A Group of Noble Dames

‘Gone to your father’s. Is that – ’ He stopped, aghast.

‘Yes, sir. This spotted object is your wife! I’ve done it because I don’t want you to come near me!’

He was sixteen years her senior; old enough to be compassionate. ‘My poor child, you must get to bed directly! Don’t be afraid of me – I’ll carry you upstairs, and send for a doctor instantly.’

‘Ah, you don’t know what I am!’ she cried. ‘I had a lover once; but now he’s gone! ’Twasn’t I who deserted him. He has deserted me; because I am ill he wouldn’t kiss me, though I wanted him to!’

‘Wouldn’t he? Then he was a very poor slack-twisted sort of fellow. Betty, I’ve never kissed you since you stood beside me as my little wife, twelve years and a half old! May I kiss you now?’

Though Betty by no means desired his kisses, she had enough of the spirit of Cunigonde in Schiller’s ballad to test his daring. ‘If you have courage to venture, yes sir!’ said she. ‘But you may die for it, mind!’

He came up to her and imprinted a deliberate kiss full upon her mouth, saying, ‘May many others follow!’

She shook her head, and hastily withdrew, though secretly pleased at his hardihood. The excitement had supported her for the few minutes she had passed in his presence, and she could hardly drag herself back to her room. Her husband summoned the servants, and, sending them to her assistance, went off himself for a doctor.

The next morning Reynard waited at the Court till he had learnt from the medical man that Betty’s attack promised to be a very light one – or, as it was expressed, ‘very fine’; and in taking his leave sent up a note to her:

‘Now I must be Gone. I promised your Mother I would not see You yet, and she may be anger’d if she finds me here. Promise to see me as Soon as you are well?’

He was of all men then living one of the best able to cope with such an untimely situation as this. A contriving, sagacious, gentle-mannered man, a philosopher who saw that the only constant attribute of life is change, he held that, as long as she lives, there is nothing finite in the most impassioned attitude a woman may take up. In twelve months his girl-wife’s recent infatuation might be as distasteful to her mind as it was now to his own. In a few years her very flesh would change – so said the scientific; – her spirit, so much more ephemeral, was capable of changing in one. Betty was his, and it became a mere question of means how to effect that change.

During the day Mrs. Dornell, having closed her husband’s eyes, returned to the Court. She was truly relieved to find Betty there, even though on a bed of sickness. The disease ran its course, and in due time Betty became convalescent, without having suffered deeply for her rashness, one little speck beneath her ear, and one beneath her chin, being all the marks she retained.

The Squire’s body was not brought back to King’s-Hintock. Where he was born, and where he had lived before wedding his Sue, there he had wished to be buried. No sooner had she lost him than Mrs. Dornell, like certain other wives, though she had never shown any great affection for him while he lived, awoke suddenly to his many virtues, and zealously embraced his opinion about delaying Betty’s union with her husband, which she had formerly combated strenuously. ‘Poor man! how right he was, and how wrong was I!’ Eighteen was certainly the lowest age at which Mr. Reynard should claim her child – nay, it was too low! Far too low!

So desirous was she of honouring her lamented husband’s sentiments in this respect, that she wrote to her son-in-law suggesting that, partly on account of Betty’s sorrow for her father’s loss, and out of consideration for his known wishes for delay, Betty should not be taken from her till her nineteenth birthday.

However much or little Stephen Reynard might have been to blame in his marriage, the patient man now almost deserved to be pitied. First Betty’s skittishness; now her mother’s remorseful volte-face: it was enough to exasperate anybody; and he wrote to the widow in a tone which led to a little coolness between those hitherto firm friends. However, knowing that he had a wife not to claim but to win, and that young Phelipson had been packed off to sea by his parents, Stephen was complaisant to a degree, returning to London, and holding quite aloof from Betty and her mother, who remained for the present in the country. In town he had a mild visitation of the distemper he had taken from Betty, and in writing to her he took care not to dwell upon its mildness. It was now that Betty began to pity him for what she had inflicted upon him by the kiss, and her correspondence acquired a distinct flavour of kindness thenceforward.

Owing to his rebuffs, Reynard had grown to be truly in love with Betty in his mild, placid, durable way – in that way which perhaps, upon the whole, tends most generally to the woman’s comfort under the institution of marriage, if not particularly to her ecstasy. Mrs. Dornell’s exaggeration of her husband’s wish for delay in their living together was inconvenient, but he would not openly infringe it. He wrote tenderly to Betty, and soon announced that he had a little surprise in store for her. The secret was that the King had been graciously pleased to inform him privately, through a relation, that His Majesty was about to offer him a Barony. Would she like the title to be Ivell? Moreover, he had reason for knowing that in a few years the dignity would be raised to that of an Earl, for which creation he thought the title of Wessex would be eminently suitable, considering the position of much of their property. As Lady Ivell, therefore, and future Countess of Wessex, he should beg leave to offer her his heart a third time.

He did not add, as he might have added, how greatly the consideration of the enormous estates at King’s-Hintock and elsewhere which Betty would inherit, and her children after her, had conduced to this desirable honour.

