give you and the " missis " a row on the river the other night. A boy that couldn't swim got out of his depth, and John jumped in and brought him to land. John was wet through and had to go home, so you lost your row ; but you never thought of being angry with him." " Angry wi' him ! What ! for saving a fellow creatur'?" " Of course you were not. Well, what I'm going to say is, that men Have characters to be saved as well as bodies. Tim Andrews was like a fellow sinking, and if I tried to pull him ashore you should bear me no grudge, though it's quite true that you deserve more of me than he does."

Fletcher seemed a little softened by this view, which perhaps he adopted the more readily because there was a chance of another situation for his son. He now told Ralph how the groom of Squire Thurles — him as lived near Gloucester — had tu'k to be a Walkerite or some other "ite," and how the Squoire, who's Church t' back bone, had giv' him warning. Zo George were after a place. He moight be young for a groom, but t'other chaps there mun tak' him in hand. " Good evening, Fletcher," said Ralph, shaking hands with him ; " all's clear between us now, I hope." Then he strode on, thinking for the time less of Fletcher than of Squire Thurles, who was dismissing a good servant because the latter had opinions of his own about religion. How easy was it, Ralph thought, for a man to plume himself on being a stanch Churchman on grounds that showed him to be an indifferent Christian.

The young man again began to swing his arm, and this time from very unclerical excitement. Ralph hated shams, and had already seen, at college and elsewhere, how ugly a grain of character might now and then be covered by a thin veneer of orthodoxy, how even real zeal in the religious world was often more intense on small points of difference than on vital ones of agreement. Often would he revolve with himself the means of allaying tbe prevalent discords in the Church, or those which kept many a good man out of its pale. Often would he ask himself whether one of the primitive tests of Christianity— a life fruitful in love and good works for Christ's sake— might not be revived with advantage now. It fell from Ralph's custom of lonely meditation that he was sometimes absent in society. He could speak easily, and even fluently, when interested either on his own account or for the sake of others ; but, from want alike of use and interest, he had little skill in the inter change of social trifles.

When he did speak, he was likely enough to do so with a plainness very discon certing to the listener. For in his scorn of social fictions, Ralph not only stood up for the truth and the whole truth, but he would often present it in its most remorseless forms and at the most unseasonable moment. Like many sincere men when young, Ralph was some thing of a zealot ; not quite true to his genuine, kindly self in the apparent hardness of his sincerity, and a little intolerant in his very hatred of intolerance. He was just now charged with his plain truths. From Mr. Thurles his mind had passed to Caroline. With all his abruptness and want of tact Ralph had a natural delicacy which kept him from remonstrating with her in the presence of his parents. But the young man's heart was troubled for her who had for years been to him almost as a sister.

He was troubled by the words which had fallen from her that afternoon. Not being disposed to return home quickly, Ralph had made a wind by the river into the forest. Suddenly he saw the object of his thoughts still seated on the spot where he left her ; but her head was turned from him, and she did not catch his step until he stood before her. "You are heedless, Lady Rainford," he said; "that hillock is no fit place for you now the mists are rising so thickly." "I have a mind not to walk home with you," she answered, rising with a laugh nevertheless ; " this is the second time to-day that you have called me Lady Rainford." " Indeed ! When did I call you so before ?" " You have a short memory, Sir ; it was just after the Marriotts left, when we were all talking by the door." " I confess." " But do you repent ?

I don't approve of such conduct, Ralph, in an old play-fellow." " Then please not to make me forget again that I was such." " What do you mean ?" "Take my arm and I'll tell you as we walk. My father was blaming you for seeming proud and un amiable; and you turned him off with a laugh. Then he hinted that your behaviour might be mistaken for bashfulness or ignorance ofthe world. That reproach, though spoken in jest, struck home and hurt you deeply." "You are rude, Sir, to remind a lady of what was painful." " Not when she bids me talk to my old play-fellow. You grant then that you were pained— pained by the C charge of a fault in manners, though indifferent to that of a cold heart." " Yes ! if you will extort what you have no right to know. To be thought cold is only to be disliked, and I don't care for everybody's liking: but to be thought ill-bred is to be despised, and I don't choose to bear that from any one."

