Mohawks: A Novel. Volume 3 of 3

"I feel certain my jewel-case is lost!" exclaimed the Dowager, "and if it is I am a ruined woman; for it contains some of the very finest of the family diamonds, which are heirlooms, and must be given up to my son's wife whenever he marries. I wouldn't so much have minded my own rubies and emeralds, though the ruby necklace is worth a small fortune; and to think that careless hussy should have forgotten where she put it!"

"Indeed, your ladyship carried it to the coach – nay, 'twas Captain Asterley carried it, and your ladyship ordered where it was to be put."

"Ifackens, so I did, wench!" cried the Dowager, who was very vulgar when she was in a good temper. "'Tis on the floor of the coach, Lyddy, and I had my feet on it all the way down. Lord, what a no-memory I have, child!" tapping Mrs. Lydia Vansittart archly with her fan, and ignoring the falsely-accused abigail, who stood by with an aggrieved countenance.

"I rejoice to hear your ladyship's memory is bad," said Lavendale, approaching the group with his courtly air, at once debonair and stately, "for in that case I dare hope you will forget the poverty of your entertainment at Lavendale Manor, and remember only how enchanted its master was to have you under his roof."

"Poverty, my dear Lavendale! Your house has a delightful air, and I am going to be ravished with everything I see in it. There is nothing so agreeable, to my ideas, as a fine old mansion which time has sobered down to a prevailing sombreness – the mellow colouring of centuries. I hate your newly-built and newly-appointed house, with its Italian pediment and marble floors, and its draughty comfortless rooms. Give me a house that my ancestors have aired for me. A man who inhabits a house of his own building must feel like Adam, as if he had never had a father."

They were all in the hall by this time, and Lady Polwhele was warming her feet, which were one of her good points, at the log fire, turning about the little velvet slippers with a coquettish air, now making a Bristol diamond buckle flash in the firelight, and now bringing into play an instep exaggerated by a three-inch heel.

Lady Judith had flung herself into a chair, and had thrown off her hat carelessly, letting the loose disordered hair fall as it would about her face and neck. She had unfastened the fur-trimmed coat, revealing the snowy whiteness of swan-like throat and bust, and the glitter of a diamond cross, half veiled by a cloud of Mechlin lace. She was leaning back in her chair, sipping a cup of tea, which Irene had just brought her from the saloon, and looking admiringly round at the old hall, with its family portraits and family armour and floodtide worn last at Sedgemoor, and dusty with the dust of a generation.

The other three women crowded round the fire, Captain Asterley with them. His City wife had seen a good many grand houses since her marriage, and would not commit herself by admiring this one, lest it should be supposed she was overawed by its grandeur.

"There was a turn of the road in your park that reminded me of Canons," she told Lavendale.

"My park is but a paddock when compared with the Duke's demesne, my dear Mrs. Asterley; but I am flattered that even a branch of one of my trees should recall that splendid seat. Did you stay long at Canons?"

"N-no, not very long," faltered Mrs. Asterley, who had been admitted to the ducal palace by a side-wind of favour, to see the pictures.

Mrs. Vansittart was in raptures with Lavendale Manor. She affected a kind of hoydenish enthusiasm, rode to hounds, adored the country, pretended to know a great deal about farming, and was altogether of a masculine type of young lady.

"I hope there will be some fox-hunting while we are with your lordship," she said, "and that you can find me some kind of creature to ride. I am not particular; anything, from a Godolphin colt to your bailiff's gray Dobbin, will suit me."

"We will try to find you something better than gray Dobbin, if even we cannot promise you the Godolphin blood," answered Lavendale pleasantly. "If the frost grows no harder, the hounds will meet on Flamestead Common early on Boxing Day; but I fear you will have a good many of the rabble out that morning to follow on foot."

"O, I do not mind the rabble. I am a Republican, and admire old Noll Cromwell better than any hero in history, though he was hardly personable enough for me to be in love with his shade. It has always been a wonder to me that we did not make an end of kings and queens altogether when good Queen Anne died. Instead of making all that fuss about Settlement and Succession, the Whigs should have taken the government into their own hands, elected Robert Walpole as their head, and carried on the affairs of the nation as easily as the Lord Mayor manages the City. Was ever anything so preposterous as to send for an elderly German, who knew not one word of our language, to rule over us, just because he was a lineal descendant of King James I.?"

