Fit to be a Duchess: with other stories of courage and principle. Illustrated by E. H. Corbould and J. Absolon

Front matter

STOEIES OF COURAGE AND PRINCIPLE ; 0E, FIT TO BE A DUCHESS. Lady Mary and Lord Joscelyn hi the Conservatory.— Puje -i Front. STOEIES OF COURAGE AND PRINCIPLE; OR, Jit to be a duchess. BY MRS. GILLESPIE SMYTH, AUTHOR OF "TALES OF THE MOORS," " SELWTN IN SEARCH OF DAUGHTER," " PROBATION," ETC. ILLUSTRATED BY _.. H. COBBOULD AND J. ABSOLON. LONDON: WARD, LOCK, AND TYLER, WARWICK HOUSE, PATERNOSTER ROW. THE YOUNG LADIES' LIBRARY. Price 2s. 6d. each, handsomely bound. With Illustrations. i. Sunshine and Rain ; or, Blanche Cleveland. By A. E. W. With Illustrations by L. Hltard. 2. Roses and Thorns ; or, Five Tales of the Start in Life. With Illustrations. 3. Bible Narratives; or, Scripture Stories. By the Rev. Frederick Calder, M.A. With Illustrations by D, H. Friston. 4. Pleasure and Profit ; or, Lessons at Home.

A Book for Boys and Girls. With Illustrations by Thomas B. Dalzie... 5. Country Pleasures ; or, The Carterets. By A. E. R, With Illustrations by Thomas B. Dalziel. 6. Stories of Courage and Principle ; or, Fit to be a Duchess. By Mrs. Gillespie Smyth. Illustrated. 7 Who are the Happy Ones ? or, Home Sketches. By the Author of " Quiet Thoughts for Quiet Hours," &c. With Illustrations by John Absolon. 8. The Progress of Character ; or, ClinVhorpe. By Harriet Power. London: WARD, LOCK, & TYLER, Warwick House, Paternoster Row, E.C. CONTENTS. PAGE Fit to be a Duchess 1 The Stort of Anne Ellesmere— Chap. I. The Widow, the Doctor, and the Ward 121 „ II. The Half-Sisters 158 „ HI. The Beauty Snared 202 „ IT. Changes, Trouble", and Deliverance . 231 The Twin Novices of Chiara 271 The Heiress and the Brother; or, Frank Lygon's Choice SUBJECTS OF THE ILLUSTRATIONS Lady Maey and Loed Josoeltn in the Conseevatoey.

(Frontispiece) 47 The Dean with his Sister and Niece entee the Bi_LL-EOOM 29 Aethue's Meeting with Emily Wyndham . . 110 Miss Aubeey and Walter Ellesmeee— The Walk through the Woods 144 Anne's Tete-a-Tete with the Officer at the Ball 1T2 The Resemblance . . -,-_- 1(5 Tbe Twin Novices in the Chuech of the Convent of Nuns 281 Minna Rottheimee's Answer to Carl Reinemann. {Vignette) The Postman's knock ! ! Who is there in these days of multifarious correspondence — nay perhaps even more so, whde letters were yet of rarer occurrence, and thus more frequently fraught with weal or woe — whose heart has not heat quicker at one time, and at another half forgotten to heat at all, at sight of the square piece of folded paper, the herald of tidings on which existence, or hap piness at least, seemed awfully suspended ?

Chapter I. The Widow, The Doctor, And Tue War

It was during the earlier part of the present century, wdiile the winter in London still began before Easter, and morning dawned on its fashion ables at two instead of five o'clock ; and whde the brilliant array of vehicles now gliding at ease, like gold fish, along the splendid river of Regent-street, was stdl diurnally jammed amid the dingy defiles of Bond-street, that one of the plainest, though best appointed of these equipages, with " dowager " stamped as legibly on its grave aspect, as on its ample lozenge, excited for a moment the attention even of the habitual loungers on the pave, to the pale features and agitated demeanour of a pretty young creature, who seemed alone inside, and whose outstretched form, and urgent entreaties to an old, staid-looking family coachman, had for their evident object instant extrication from their present durance.