" The very point. It is less grief to you, then, to fail in the sympathy which is a woman's bond to her fellow creatures and her duty to God, than to be laughed at by the foolish for a breach of good taste ? " Caroline, seriously displeased, withdrew her arm and walked on in silence. " You are offended," continued Ralph ; " will you hear my reasons for speaking to you so plainly?" " Pray go on, Mr. Arundel ; you can hardly be more severe to me than you have been already." " First, let me remind you," said Ralph, " that I am soon going away. Some frankness may be allowed between those who are to part so soon, and perhaps for long." " I have told you to speak on." " In some shape your remembrance will go with me. I should like, when I am far distant, to picture Caroline of Rainford as I have seen her stand by a poor man's cottage, with a smile that went in-doors like a sunbeam.

Or, at times she should have that grave tender look which had more comfort for sad hearts than a world of words. Shall I see her thus ; or must I recall only the young aristocrat with the cold eye and the lip that would be scornful but or her good taste? Shall I think of her as wrapped up in the sense of her intellect and refinement, despising the simple pursuits and homely manners of her neighbours, and so separated at last from her old friend, Ralph, by a fence of punctilios that he must always think of her, even to himself, as Baroness of Rainford?" Caroline again slipped her arm into Ralph's, and there was a short pause. At length she said — " You must think of her, Ralph, as one who had many faults, and with whom you were sometimes hard ; but who remembered that she was your sister and forgave you."

Her soft tremulous tone went to Ralph's heart. He felt that he had been almost unjust to her in his severity, as, indeed, he was apt to be towards the faults of those for whom he had much regard. He did not reply ; but she looked up to him and saw a smile of child-like affection that changed his whole face. Leaving the plantation, they crossed the road and entered Mr. Arundel's gate. The house stood upon rising ground, and, approaching it, they both halted to mark the level sunlight, which, softened by the mist, poured like a tide through the else sombre woods. Then Caroline spoke again — " I was very unjust to you, Ralph ; yours is true c friendship, for you would make me better. There are others perhaps who would be willing to add to my pleasures ; but you care for myself. Think when we are parted that I knew and felt this."

She had never spoken to him before with so much tenderness. Perhaps he had never felt so much for her as those simple words excited. "Thank you, Caroline," he answered, and they turned towards the house. There was visible movement within ; lights were glancing from window to window, and as they drew near the sound of eager voices was heard at the door. The next moment a postilion dashed past them with an empty carriage. Then they saw Mr. Arundel advancing to meet them. " Here is a joyful surprise for you, Caroline," he exclaimed ; " your mother is just arrived from France. and eager to see you."

Chapter III

The dowager Lady Rainford's sudden return to Eng land would have surprised no one who thoroughly knew her. In her case the love of change and excitement often gave an impromptu air to the sayings and doings of a woman who was circumspection itself in her plans. A certain brilliant rapidity lent the semblance of inge nious freshness alike to her most important actions and to her premeditated sallies in a drawing-room. She thus gained a character for impulsiveness, the value of which she fully understood. Her passionate grief for the loss of her son — true and abiding as that grief was — exhausted its first intensity in less time than she could once have thought possible. To her surprise an appetite for the pleasures of society, in which she shone, suddenly revived, and her neglected daughter, whose position was now brilliant — or might easily be made so — became the object of her keen soli citude.

To urge to its culmination the bright star of Caroline's destiny, and to share in its happy influence, were desires which took abrupt but deep root in the heart of the dowager. Hence her sudden appearance at Mr. Arundel's, from whose dwelling she proposed to remove Caroline without delay. Few women could have seemed more agreeable in person or manners than Lady Rainford when she entered the drawing-room at Oldcourt. It must be borne in mind that we shall henceforth use the title Lady Rain ford to designate the dowager, except in those cases where Caroline is obviously intended. Like her daughter, Lady Rainford was rather tall; but her slight airy figure, charming in its own style, laid no claim to that more commanding beauty of which Ca roline had already the promise. Still the dowager could put on dignity enough at times, and it became her well.