"O, but we couldn't get on without a king," cried Mrs. Asterley. "I love the look of the King's gilt coach and eight, or his gilt chair, with six footmen walking in front, and a body of soldiers behind. 'Tis one of the prettiest sights in London. And would you have no Drawing-rooms, and no birthnight balls, and no illuminations, and no trumpeters, and no beefeaters, when the King goes to the play?"

"We should get on just as well without any such raree-shows," said Mrs. Lydia contemptuously. "Give me a Roman Forum and Consuls elected by the people."

"Nay, child, I'm sure the Romans were no better off than we are, from anything I can hear of their Neros and their Caligulas," protested the Dowager; "and I quite agree with Mrs. Asterley that a Court is an indispensable institution. We must have somebody to make a fuss about, and though I allow that Germans are mostly savages, I am sure Queen Caroline is the nicest woman I know."

"Say that she is a great deal too good for her boorish husband, and we will all be of one mind with you," said Lady Judith; and then there was a move to the saloon, where every one clustered round the table, and where tea, coffee, chocolate, cakes, and toast were discussed with considerable gusto by people who had dined at two o'clock.

Judith was altogether the queen of the friendly little party. Lavendale helped her to take off the great sable-bordered pelisse, and she emerged from her furs in a gown of black brocade, which intensified the dazzling whiteness of neck and arms, and a black satin petticoat embroidered with silver. Her only ornament was a large diamond cross, tied round her neck with a broad black ribbon, but the diamonds were as magnificent as any to be seen in London.

"Was it not that cross which the Queen wore at her coronation?" asked Lady Polwhele, screwing up her wrinkled eyelids to peer across the table at the gems.

"I believe this was one of the trifles which her Majesty did me the honour to wear on that occasion," answered Judith carelessly.

"I wonder she gave it back to you; I wouldn't, if I'd been Queen of England. You should have sued me for it."

"I don't believe Judith would ever have found out her loss," said Mrs. Vansittart: "she has a plethora of gems. She lets me blaze in borrowed splendour sometimes, but I take no pleasure in my finery. 'Tis the sense of possession that is the real delight."

"Ay, I know that by sad experience," said the Dowager. "I detest the family diamonds because I know I shall have to see them worn by somebody else, if I live long enough. When I see Polwhele flirting with some scraggy minx, I fancy how she would look with my collet necklace on her bony neck. And he is such a weak young simpleton that I never see him civil to a young woman without expecting to hear next morning that he has proposed to her."

"I don't think your ladyship need anticipate immediate peril," said Asterley, with a significant air. "From the kind of life his lordship has been leading of late, I should think there was nothing further from his thoughts than matrimony. A young man cannot marry two French dancers; and from what I know of the ladies with whom Lord Polwhele has been seen about town lately, if he marries one 'twill be at the risk of getting shot or stabbed by the other. O, I don't mean that the lady would murder him herself. She would get some serviceable Irish captain to invite him to a meeting in the Five Fields or at Wormwood Scrubs."

"You have no right to talk of such things, Asterley, and in the hearing of a mother!" whimpered the Dowager.

"I beg your ladyship's pardon; but when all the town knows the story – "

"The town reeks with malicious inventions," said Lavendale lightly. "I daresay young Lord Polwhele is not a whit worse than his neighbours."

Lady Judith leant back in her chair and listened with a supercilious air, as if she had been looking on at a gathering of ants and emmets. They sat and babbled about their acquaintances: how he or she had run mad, and how people did such monstrous stupendous things that it was strange no fiery rain came down from heaven, or inward convulsion upheaved the earth, to wreak the vengeance of the Omnipotent on this modern Sodom. Lady Judith listened, and said scarce a word. Of course the world was wicked; she had known as much from her childhood. She had heard of gambling debts and family quarrels, elopements and suicides, madness, scrofula, hereditary hatreds, and fatal duels, in her nursery. There was nothing new in the latest scandal, only another turn of the old figures in the old kaleidoscope. She heard and smiled.

"My dear souls, how stale your talk is!" she said at last: "not one of your scandals has any originality. They sound as if you had adapted them from the French. They are reminiscences of the Regent and his roués. Confess now that they are stolen from the Philippiques."