This, by a freemasonry peculiar to the craft (for a. true London whip, taken civdly, will squeeze his horses and carriage into a nutshell, for the man whose panels one word of rudeness would make him risk his life to demolish), was miracu lously achieved; and amid a chorus of conjectures, which nobody was chivalrous enough to attempt to verify, the bottle-green chariot, pretty young lady, and old coachman (Welsh wig and all) disappeared from the eyes and memory of the fashionable throng. They soon drew up, according to the sensible, though agitated directions of the youthful, inmate, at the door of the first apothecary's shop. And it having occurred to the no less judicious elderly footman behind, to had, in their progress, the well-known carriage of one of the first of town physicians, that benevolent individual had jumped out of his own vehicle with professional alert ness, and was ready, at the door of the other, to administer aid in any shape in which it might be required.

It was a novel sight, even to Dr. F , which the interior of the carriage exhibited. Nor was it, for a moment, easy to decide whether his assistance was most urgently called for by a portly-looking elderly lady (the victim apparently of fatal apoplectic seizure), or by the pale fair girl, who, alike overstrained in body and mind, endeavoured to support from entirely sinking to the bottom of the carriage, her insensible com panion. To lift the younger patient out, however, and consign her to the restoratives of the apothecary, was plainly the easiest, as wed as best thing to be done ; while a similar attempt in the case of the elder lady would have been equally injudicious and ill-timed. In a second, Dr. F was on his knees in the carriage beside her — her arm bound, and a vein opened; but with so little success, that all the slight hope the first glance had allowed the doctor to cherish, even vanished from the good man's mind.

His solicitudes instantly reverted to the poor girl; and anticipating her half-frantic efforts to return to her "■ dear grandmamma," he lifted her once more, unconsciously into his own carriage, shut the door on her, and bidding his coachman follow in the wake of the other chariot, took his place beside its dying mistress, and gave to the bewildered servants the, for the first time, unwel come order — " Home ! " At the door of a handsome, though old fashioned, mansion, secluded by a high brick wrall from plebeian associations, in the then almost rural neighbourhood of Chelsea, a whole house hold of the same venerable stamp were soon drawni together by the sad arrival. In the mistress whom they loved, it was evident, with no hireling regard, life was alas ! extinct ere she reached her own threshold ; and to keep the sad consciousness of the event awhile from her fainting granddaughter, became the chief object with every one.

The doctor evaded, with all the melan choly tact of daily experience, her anxious in quiries; and stating the most perfect quiet (he did not specify for whom) to be absolutely necessary, consigned the enforcing of his decree to the sdent cares of the heart-broken house keeper. There was not a dry eye in the whole esta blishment when she, who in all the green vigour of sixty, had tripped down the steps to her usual airing, was lifted a mass of inanimate clay across her own threshold, and temporarily extended in the cheerful dining parlour, where covers had already been laid for a social meal, to be graced by the presence of a long cherished and famdiar friend. The contrast of the clear wood fire (so genial in a chill spring afternoon), the massy7 side board of old family plate — the comfortable and even convivial air of the whole apartment — above all, of the fine full length picture, redolent of health and beauty, over the mantel-piece, -with the sad object which, in utter oblivion of them all, reposed on a distant couch, was felt peculiarly by every one.

Death steals so gradually on the sick chamber, that he sobers, rather than startles. In the tumult of battle he is gazed at, and defied. In the crowded mart he comes sometimes, an unwelcome bidder, awes for a moment the busy traffickerSj and is forgotten. But to breathe no more, to feel no more, to listen no more, to be a thing of nought in that domestic sanctuary, where one short hour before, the spirit now fled, pervaded, animated, formed the master-spring of every joy, and grief, and incident — who can know that such things are, and may be, and not feel the spot which one moment may thus leave a wilderness, no home for beings, on whom may dawn no earthly morrow ? The task of Dr. F was soon, too soon fulfilled. But he was not one to depart satisfied, tiU assured that comforters, more judicious than distracted servants, were at hand to communicate the sad bereavement to the youthful mourner.

Instead of feeling jealous that the first impulse of all in the household had been to send for his friendly rival, Dr. Y , their late mistress's confidential relative, as well as medical adviser, it was with satisfaction he resigned to him the superintendence of a house of mourning, where, two hours later, he would have taken a place (rarely allowed him by professional avocations) at the social board. At no time was Dr. Y a man of many words. The few he would now have exchanged with his brother practitioner stuck in his throat. A. cordial pressure of the hand w7as all he could afford ; and when left alone, by his departure, in the room where he had spent his lightest-hearted hours with that friend of his youth now stretched before him, the old man — hard, blunt, and odd as he was thought by nine-tenths of the world — sobbed like a child.

