Lord and Lady Harcourt: or, Country Hospitalities

Front matter

OR, COUNTRY HOSPITALITIES. BY CATHERINE SINCLAIR, Author of "Sir Edward Graham," "Jane Bouverie," "The Journey of Life," "The Business of Life," and " Holiday House." " Improve the present hour, for all beside Is a mere featber on a torrent's tide." Cowper. LONDON : RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET. 1850. LONDON : BKADBIKT AND E VAN 5, PHINT KBS, W HITEFB1 ABS . Co tfje fteater. THE EARL AND COUNTESS OP HARCOURT Request the honour of your Company during this ■week to meet a small select party of all the world at SAXONBOROUGH CASTLE, MIDDLESEX.

Chapter I

Never go gloomily, man with a mind ; Hope is a better companion than Fear; Providence, ever benignant and kind, Gives with a smile what you take with a tear. Longfzixow. In pagan times it was alleged that Jupiter placed before his palace-gates two enormous jars, the one filled with the pleasures intended for mortals, and the other with their misfortunes ; but in the lot of Lady Jane M'Murray, since her early widowhood, it seemed as if the first jar had been entirely omitted, and the last emptied over her devoted head. Many have made their lives one long agony of tears and self-pity, who did not suffer, at the outset of existence, more deep B affliction than she did : yet, though her eyes had become sunk, and her form wasted with grief for the premature loss of her husband, in their first months of married felicity, and, in consequence of all the bright worldly prospects which his brilliant talents and amiable disposition had afforded her ; Lady Jane would not give way to the apathy of grief, and she roused herself to exertion by the consciousness that a Christian must act as well as suffer.

" But is it then to live, when such friends part ! 'Tis the survivor dies ! " In the stormy whirlpool of sorrow, and amidst the wreck of every surrounding hope, one frail relic survived — one duty and one comfort re mained. A daughter had been born to her not many weeks after the loss of her much-loved husband ; and to that beloved child's moral and religious education, all Lady Jane's subsequent life was devoted, with a degree of success which had rendered young Bertha M'Murray, in beauty and accomplishments, all that her much admired mother once had been; as well as, in good sense, benevolence, and piety, all that her admirable mother now was. Bertha's father had been the youngest of younger sons in the distinguished family of The M'Murray, of M'Murray, a highland chief; and Lady Jane, since her widowhood, had suffered, according to the prognostics in England of many rejected admirers, and disappointed relatives who abhorred her disinterested choice, all the priva tions they could have wished or anticipated, with a million more on which they had never calcu lated ; and yet she felt happier now, in religious retirement and contented activity, than the most richly endowed of them all in luxurious idleness.

Strange and unaccountable though it be, at no time do survivors in some families appear so greedily keen to grasp the gifts of this world, as when death has most recently exemplified how fleeting and vain they all are. Even among the nearest relatives and the most afflicted mourners it is often sadly marvellous how those around seem eager to snatch at the merest trifles to which they can lay a just, or, truth to say, even an unjust, claim. Lady Jane M'Murray, on the b2 death of her deeply-lamented husband, had scarcely a feather unplucked from her wing by his surrounding brothers. It soon appeared, too, that, among her own old friends and connexions, she could merely hold a poor-relation place, which made her liable to purse-proud, condescending, intolerable patronage ; and it was not pride, but independence, which made the refined and graceful young widow shrink from being a sort of pauper guest conveyed to the great houses of her numerous cousinhood in their borrowed carriages, and from being liable to overhear the supercilious tone in which they spoke of her in corners, with hands and eyes turned up, as "poor Lady Jane."

Several of her self-constituted advisers occasionally pointed out, with, perhaps, very kind intentions, how luxuriously a no-jointured widow might five abroad, and amuse herself from morning till evening, upon the merest atom 01 an income — no better than beggary at home. Silks could be had there, duty free ; Curacoa at only nine francs a bottle ; trinkets for half price ; and lace for next to nothing. There were public promenades at Baden ; bands of music, theatres, balls, concerts, and perpetual pic-nics, almost gratis. At Florence she might, for a perfect nothing, have splendid apartments, up only three pair of stairs; a capital ordinary; and a gallery of pictures to wander in for ever. Or at Paris, the opera was unusually brilliant, and the English ambassador magnificently hospitable : while, at all three places, Bertha's music and dancing could be cultivated to the highest pitch of operatic perfection, on the most reasonable terms.

