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Read Ebook: The Exclusives (vol. 2 of 3) by Bury Charlotte Campbell Lady
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Ebook has 333 lines and 49801 words, and 7 pages
IN THREE VOLUMES.
SECOND EDITION.
LONDON: HENRY COLBURN AND RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET.
THE EXCLUSIVES.
THE CLOSING SCENE AT RESTORMEL.
On the evening previous to Lord Albert's departure, while Mr. Foley and Lady Hamlet Vernon were intently engaged in playing at chess, Lord Albert announced to Lady Ellersby his intention of leaving Restormel, and paid her the usual compliment of thanks for the honour she had done him in inviting him there.
"You have lost your queen," cried Mr. Foley, addressing Lady Hamlet Vernon, "now in two moves I will give you checkmate, lady fair. But see--what is the matter?--she is ill--she faints--lend assistance for heaven's sake!" Lord Albert flew towards the spot, and caught Lady Hamlet as she was falling to the ground. The usual remedies were applied; and when sufficiently recovered, the sufferer was carried to her room, apparently still unable to speak.
"I hate all scene-makers," said Lady Boileau; "if there is a thing I cannot bear, it is the getting up of a sentimental catastrophe.--Don't you, Mr. Leslie Winyard?--Don't you think it is the acm? of bad taste?"
"One may always command one's-self," observed Lady Baskerville.
"Spoken like an orator," said Mr. Spencer Newcombe; "and not only an orator, but a philosopher."
"I will bet you ten to one," cried Mr. Leslie Winyard, "that Lord Albert D'Esterre does not leave Restormel to-morrow."
"Done," said Mr. Spencer Newcombe.--
"I don't think he will go," said Lady Ellersby, gently.
"Why not?" asked Lady Tilney.
"Lady Hamlet Vernon will not let him."
"C'est tout simple," rejoined Comtesse Leinsengen, with a shrug of her shoulders.
"It appears to me," said Lady Baskerville, "that if he does go he will not be very much missed. I never knew so dull a member of society; he never speaks but to lay down the law, or to inculcate some moral truth: now really when one has done with the nursery, that is rather too bad."
"Providing she don't drive away George Foley," said Lady Boileau, "she may reap the fruits of her fainting here."
"Promised!--well, dear Lady Baskerville, I thought you were too prudent to make such promises. What will Lord Baskerville say?" lowering her tone to a whisper.
Lady Baskerville, speaking aloud--"Oh, dear! la! I should never have thought of asking him what he likes upon such an occasion;--we live too well together to trouble each other with our little arrangements.--Is it not true, Lord Baskerville? do we not do exactly as we choose?"
"I hope your Ladyship does," he replied, in all the airs of his exclusive character; "I should conceive myself vastly unhappy if you did not?" Lady Baskerville looked significantly at her dear friend Lady Boileau; who knew, as well as herself, that this ultra-liberalism of her Lord in regard to the conduct of wives, whatever it might be in respect to husbands, was entirely assumed on Lord Baskerville's part.
While this conversation passed in the drawing-room, Lord Albert and Mr. Foley were discoursing in their apartment above-stairs. They had each expressed great interest about Lady Hamlet Vernon's indisposition; and after waiting some time to hear accounts of her from her female attendants, they fell into other conversation of various kinds, during which Lord Albert D'Esterre found himself unfeignedly amused and interested with the talents, taste, and refinement of Mr. Foley; and the more so, as he spoke much of Dunmelraise and its inhabitants, and was lavish in his praise of Lady Adeline.