In a moment, all the incidents of a long life seemed to crowd around him. Before him, as he sunk unconsciously in a chair at the yet uncleared board, hung its hostess; gay, hand some, and commanding, as when at nineteen he witnessed the marriage of his heiress cousin with her late husband. Behind him, every lineament sharpened into strong rebef by the stern chisel of death, lay all that remained of the far more inestimable matron friend of his old age. Between, what long buried griefs and forgotten incidents rose on his busy memory ! Their long, almost fraternal, attachment — their thousand little playful dis putes — the knotty point on which, on that very day, her keen, and not a little formidable antagonist had boasted he would " bring her to reason " — all combined to overwhelm the solitary, friendless, childless survivor.

" God help and pity me, Anne ! " said he (apostrophizing in his uncontrollable sorrow the mute picture before him), " and the poor little girl you have left me to keep for your sake ! How I am ever to tell her she has no friend left on earth but an awkward, clumsy, good for nothing old man, that knows less than a babe unborn, about girls and their ways, is more than I can compass ! " THE STOItY OF ANNE ELLESMERE. While, bow-ever, the necessity for disclosure w-as mercifully for all postponed tiU the morrow, by the effects of Dr. F 's judiciously prescribed opiates ; and while by hands, never hitherto raised but to bless her, the inanimate remains of their mistress were deposited on that bed whence she had risen a few hours before, with years of health and usefidness apparently before her, we must revert to the early history and subsequent career of Mrs. Ellesmere.

The amiable and accomplished, though in some points eccentric person whose death has formed the somewhat unusual introduction to her life, was the only daughter of an opulent banker ; and left, at an early age, with a fortune of fifty or sixty thousand pounds, a prey to the various matrimonial speculations of which young women similarly circumstanced are usually the objects. These, her unprotected situation — for she was an orphan, with few or no near relatives — rendered peculiarly miscellaneous and obtrusive. And it w-as a positive relief to escape from them all, at the age of nineteen, by a marriage with the only one of her suitors, to whom disinterestedness in the pursuit, could, even by the utmost credulity of self-love, be ascribed. Mr. Ellesmere, though no hero, was sufficiently manly, good looking, and gentlemanlike, to have rebuked into insignificance a whole host of city admirers.

His high birth and old family were peculiarly desirable to one possessing neither; and his fine park and gothic mansion were romantic enough to compensate for the absence of romance in their master. But the chief charm which, in the eyes of the heiress, cast a halo of perfection around its hitherto vainly sought pos sessor, was the obvious indifference of Mr. EUcs mere, of Ellesmere Had, about her money : — that idol, to which she had seen hecatombs of devotees bowing in the dust, whde the poor hand annexed to the dross seemed only valued, or rather sought, as a matter of course, as the key to its possession. That Mr. Ellesmere did not marry Miss Brit ton's fortune was evident, from his high-minded indifference to its amount, and his insisting on its being settled unreservedly upon herself.

And this superiority on the one point, to which the poor heiress's suspicions had been so long painfully dircctcd, sufficed to blind her as to what it was that Mr. Ellesmere did want and marry : videlicit not the beloved, and preferred, and indispensible object of his discriminating affection, but the first handsome, commanding-looking, eligible young lady whom fate had tlirown (with evident absence of all design on her part) in the wealthy bachelor's way. For, if the Scylla from which thus blindly rushed had been a bevy of ortune-hunters, the Charybdis against which Mr. Ellesmere had long manfully struggled was a vortex of match-making mothers and daughters; in the joy of extrication from whom, by his chance meeting with the persecuted heiress, he over looked, like herself, all minor incompatibilities between two of the most dissimilar people whom avoidance of others ever taught to run into each other's arms.