To Lady Jane, the affections and duties of life were more dear than life itself; therefore she resolved to five within her income, in the country where God had appointed her lot ; and hearing Sir Roderick M'Murray, the young chief of her husband's clan, jestingly exclaim, one day, that he wished it were possible, while he enjoyed him self abroad, to let his own old castle of Bentarvit, or to pay any one an annuity for living there, to keep out the dry rot, the ghosts, and the rats, Lady Jane immediately offered such a mere trifle of rent as she could afford, and was at once joyfully installed a most welcome tenant, "for a thousand years," said the delighted Sir Roderick, " should it suit my good aunt to remain as long." In a poor neighbourhood it is astonishing how much a willing income can achieve in doing good; and Lady Jane's purse, though judiciously closed against the idle lazzaroni at Bentarvit, very soon appeared, to the industrious peasantry around, like the widow's cruse, never to . be exhausted; while she pressed the liberality of Heaven upon her thankful pensioners, and con scientiously devoted most of her time to the education of her lovely young daughter, who became every year more and more a motive to exertion, as well as its ample reward.

Nothing is more curiously uncertain than the future fate of a beautiful and accomplished girl at the age of eighteen. She may marry the highest peer in the realm, or, like Lady Jane, the poorest pauper of a younger brother in the High lands ; or she may remaiu like one of Sir Joshua Reynolds'^ pictures, fading insensibly away beside the walls where she originally claimed admiration. Lady Jane had anticipated, for her carefullyeducated daughter, every position in life except the one which Bertha was destined soon to fill ; but nothing short of the most miraculous clair voyance could have enabled that best of mothers to foresee her daughter's future lot ; though the principles and accomplishments she had given her were suited to adorn any position — as no governess in Monsieur de Porquet's establishment could have been more skilled, or half so judicious.

Bertha's eighteenth birthday took place on the 12th of August, 1S50. The hot sun, all that morning, had seemed as if it would broil every hill in the neighbourhood, and boil the lake beneath ; while showers of grouse had fallen upon all the Highland moors. Towards night the weather suddenly became stormy ; the moon coquettishly appeared and disappeared among the passing clouds ; the wind whistled up the glens ; the many-coloured trees looked like a waving field of tulips ; the falling leaves whirled in the blast; and many a gigantic old fir-tree bent his towering head from the dark summit of Bentarvit. Lady Jane did not agree with the poet that — " Where none admire, 'tis useless to excel ; ' for no sigh of motherly vanity or of peevish disappointment escaped her, as she looked at the lovely Bertha in her neatly-fitting pink gingham frock — a perfect vision of youthful beauty and grace, admirably suited to shine in scenes of brilliancy and fashion, into which it now seemed impossible, if it were desirable, that she should ever be introduced, and of which her unsophisticated mind could form no conception.

The French have a saying, that peace is first cousin to ennui; but it was not so with the well founded peace at Bentarvit Castle. After a day spent in distributing comfort and plenty among their poorest neighbours, the evening was plea santly enjoyed with music, work, or reading ; but Lady Jane, at length, about nine o'clock, drew in her chair beside the cheerful tea-table, and had beguiled above an hour in discussing with Bertha various works on literature, science, and religion, in that companionable tone which is the happiest of all, if once established, between a mother and daughter; when suddenly the attention of both ladies was attracted by a sound most unusual at Bentarvit, even in the broad light of day, but perfectly unheard of in the shades of evening. The house-bell was loudly rung, and soon after the sound became audible of a voice evidently English, in animated consequential colloquy with the page in buttons, who called himself man servant to Lady Jane, while a frequent laugh of good-humoured hilarity relieved the ladies of all apprehension that it might be a burglar with a crape over his face and pistol in hand.

A few minutes afterwards, their boy-of-all-work rushed up stairs, and hurriedly precipitated into the room, unannounced, three distinguished-looking gentle men, in shooting-dresses, who started back at the entrance, evidently unprepared for the presence of ladies, and especially of such ladies as now grace fully rose to receive these unexpected visitors. After a momentary pause, while the expression on every face was a tessellated mixture of courtesy and astonishment, one of the intruding party, assuming a look of gentleman-like polite ness, appointed himself spokesman for his friends. " Pardon me," said he, respectfully addressing Lady Jane, while a tinge of the brogue betrayed his country, and there was liveliness enough in B his laughing eye for all Ireland together, " I am afraid three damp strangers, at this time of night, must be rather mal-a-propos.