Whether the impending titles had really any effect upon Betty’s regard for him I cannot state, for she was one of those close characters who never let their minds be known upon anything. That such honour was absolutely unexpected by her from such a quarter is, however, certain; and she could not deny that Stephen had shown her kindness, forbearance, even magnanimity; had forgiven her for an errant passion which he might with some reason have denounced, notwithstanding her cruel position as a child entrapped into marriage ere able to understand its bearings.

Her mother, in her grief and remorse for the loveless life she had led with her rough, though open-hearted, husband, made now a creed of his merest whim; and continued to insist that, out of respect to his known desire, her son-in-law should not reside with Betty till the girl’s father had been dead a year at least, at which time the girl would still be under nineteen. Letters must suffice for Stephen till then.

‘It is rather long for him to wait,’ Betty hesitatingly said one day.

‘What!’ said her mother. ‘From you? not to respect your dear father – ’

‘Of course it is quite proper,’ said Betty hastily. ‘I don’t gainsay it. I was but thinking that – that – ’

In the long slow months of the stipulated interval her mother tended and trained Betty carefully for her duties. Fully awake now to the many virtues of her dear departed one, she, among other acts of pious devotion to his memory, rebuilt the church of King’s-Hintock village, and established valuable charities in all the villages of that name, as far as to Little-Hintock, several miles eastward.

In superintending these works, particularly that of the church-building, her daughter Betty was her constant companion, and the incidents of their execution were doubtless not without a soothing effect upon the young creature’s heart. She had sprung from girl to woman by a sudden bound, and few would have recognized in the thoughtful face of Betty now the same person who, the year before, had seemed to have absolutely no idea whatever of responsibility, moral or other. Time passed thus till the Squire had been nearly a year in his vault; and Mrs. Dornell was duly asked by letter by the patient Reynard if she were willing for him to come soon. He did not wish to take Betty away if her mother’s sense of loneliness would be too great, but would willingly live at King’s-Hintock awhile with them.

Before the widow had replied to this communication, she one day happened to observe Betty walking on the south terrace in the full sunlight, without hat or mantle, and was struck by her child’s figure. Mrs. Dornell called her in, and said suddenly: ‘Have you seen your husband since the time of your poor father’s death?’

‘Well – yes, mamma,’ says Betty, colouring.

‘What – against my wishes and those of your dear father! I am shocked at your disobedience!’

‘But my father said eighteen, ma’am, and you made it much longer – ’

‘Why, of course – out of consideration for you! When have ye seen him?’

‘Well,’ stammered Betty, ‘in the course of his letters to me he said that I belonged to him, and if nobody knew that we met it would make no difference. And that I need not hurt your feelings by telling you.’

‘Well?’

‘So I went to Casterbridge that time you went to London about five months ago – ’

‘And met him there? When did you come back?’

‘Dear mamma, it grew very late, and he said it was safer not to go back till next day, as the roads were bad; and as you were away from home – ’

‘I don’t want to hear any more! This is your respect for your father’s memory,’ groaned the widow. ‘When did you meet him again?’

‘Oh – not for more than a fortnight.’

‘A fortnight! How many times have ye seen him altogether?’

‘I’m sure, mamma, I’ve not seen him altogether a dozen times.’

‘A dozen! And eighteen and a half years old barely!’

‘Twice we met by accident,’ pleaded Betty. ‘Once at Abbot’s-Cernel, and another time at the Red Lion, Melchester.’

‘O thou deceitful girl!’ cried Mrs. Dornell. ‘An accident took you to the Red Lion whilst I was staying at the White Hart! I remember – you came in at twelve o’clock at night and said you’d been to see the cathedral by the light o’ the moon!’

‘My ever-honoured mamma, so I had! I only went to the Red Lion with him afterwards.’

‘Oh Betty, Betty! That my child should have deceived me even in my widowed days!’

‘But, my dearest mamma, you made me marry him!’ says Betty with spirit, ‘and of course I’ve to obey him more than you now!’

Mrs. Dornell sighed. ‘All I have to say is, that you’d better get your husband to join you as soon as possible,’ she remarked. ‘To go on playing the maiden like this – I’m ashamed to see you!’

She wrote instantly to Stephen Reynard: ‘I wash my hands of the whole matter as between you two; though I should advise you to openly join each other as soon as you can – if you wish to avoid scandal.’

He came, though not till the promised title had been granted, and he could call Betty archly ‘My Lady.’

People said in after years that she and her husband were very happy. However that may be, they had a numerous family; and she became in due course first Countess of Wessex, as he had foretold.

The little white frock in which she had been married to him at the tender age of twelve was carefully preserved among the relics at King’s-Hintock Court, where it may still be seen by the curious – a yellowing, pathetic testimony to the small count taken of the happiness of an innocent child in the social strategy of those days, which might have led, but providentially did not lead, to great unhappiness.

When the Earl died Betty wrote him an epitaph, in which she described him as the best of husbands, fathers, and friends, and called herself his disconsolate widow.