"It is not for myself I mourn--it is not the threatened loss of your society, however much I value it, which has occasioned my being so overpowered--it is the knowledge of a secret which pertains to another, and in which your fate is involved, that has quite mastered me--this much I must tell you. I must see you before you go, I must prepare you for your meeting with Lady Adeline Seymour." Twenty times he read over this note. "What can it mean? can its meaning be that Adeline loves Mr. Foley, at least that he thinks so? and I, what have I been doing? into what a sea of troubles have I plunged for the enjoyment of the society of a person that in fact affords me none--for the empty speculation of recalling the chaotic mind of one to a sense of reason and religion, fool that I was for the attempt." Then, after a considerable pause, and after deep reflection, he burst forth:
At last the company rose from the breakfast table, and as Lady Hamlet took Lord Albert's arm, and walked out on the terrace under the window, she said, "This is kind of you to have listened to my request:" and then as they walked from the house, proceeded in a graver tone to add, "I am aware, dear Lord Albert, that my note of last night must have surprised you, and that the subject connected with it, on which I am about to touch, is one of the utmost delicacy, and one which upon the very verge of the attempt I shrink from; but you have evinced so much real interest in the state of my wayward mind, and have said so much to me with a view, I am certain, of placing my happiness on a more secure and steady foundation than I had ever any chance of before, that I should be ungrateful in the extreme, if a corresponding wish for your comfort in life did not in turn actuate me. I cannot be ignorant of the engagement between yourself and Lady Adeline Seymour, the fulfilment of which will not, I presume, be long delayed; unless, indeed--"
Here Lady Hamlet Vernon's voice faltered, and for a moment she paused; but, as if making an effort to subdue her emotion, she added in a lower and firmer tone, and with an expression of something like intreaty in her countenance as she looked up at Lord Albert, "Unless I, dear Lord Albert, shall prove the happy instrument of saving you from too precipitate a step in this matter. May I continue to speak to you thus unreservedly?" Lord Albert made no answer, but bowed his head in token of assent, while he walked by her side like one lost in a perturbed dream. She continued,
Lord Albert shuddered, and a sigh was the only interruption he gave, as Lady Hamlet proceeded.
"Now let me beseech you, and believe me to speak from the most disinterested feelings, that when you meet Lady Adeline, you will not betray yourself into a too hasty arrangement for your union. See her--see her, by all means. Judge for yourself; use your own eyes, hear with your own ears, and be the arbiter of your own cause, but do nothing rashly. Time is necessary for all decisions in momentous questions; and what can be more momentous, and in what is there more at stake, than in an union for life? Can too much deliberation be given to the subject? Alas! I know, from my own fatal experience, what misery must ensue where no tastes, no principles, no objects exist in common between those united. I owe to this cause a great portion of my present unhappiness; for the misery I endured, and the constant efforts I made to bear up against the tenfold wretchedness of my marriage with Lord Hamlet Vernon, impaired my intellectual powers, and prevented my turning the energies of my mind to any useful or profitable purpose. Hence I have become what I am, dependant on the resources of the hour, to enable me to pass through life with any thing like composure."
Lord Albert had listened with feelings which it would be impossible to describe to all that had fallen from Lady Hamlet Vernon; and in the emotion, which her communication and her entreaties produced, he could find no words for utterance, no answer to her appeals. He was like one dumb, and deprived of sense; and he stood for some moments rooted to the spot when the voice of his counsellor had ceased.
"See her! yes, I will see my Adeline," he at length said in a deep agonized tone, as if communing with himself. "Yes, I will see her."
"Lord Albert, I entreat you, I implore you," cried Lady Hamlet Vernon, with an emotion that made her words quiver on her lips, "I beseech you forgive me, if"--the window of the library was at this moment thrown hastily up; and Lord Albert D'Esterre heard his name called by Lord Ellersby, who held in his hand a letter.
"D'Esterre," said he, "here are your letters." Lord Albert hastened forward mechanically to receive them, and one he gazed upon more intently than the rest, as he looked them over--it was from Adeline.
Who is there who has not recognised, even in its peculiar folding, the letter of a beloved object? and whose heart has not throbbed with delight ere even the seal were broken? Such was the emotion of Lord Albert, awoke up from the paralyzing influence of Lady Hamlet Vernon's communication to new life by the letter he now pressed to his bosom; and regardless of what had passed, he hastened to his room, and read as follows:--
/# "DEAREST:--My mother has been gradually growing worse and worse these two months, and I have persuaded her to go to town for a consultation of her physicians.