The fact is, we are benighted sportsmen, from Aucha-unpronounce able tower, in Glentarvit, and must sleep like babes of the wood on withered leaves, without the benevolent sparrows to feed us, unless you can kindly give my friends and me two chairs and a bolster till morning." Bertha could not repress a laugh at this pa thetic appeal, and it now flashed like lightning into Lady Jane's recollection that a party of English sportsmen had arrived the day before, to inhabit a nearly ruinous castle, about ten miles off, for which they were to give an almost fabulous rent. There her cousin, Sir Roderick, had assured them they might shoot a bird a minute, as long as they chose to carry a gun; and it required no great stretch of penetration to guess that these new arrivals were now her guests. With a degree of ready wit and good-humoured audacity, which none but an Irishman could have displayed, the more animated intruder had, in less than ten minutes, introduced himself as Lord Killarney, and then, assuming the tone of being Lady Jane's oldest friend, he presented, with all the ceremony due to a drawing-room, Count Shriekenstrype, and afterwards Lord Harcourt, a noble, distinguished, George -the-Fourth looking man, of about forty, with a most prepossessing expression and manner.

If the newly-arrived guests had all been mem bers of the beef-steak club, they could never have sat down to a better dinner than the impromptu chop, which very soon, by Lady Jane's orders, smoked upon the tea-table, while Lord Killarney, over a tumbler of negus, kept the whole party in ecstacies of amusement at the description of their day's adventures, which Lord Harcourt smilingly protested were as new to himself as to the ladies, seeing that a very small foundation of fact could carry a perfect castle in the air of fiction, when Lord Killarney undertook to build it up. The intimacy, that evening so auspiciously begun, was continued with increasing pleasure on all sides during the following month, and had a more marvellous denouement at last than ever Lord Killarney, in his most brilliant fits of imagination, had conceived ; for a mutual attachment, followed by an engagement to marry, arose at length between Lord Harcourt and the beautiful young Bertha M'Murray, in whom her devoted admirer declared he saw a resemblance to the most classical pictures by Titian, and in whose disposition he discovered that refined sensibility, with very sound judgment, which excited not only his most ardent attachment, but also that respect without which no attachment is permanent.

After looking at the countenance of Lord Harcourt, whatever any one glanced at, even sun shine itself, must be something less cheerful and gay; for his face was always beaming with humour, and with good humour. Though he laughingly called himself " a moss-grown old man," yet in his fine aristocratic countenance there appeared not a trace of years ; and while his own life had seemed to all who knew him quite a triumphant march of prosperity, most cordially did he wish to see every one as happy as himself, or happier, if that had been in the power of nature. The world, under his direction, would, indeed, have been a cheerful scene. Nothing bored Lord Harcourt so much as any one presuming in his presence to look melan choly, and he was a total unbeliever in head aches, nervousness, low spirits, or lassitude, always cheerfully protesting, that if people would only rouse themselves, they could with perfect ease shake off all annoyances, and that it was mere folly to give way.

In short, people generally believed it impossible to put Lord Harcourt either out of spirits or out of humour, as he had evidently established in his own mind an anti-annoyance society for the suppression of small vexations, " Patron and President — the Earl of Harcourt, Lord Lieutenant of Middlesex, and Colonel of the Middlesex Yeomanry." One living proof existed that Lord Harcourt could not be the mere boy that his countenance and manners were thought to indicate. He had, it must be confessed, one very nearly grown-up daughter by a previous marriage. Lord Harcourt in former times was over-persuaded by his late father, soon after leaving Oxford, into marrying Lady Maria Mornington, then thought pre-emi nently suitable in rank, beauty, and accomplish ments ; but there are two important points most marvellously overlooked sometimes in the choice of a wife, and entirely wanting on this occasion.