Anne Britton, though clever in no ordinary degree, had, from living among common-place people, been thrown almost entirely on her own re sources for education and amusement. It was the age of romances, of that, perhaps, most prepos terous kind, which invests poor human nature with an ideal perfection in character and conduct im possible to be realized, and yet narrated with so much of truth and circumstantiality as to deceive unwary youth into the belief of the existence of beings such as a Grandison. On this imaginary standard all Anne's matrimonial hopes — nay, ex pectations — were founded. And because honest John Ellesmere, thanks to a tall figure, good features, and good clothes, always looked like, at least, a country gentleman ; and on the rare and dreaded occasion of making his proposal, was betrayed, by agitation, into something which might be mistaken for habitual sensibility — Anne erected on this foundation (substantial enough, perhaps, for more solid comfort), a baseless fabric of gene rosity, and romance, and sentiment, which the good man was as incapable of comprehending, K as he would have been of assuming it to mis lead.

To many girls, even at that day — to too many, I fear, in our own — the unlimited command and undisturbed possession of a fine house, large es tablishment, and splendid income, with good humoured indulgence — nay, olient kindness — from its master, would have seemed a happy lot. But, when, after the usual privileged period, during which, nonsense, or even sdence, passes for wit, and when the passiveness of bridegrooms keeps pace with the caprice and unreasonableness of brides, things fell into their wonted channel, and John Ellesmere left his wife to the then lady-like resources of her tambour-frame, and china closet, to return to the dogs and horses which formed his summum bonum of felicity, Anne began to wonder that, in her horror of fortune-hunters, the inconvenience of a fox-hunting husband had never crossed her imagination.

Exactly on the same principle which made Mr. Ellesmere's stud and kennel the object of pride to himself and envy to all his neighbours, he had enriched his hitherto imperfect establishment with a ' crack ' wife. And precisely that share in his hearty and constitutional 'liking' (for affection would have been almost equally inapplicable in either case) , which was not already engrossed by the ten best hunters, and thirty best couples of hounds in the next three counties, had John to bestow on the ' nice clever woman,' who looked so well at the head of his table, that it was a deuced shame her cockney education had prevented her learning to ride ! It was not John's fault that (better late than never) this accomplishment, so precious in his eyes, was not acquired. And much as Amazonian habits are, in our days, to be deprecated, Anne was, per haps, not the only woman who might have cheaply purchased such humble matrimonial happiness as she had chosen to carve out for herself, by occa sionally mounting her husband's hobby abroad, instead of riding full tilt against it at home, to the hourly damage of his temper, and ultimate danger of her own too susceptible heart.

It is, and must be felt, a grievous disappoint ment to an intellectual woman, to find that with her partner in life she has no one idea in common. But the best chance of reciprocity in his admis sion of such' as she may feel desirous gently to insinuate, lies in her cheerful and ready adoption of the harmless pursuits of him whom she has taken " for better and for worse." Of all this worldly, nay it is to be hoped as springing from a far higher source, at times un worldly wisdom, poor Anne knew nothing. She only knew that John Ellesmere was not a hero; and felt and acted like an ill-used heroine accord ingly. In vain did her good-natured husband testify as amiable sobcitude in the selection k2 of her four matchless greys, as in the pedigree of his own beloved hunters. In vain did he seek to light up her eyes at her own diamonds, or purchase her smdes on the hunting comrades who frequented his table, by decking it with costly plate.

Its mistress sat, civil but stately, like a being from another sphere amid inferior creatures. John was puzzhd, distressed, and vexed. He might, perhaps, had he been less thoroughly good tempered, or his wife less young and pretty, have been angry; but before any sentiment of that sort had time to arise, the promise of an heir turned the feelings of both into a softer and more kindly channel. Anne ceased to think John so very unlike Sir Charles Grandison, when he staid at home some times on a fine scenting morning, because she had looked pale, and out of spirits when he went out last — nay, she began to think reading Sir Charles but dull work, compared with working frocks and baby caps for the expected heir of EUesmere. The effect of these said frocks and caps (not always put away with sufficient alertness on the approach of feet which no longer came booted and spurred into her boudoir) on the soft heart of John was that of absolute magic.