"It is so long since I have heard from you, Albert, it is painful for me to write, scarcely knowing how far you may be interested in what I have to communicate--but I try to still my uneasiness--let me but see you, dear Albert, all will be forgotten, all will be forgiven; for I am your own true and affectionate
"P.S. You will find us at Mamma's house in town." #/
A letter like this, breathing such trust and love, and so replete with genuine expression of delight in the prospect of meeting him, was indeed sufficient to make Lord Albert forget at once the poisonous theme which his ears rather than his reason had imbibed in his interview with Lady Hamlet. Impelled more by the eager anxiety of affection to behold the object of his late disquietude, than to see her for the purpose of convincing himself of her errors, he leapt with alacrity into his carriage, and drove towards London, without casting a thought on those he left behind.
The mortification which Lady Hamlet Vernon felt was severe, in proportion as from its nature it admitted of no sympathy. She was, of course, ignorant of the cause of Lord Albert's destination being so suddenly changed from Wales to London; but in the blindness of her increasing passion, she resolved in the first moment of her despair to follow him thither. A cooler judgment, however, made her recollect that if she lost Lord Albert she had other friends to retain, a position in the gay world to lose, and that, at all events, it was not by pursuing him at that moment that any thing was to be gained; she therefore determined on remaining some days at Restormel, and making herself as agreeable as possible to the party that continued there. To one of Lady Hamlet Vernon's disposition this was no easy task. Violent and impetuous as she was by nature, left as she had been without any control, it was a very Herculean work to hide all the warring passions of jealousy and disappointed love beneath the semblance of a cool indifference--a disengaged mind.
"What have you done with Lord Albert?" was Lady Baskerville's first question to her after the morning's salutation; "I hear he departed in violent haste at an undue hour this morning. He looks of such an imperturbable gravity, one does not understand his ever being brought to do any thing out of measure or rule."
She thought by this means to discover the cause of his sudden disappearance, and gratify her inquiries as being the curiosity of another.--"Lord Ellersby," she said, "Lady Baskerville is desirous to learn what wonderful event can have called Lord Albert away from us so very suddenly."
"I do not know," said Lord Ellersby, "unless he is going to be prime minister; don't you think, Winyard, he has the dignity of office on his brows already?"
"In his own opinion, I make no doubt, he stands a fair chance for the highest situations; but we have quite exploded all that sort of fudge now-a-days, and I think, unless we were to have a bare-bone parliament, and a cabinet of puritans, his very consequential lordship has not much prospect of success in that line."
"No," said Lady Tenderden, taking up a newspaper, "I think this paragraph in the Morning Post will rather explain the secret of Lord Albert's going away:--
/# "'We understand Lady Dunmelraise, with her beautiful daughter Lady Adeline Seymour, is shortly expected in town, and are sorry to add that Lady Dunmelraise's ill health has hitherto caused her absence from the gay circles of fashion.'--This is put in by herself, or some of her friends, you may depend upon it." #/
"Dear," said Lady Baskerville, "those vulgar newspapers are always filled with trash of that sort; nobody attends to such nonsense. I dare say this Lady Adeline is some awkward raw girl, enough to make one shiver to think of; however, she may do very well as a wife for Lord Albert, and he may be gone to meet her."
"Oh, I do assure you," cried Lady Tilney, "that the public papers are the vehicles of a great deal of good or evil; and that not only political discussion, but the discussion also of the affairs of individuals, is constantly promoted by the freedom of the press."
"For my part," said Lady Baskerville, "I think it is quite abominable that those vulgar editors of newspapers should be allowed to comment upon what we do."
"I like it all very well when it does not interfere with me," he replied, yawning; "but I think it is very disagreeable when these vulgar fellows, the news-writers, say some impertinent thing, for which I cannot give them a rap over the knuckles."
"Nevertheless," rejoined Mr. Foley, who had just laid down his book, "I do assure you that, puff or no puff, Lady Adeline Seymour will astonish you all, for she is a very extraordinary person."
"Then I am sure I shall not be able to suffer her," said Lady Baskerville.
"Mr. Foley seems to be paid too," rejoined Lady Tenderden, laughing, "for making the young lady notorious; and we shall see him with a placard stuck on his shoulders, setting forth the beauties and perfections of the wonderful young lady."
Mr. Foley smiled as, he replied: "I shall leave it to time to prove to every one of you how very much you are mistaken."
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