Lady Maria had a temper a faire peur, and health which required such incessant attention, that her good-humoured husband was kept wandering for five years all over the world with a peevish, sickly wife, in search of baths and doctors, till she died at last, much, but not very justly, regretted. Nothing is more inconvenient, generally, than a dying request, and Lady Harcourt made hers particularly so. She left only a little girl, and ordered, rather than requested, that the charge of Lady Caroline's education might be committed en tirely to her own mother, Lady Axminster, one of the most disagreeable dowagers in London, adding an injunction that the child and this guardian grandmother should be allowed to live always at Saxonborough Castle. That arrangement, of course, necessarily included Lady Rachel Mor nington, Lady Harcourt's only unmarried sister, now a handsome, well-got-up and well-made-up spinster of about thirty-five, on whose behalf Lord Harcourt certainly never felt a momentary wish to vote for the new marriage bill.

Lady Rachel at once managed with a degree of diplomatic skill, which Talleyrand might have envied, to take almost the entire command of Lady Caroline, the governess, Lady Axminster, and the whole estab lishment at Saxonborough Castle. To this usurpation Lord Harcourt, with his characteristic love of present comfort, almost unconsciously submitted ; and finding it much easier to remain absent from his magnificent home than to unseat his very permanent guests, he every year resided there less, and travelled or visited more, while the smallest inquiries that his careless, self-indulgent character led him to make, respecting the progress and acquirements of his pretty young daughter, were very drily received by the two ladies, as an infringement of their prerogative, or an implied doubt of their judgment.

Lady Caroline wanted only a few months of being eighteen, and, except what he gained by a little rallying small-talk in the drawing-room, her father saw or knew nothing of her; for she was represented always when he wanted a more permanent interview as being so busy with her French governess, that he generally yielded, not to the better judgment, but to the worse temper of Lady Axminster and Co. Never was there such an uproar of astonishment, and, truth to say, of indignation, as at Saxon borough Castle, when Lord Harcourt, in a letter of much good feeling and of real kindness to her Dowagership and Lady Rachel, announced his approaching marriage to Bertha M'Murray, "a granddaughter," he added, " of the late Lord Belgravia, and cousin to Sir Roderick, the chief of M'Murray." " What a horridly Scotch name !

I daresay she is red-haired and a blue stocking !" exclaimed Lady Rachel, turning to her young niece, who continued stitching diligently, though her hand evidently shook with concealed emotion. " Just fancy, Caroline, some romantic-looking, fiddle faddle red-cheeked girl out of a Highland shealing, having secured the greatest match in London !" "They say every man should consider a subject twice before he acts — once when drunk, and again when sober; but Harcourt, though a temperate man in general, must have been very far gone indeed before he came to this," observed Lady Axminster, in a sharp angry voice. " When the intoxication of love is over, he will, too late, take a sober enough view of this absurd affair." " I pity his infatuation ! " added Lady Rachel, still more indignantly, looking towards Lady Caroline, who quietly shook down her ringlets more than ever over her face, so as entirely to conceal its expression.

"I have observed that every mortal commits, once in his life, some intolerable blunder, of which, for the rest of his days, he irretrievably repents. One man buys an estate which ruins him; another builds a house in which he cannot afford to reside; a third publishes some rash letter in the newspapers which brings him into general ridicule ; a fourth plunges into unlucky speculations ; or a fifth betrays some important secret which he ought to have kept, — nobody escapes his one tremendous blunder ; but the most hopeless case of all is, for any man to burden himself, as Harcourt is certainly doing, with a wife of whom he will be tired and ashamed in a week." Little did the gentle and lovely Bertha M'Murray imagine all this fortune-telling on the part of Lady Rachel, which was going on in her future home and in the presence of her future daughter-in-law, when, with every anticipation of perfect felicity, she gave her hand, with her whole heart, to the only man on earth she had ever loved.

Lord Harcourt was in fact almost the only man on earth with whom Bertha had ever been intimate, as, no doubt, Miranda in the "Tempest" scarcely knew less of the world and of mankind than the young bride had done at Bentarvit Castle. On her wedding-day, simply attired in white muslin, she looked like the beautiful heroine of a fairy tale, dressed in a snow-drift with a streak of blue sky for her scarf, and her eyes shone like stars beside the massy folds of her night-black hair. Never was there a happier pair than Lord and Lady Harcourt, when, on the 25th of Sep tember, 1850, they were united in the presence of Lady Jane, Lord Killarney, Sir Roderick, and a very few old friends and distant relatives. Crowds were meanwhile entertained on the neighbouring hills by Lord Harcourt. He desired all those cottagers who had been the objects of Lady Jane's bounty, to share an ox roasted whole and every rural luxury that Sir Roderick's steward could devise, to make Bertha's old pensioners and young scholars rejoice on her wedding-day.