"May I show you your rooms, ladies?" said Irene, "and then we might have time for some music before supper."

"O, hang music!" cried Miss Vansittart. "We have music enough in London. 'Tis nothing but talk of Cuzzoni and Faustina, Handel and Bononcini, all day long; everybody fighting for his or her favourite singer: and 'tis dangerous to confess one admires Senesino, lest one should be torn to pieces by the votaries of Farinelli. Let us clean ourselves, and then sit down to a good round game – bassett, or pharaoh."

Durnford rang the bell, and the housekeeper came with a couple of maids, carrying wax candles; and the ladies gathered up their cloaks and hoods, and prepared to be ushered to their several rooms.

"One word, Lavendale," cried the vivacious Dowager, wheeling suddenly on the threshold: "is there a ghost?"

"There is the ghost which appeared to Saul, madam, in the twenty-seventh chapter of the first book of Samuel."

"Pshaw, coxcomb! you know what I mean. Is this fine old house of yours haunted? It ought to be, if you lay claim to respectability. Have you ever seen a ghost within these walls?"

"Not one, your ladyship, but a hundred. The ghosts of lost hopes, the ghosts of good resolutions, the phantom of my boyish innocence, the shadow of my wasted youth, the spectre of my dissolute manhood. These rooms were full of ghosts, Lady Polwhele, till this dear lady," taking Judith's hand and kissing it, "exorcised them all by her magical presence. You will find no ghosts to-night. Love has laid them."

"Au revoir, Count Rhodomont: I think that should be your name," said the Dowager, as she skipped lightly off, followed by the other women.

Everybody was delighted with everything: the rooms, the fires, and bright clusters of candles, shining upon old Venetian looking-glasses in silvered frames; the oak passages, which would have seemed gloomy enough had the house been dark and empty, but which were now lighted by wax candles in polished brass sconces, and garnished with garlands of evergreens.

There was an air of Christmas gaiety and gladness throughout the house.

"And yet I am convinced there is a ghost," protested Lady Polwhele.

CHAPTER XI

"THERE IS ANOTHER AND A BETTER WORLD."

Christmas Eve and Christmas Day were celebrated with all due observances. Lord Lavendale and all his guests attended the village church on Christmas morning, to the edification of the neighbourhood, which consisted of about a score of smock-frock farmers, with their labourers and dairy-maids, and a sprinkling of small gentry. Among these his lordship's party created a sensation, and almost every eye was directed to the big raised pew, with its carved wainscot and silk curtains, and its comfortable fireplace in an angle of the wall.

It was long since Lavendale had seen the inside of a church, and he looked round the village fane with wondering, interested eyes, and comparing it with the glory and vastness of St. Peter's at Rome, which was the last church he remembered to have worshipped in, four years ago at an Easter service. He had come here to-day to humour Lady Judith, who had urged that, as they were going to live at Lavendale by and by, and to settle down into sober country folks, they ought at once to conform to the obligations of their position.

He looked round the church, and remembered the years that were gone, when he had sat in that pew by his mother's side, nestling in the folds of her brocade gown, or sheltered by her furred mantle, and following the words of the lesson in the large-type Bible open on her lap; his childish finger travelling along the line, his childish lips whispering the words. He, the unbeliever, had begun, as other children, in implicit trustfulness. The old familiar Bible stories came back to him, the vivid pictures of the old patriarchal life, full of reality, lifelike in their exquisite simplicity. How he had loved and believed in those old histories! how solemn and earnest had been his childish piety! Then came his orphanage and university life, amidst a reckless, impious crew; and then the Mohawk Club, and the Calf's Head Club, and an assumption of blatant vice as a profession. He had been proud when he was told that society called him the bad Lord Lavendale, in contradistinction to his father, who had been the very pink and pattern of pious respectability.

Well, there was time to mend yet, time to lead a new and honourable life. The words of the ghostly voice were in his ear as the pitch-pipe gave the note, and the villagers began to sing "Hark, the Herald Angels":

"Repent, Lavendale; prepare to die!"

Yes, he would repent, but it should be a repentance made obvious by good works; his preparation for a better world should be the work of years.