If ' eating gold' would have coaxed the sickly appetite of 'poor dear Anne,' he would have crossed the globe in quest of it ; and he did far more, when, in deference to her anxious looks and increased nervousness, he turned his hunters to grass, and lent his hounds for a season to a friend in another county. But horses were, after aU, to be the death of John; though nothing could be more charac teristic of the revolution achieved by anticipated parental feelings than the manner of the catastrophe. It was in the humble task, which nothing would induce him to delegate, of breaking a lilliputian pony to draw his wife in a garden chair, that the despiser of five-barred gates, and survivor of an hundred falls, ignobly met his fate. The unmanageable viciousness of the beautiful little animal had, as usual, been kept secret by the dear friend who sold it ; and the best whip in England, seated in a tiny vehicle, on a level with the heels of the veriest devil ever Araby sent forth, was laid low by a kick from a creature not twelve hands high !

The reino had, in a fit of delusive quietude on the part of the animal, been suffered to drop ; and in stooping forward to recover them, Mr. Ellesmere received a blow on the chest, by which a blood-vessel on the lungs was ruptured, and his herculean frame prostrated in a moment. There was no one near; powerless as an infant he fell entangled amongst the debris of the shattered carriage, was dragged a considerable way with accumulated injury, and when taken up at length, could only articulate, " Don't tell Anne !" ere he expired in the cottage to which he had been carried. But from Anne, alas ! not even her husband's dying injunction could avert the knowledge of his death ; though she owed perhaps to his kind consideration her ignorance of its more distressing features. The premature birth of a boy was the natural consequence of an event which it alone, perhaps, prevented her brooding on to madness ; for all her romantic feelings had now taken the turn of remorse for inadequate appreciation of him who had died to promote her health and convenience.

Death is the most flattering, as well as durable of limners ! and under his mel lowing and indelible touch, the father of her child became once more a hero, in the mind's eye of his inconsolable widow. But how were those feelings enhanced, when, on the opening of his will, executed on the day when his bosom first swelled with paternal anti cipations, she found the sole guardianship and unlimited control of his unborn heir committed (by one to whom the casualties of the hunting field had for once taught the lesson of his mor tality) to his " faithful and beloved wife," with every expression of deference for her superior abilities, and esteem for her character which the limited vocabulary of a plain man could dictate. We leave it to those who have keen feelings, not unmingled with self-upbraidings for injustice to a departed object, to imagine the dying devotion to the memory of a husband, and the interests of a child, which such an unexpected proof of con fidence was calculated to inspire.

Left a widow at one-and-twenty, with youth and beauty, with the full enjoyment of her husband's fortune, and the' unlimited disposal of all that had belonged to herself, the world contained for the fond heart of Anne but two spots — the grave of the man who in death, if not in hfe, had understood and appreciated her, and the cradle of his precious, delicate boy. No, I forget, there was a third ! the paddock — where, when the first burst of grief occasioned by the sight of them was past, his once proscribed hunters were dady fed and petted by her who, in the waywardness of youth and inexperience, had often denounced them as the bane of her own happiness, and probable shorteners of her husband's existence. It is not to be supposed that a widow, young, handsome, and thus richly endowed, could remain long unassailed by temptations to a second union.

But the romance inherent in her character had now invested with inviolable sanctity the ties which bound her to her husband's grave. Des titute of near relations of her own, and on barely civil terms with those of Mr. Ellesmere, she had ualuckily no friend to suggest, that she would perhaps best consult the welfare of his infant heir by giving him from the cradle a judicious and disinterested protector. The only person by whom the advice was volun teered, was a humorist cousin of her own, a student of medicine, for whom, almost from childhood, she had cherished a girlish fancy, whose dormant reminiscences might even now have been fanned into a sober flame. But the same bugbear of wealth, which had formerly driven the odd and independent spirited boy from the side of his heiress cousin, still kept him aloof in manhood, amid the struggles of a rising profession, from the wealthy widow ; and his playful exhortations, not being backed either by the personal suit or example of one who professed himself (for whose sake he never hinted) a determined bachelor, only rivetted Mrs. Ellesmere more firmly to the memory of her husband, and the care of his boy.

That this precious child was spoiled, in that vulgar sense of the word which is held to mean unlimited indulgence, and the power of making himself and all around him unhappy, would be a libel on even a widowed mother. But the unceasing attention, nay, even the vigilance of reproof with which the slightest actions and faults of the sole heir to thousands are neces sarily visited, is only one degree less pernicious than reckless partiality ; and whoever knows anything of the pride inherent in our nature, is aware that there are few children who would not prefer the consequence inferred by being watched and punished, to the insignificance implied in utter neglect. Walter Ellesmere, however, whose disposition, like that of his father, was quiet and phlegmatic, was much more given to sins of omission than commission; and happily, as she thought, for his mother, rather required the spur than the rein.