Amidst enthusiastic cheers the young bride departed, and Lord Harcourt, on entering the chariot, threw a shower of silver to the scrambling crowd, who, in true Scotch fashion, returned the compliment with a shower of old shoes. The carriage-wheels now rolled down Glen Urquhart, throwing up mud like trundled mops ; the post-boys galloped as if they meant to leap over every turnpike-gate on their road ; and Bertha, with tears and smiles, waved her hand kerchief to Lady Jane, who sunk on a sofa after the gay cavalcade had vanished, and for the first time felt the whole extent of her own loss and the loneliness of her future existence; but, after some time spent in fervent prayer, she rose with con quered emotion in her look, and with an affec tionate conviction that the sunshine of her hfe would still be bright as long as her beloved and most deserving Bertha was happy.

" I declare !" exclaimed Lord Killarney, giving a pensive twirl to his mustachios, " the thing most like a Highland wedding is — a Highland funeral. At the funeral, however, we pity only one ; but at the wedding there are two victims claiming our sympathy. Certainly, bonfires and bagpipes, heather, kilts, and tartan, are in all their glory to-day, and if the Lake of Bentarvit could have been turned into whiskey, Harcourt would have got the transformation made ! " CHAPTER H. Lord Bateman was a noble lord, A noble lord of high degree. The Loving Ballad of Lord Bateman. Hie stately homes of England, How beautiful they stand Amidst their tall ancestral trees, O'er all the pleasant land. Hemaxs. " To whom belong this noble mansion and these vast domains ? * demanded bis Majesty. " To the most noble the Marquis of Carrabas, sire,*' replied the reapers, as Puss in Boots had commanded them to say.

History of Puss in Boots. It is in London, chiefly, that the real importance of rank and fortune can be adequately estimated, as the more remotely people reside from the Court, the less aware they naturally are of the dignity and influence attending on a very high position. Bertha had been brought up with a proper respect for noble birth, and felt some natural pride in her own unblemished descent; but the splendour of her new promotion dawned upon her observation and experience by very slow degrees. During the first few weeks of wandering through the Highlands, she felt pre-occupied with the delight of seeing so much natural beauty, and engrossed with the deepest feelings of her heart, therefore the magnificence of her equipage and attendance attracted a very small share, if any, of her thoughts.

At the small country inns, too, where Lord Harcourt delighted to linger, while she gladly accompanied him in his expe ditions for salmon-fishing or grouse-shooting, the accommodations were scarcely equal in extent, and very inferior in comfort, to the miniature drawing-room at Bentarvit Castle. About the middle of December, the bridal party reached London, where Lady Harcourt, as yet alike unknowing and unknown, employed at her husband's request the first artists of fashion to add all the magnificence that had hitherto been wanting to her trousseau ; and great was Bertha's astonishment, amounting almost to con sternation, when she discovered what a boundless sum Lord Harcourt thought it necessary for her to lavish, before she was, as he jestingly expressed himself, "fit to be seen." Still, in all the gorgeous magnificence suited to her station with which she became decorated, Bertha looked and felt as simply natural, as in the ginghams and muslins of Bentarvit ; and still the beautiful transparency of her mind and the graceful hilarity of her character became more and more the admiration and delight of Lord Harcourt, now so deservedly and so truly the happiest of men.

It was not before nearly the end of December, that in preparation for an assemblage of relations, connexions, and friends, under his own roof during Christmas, Lord Harcourt at length most un willingly turned his wheels towards Saxonborough Castle ; and only then did Bertha, with a feeling of bewildered astonishment, fully appreciate her own high and brilliant position. Lord Harcourt, accustomed all his life to such demonstrations, had no idea how it amazed his young bride when she saw blazing bonfires, in honour of herself, on every hill, when she met two hundred tenants mounted on horseback to receive her, when she beheld thousands assembled in the park to greet her, when she heard shouts rending the very skies, when she beheld above a hundred windows in her new home glowing with lights, and when drawn through a long avenue of hoary old oaks, by a shouting multitude of happy tenantry, she was conveyed in triumph through the massy gates to Saxonborough Castle ; the Gothic towers, turrets, and - battlements of which might have been, for splendour, the residence of a sovereign prince.