For study, he displayed not one jot more energy or relish than his father had done before him ; and the clever tutor whom, at the earliest pos sible age, Mrs. Ellesmere bribed away from college with a noble salary in hand, and a rich living in prospect, to inspire her darling with the love of learning, felt half ashamed to pocket tie one, so utterly hopeless was the other. At the same time, the heir of Ellesmere, though no scholar, was a gentle, pleasing, well-behaved boy; and if, bending to the decrees of fate, his mother had been content to make of him, like honest John, a better sort of gentlemanlike squire, success was easy and certain. But what would then have become of the lofty visions of fame and superiority in the senate and councils of his country, with which, like the mother of the Gracchi, Mrs. Ellesmere had fed her solitary and anxious hours?

Why had she remained single, and directed to one object all the energies of an active and powerful mind, but that the fruits of her education should do credit to its maternal conductress? It was the fashion, she knew, to decry female guardianship and management, and in the talents and perfections of her son she had hoped to see the slander amply refuted. To attain this object, however visionary, there was, to do her justice, no sacrifice which she deemed too great. And those similarly circumstanced, who have staked, like her, their all of honour and happiness on some frad human idol, can alone appreciate the feeling of self-renunciation with which she consigned her precious Walter to the emulation and contentions of a public school. She reaped her reward in the increased man liness with which he returned to her arms ; and the limited portion of Greek and Latin which, under any process, his memory could be made to receive (not to retain or digest) was, by dint of necessity or emulation, slowly and reluctantly acquired.

But, as years advanced, there came, with the Greek and Latin, other acquirements less creditable to Harrow, and less profitable to the young heir, in the shape of precisely that extreme of idleness and expense to which both are carried, when indulged in, rather at the sug gestion of other and bolder spirits, than of the transgressor's own inclination. Boys (men they caUed themselves) first found out, and then told Walter, that he was heir to £10,000 a year; reminded him (which he was in no danger of forgetting) that he had a fond and wealthy mother; and inferred from these premises that any limit either to his follies or expenses would be, to say the least of it, superfluous. The conclusion, however natural, was, as it proved, erroneous. Shocked and terrified by exaggerated rumours of her son's debts and ex cesses, Mrs. Ellesmere resolved, though with an aching heart, to emulate in severity the austerest male guardian on record.

She not only sanctioned, without one symptom of external relenting, the dismissal from school of her darling, but pro nouncing his late conduct a bar alike to his pro ceeding to college, or returning under her own roof, consigned him, unseen, and ostensibly un pardoned, to the care of a clergyman of acknowledged learning and strict morals, in a remote part of England. There was more, perhaps, of outraged maternal pride than wholesome maternal feeling in this act of bitter self-denial. Walter, like his late father, was accessible to kindness ; though phleg matic and passive under a severity which he could scarcely believe to be real, and of which his mother, he was sure, would be the first to tire. For contrition under his late misdemeanours was substituted resentment at being disgraced and banished from home; and Walter Ellesmere, at nineteen, weak, proud, aud wavering, with no other companion or counsellor than a stern, un bending pedagogue, was quite at the mercy of any one who would take the trouble to persuade him that he was extremely ill-used, and fully entitled to retaliate.

This office was, ere long, assumed by a mother who, the antipodes in character, conduct, and principles of poor Mrs. Edesmere, was on that very account the more suited, first to undermine her in the opinion, and then supersede her in the affections of her son. Poor Walter's evil genius had some time before sent into the cheap neighbourhood of S , to recruit her own finances, and her daughter's bloom after a winter's campaign, the wife of a Captain Aubrey ; who, with this good travelling name, derived from some fencible or mditia com mission, had long since carried on, with varying prosperity, the trade of a gambler, at the then head-quarters of the honourable fraternity — Bath. Here, even during the dulness of summer, the captain found it convenient for his purpose, as well as congenial to his habits to linger ; angling, in a small way among invahds and dowagers till the returning shoal of the succeeding season, should make it worth while to spread his nets in earnest.