Tears of joyful excitement sprung into Bertha's beautiful eyes at this almost triumphal reception, and she hurriedly passed her hand through her husband's arm, overawed by the consciousness of a change beyond all she had anticipated or imagined. Lord Harcourt, when his chariot stopped before the massive entrance, instantly sprang out. Then handing Bertha up the steps, he stood side by side with her under the portico, and, addressing the assembled multitude, presented to them his bride, who was received with enthusiastic and tumultuous cheers. These testified to the popu larity of the orator more than to his eloquence, as Lord Harcourt's agitation prevented his becoming distinctly audible ; but, next day, a very good speech was made for him, in the county newspaper, which would have been excellent, as he laughingly remarked, had it ever been spoken.

Bertha, confused and agitated while leaning on her husband's arm, had afterwards a vague consciousness of hurrying through splendid halls, echoing passages, and magnificent drawing-rooms, blazing with lights, glittering with mirrors, and crowded with servants, till she reached at last one saloon more splendid than all, hung round with full-length portraits of the family ancestors. Their original residence within those walls was dated long before the Conquest ; and here Lord Harcourt, with every expression of devoted attachment, welcomed Bertha to the home where he trusted many years of united happiness awaited them both. Scarcely had Lady Harcourt time, with a look of trusting confidence, to reply, when the door opened, and, before she could quite recover her presence of mind, a procession entered, consisting of Lady Axminster, in the very deepest mourning that any " inconsolable woe department " could have furnished, and wearing a mourning brooch set in diamonds like a sarcophagus, followed by two slight figures dressed exactly alike and their c faces drowned in a torrent of ringlets.

As Bertha had been prepared to welcome only one daughter, she felt for an instant perplexed by the apparition of two young ladies so exactly similar ; but on a nearer view she perceived a very wide difference in age, and that the one rather more juvenile in dress was twenty years senior to her companion in countenance. Lady Axminster, tall, stiff, and perpendicular, had an exceedingly injured and angrily melancholy look, as she advanced very slowly up the room, looking like Mrs. Siddons in the tragedy of " Isabella," while Lord Harcourt, turning away as if not yet aware of their presence, whispered to Bertha, before he hurried forward to meet the dismal-looking party, "I wonder what reception my bride is to receive from the three generations of ladies ! Like the beef-eaters in ' The Critic,' their unanimity is always wonderful !

As for my poor Caroline, she has never yet dared to imagine that her head is her own ; but I must make some allowance to-day. Poor souls ! their spirits on this occasion will of course be but half-mast high. I really do feel for old Lady Axminster !" " So do I, Harcourt ! deeply and most sin cerely," whispered Bertha, in reply; " as my mother said, I must expect that there shall be a prejudice to conquer ! For your sake, chiefly, as well as for my own and theirs, I hope gradually to extinguish it. If patience and kindness can do so, I am prepared. "- The two elder ladies could scarcely have looked at Bertha with more unmitigated abhorrence than they did, had she been suspected of poisoning the late Lady Harcourt ; but she, feeling for a mother and a sister's grief, however uncomfortably testi fied, sent her thoughts with congenial sympathy back to the time when her own predecessor, almost as young, and perhaps as happy as herself, had prematurely been summoned to resign that place she herself now filled, and to be laid in an early grave.

Lady Axminster, when she could no longer procrastinate her meeting with Bertha, coldly extended her cheek to the young intruder, while Lady Rachel frigidly held out a stiff wooden looking hand; after which both ladies instantly turned away, with pocket-handkerchiefs clasped to c2 their eyes, in attitudes that might have been modelled in marble for a tombstone. Lord Harcourt's detestation of " scenes " never was more thoroughly developed than now, when the apparent danger of two ladies falling into hysterics, simultaneously, was rather too much for him. Shrugging his shoulders, elevating his eyebrows, and almost imperceptibly raising his hands with a clandestine glance of ludicrous per plexity to Bertha, he turned hastily away; and she felt almost afraid that he might inadvertently fall into a low whistle, which was her husband's usual mode of testifying against small annoyances.