LADY BELL

VOL. II.

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LADY BELL

A Story of Last Century

BY THE AUTHOR OF “CITOYENNE JACQUELINE”

IN THREE VOLS.—II.

STRAHAN & CO.
56, LUDGATE HILL, LONDON
1873

LONDON:
PRINTED BY VIRTUE AND CO.,
CITY ROAD.

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CONTENTS OF VOL. II.

CHAP. PAGE I. A MESSAGE OUT OF THE PAST 1 II. FREED BY THE VISITATION OF GOD 15 III. KEEPING HOUSE TOGETHER 28 IV. FRIENDS IN NEED 41 V. BOW BELLS AND THE FAMILY IN CLEVELAND COURT 58 VI. A GAY YOUNG MADAM 71 VII. MAKING AN ACQUAINTANCE AT THE PANTHEON 82 VIII. OPINIONS DIFFER 95 IX. BOULTON’S COINS AND WEDGWOOD’S DISHES 106 X. A PARTY ON THE WATER 124 XI. DISCORD 135 XII. THE LITTLE DINNER AT HAMPTON, WITH MUSIC ON THE WATER 149 XIII. A VISIT TO LEICESTER FIELDS 162 XIV. SIR JOSHUA AT HOME 174 XV. THE MASQUED BALL IN PROSPECT 185 XVI. THE MASQUED BALL AS IT BEGAN IN REALITY 198 XVII. THE “COMMON DOMINO” 210 XVIII. ROMEO AND JULIET ON THE STAGE, AND IN LADY BELL TREVOR AND MISS GREATHEAD’S BOX 222 XIX. THE MEETING ON THE MALL 240 XX. TO TIE OR NOT TO TIE THE KNOT? 251 XXI. ISLINGTON CHURCH EARLY ONE MARCH MORNING 264 XXII. BACK AT SUMMERHILL 276

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CHAPTER I.

A MESSAGE OUT OF THE PAST.

One hot day in the latter end of June, Lady Bell was sitting in the orchard, with Mrs. Sundon’s child in her lap, cooing to it, tickling it, tossing it, decking it with daisies, pretending to herself and to it, that the not-many-weeks-old child noticed and appreciated its floral finery.

The long, flower-besprinkled grass grew all round, beneath the bending, leafy boughs, through the shadows of which came perpetually shifting chequers of sunshine. There could just be seen, down a vista, the quaint, grey house of Nutfield, with the last year’s yellow corn-stacks beyond the orchard, mellowing and warming the green and grey tints under the blue and white cloud-flecked sky.

Mrs. Sundon with her fine figure and face, in one of her white wrappers and close caps, came slowly up between the interlacing boughs; she stopped beside Lady Bell and the child, looking down upon them. The group was very sweet and graceful, and wanted only a St. Joseph and a little St. John to make it stand for one of the old Italian “Riposos.”

“Look here, Lady Bell,” said Mrs. Sundon, putting her finger on a paragraph in a newspaper which she held in her hand.

Lady Bell started and rose up in vague perturbation. For precaution’s sake Mrs. Sundon had abstained from giving her friend, even in private, that friend’s name and title, since Mrs. Sundon had discovered Lady Bell at Nutfield. What had surprised the compromising words from Mrs. Sundon now?

Lady Bell took the newspaper and looked at the place indicated. Her hand was shaking, her breath was coming fast, her eyes were dazzled; but the intimation was so plain and direct that she took in its meaning at a glance. There was no ambiguity there to prevent the message reaching its destination and doing its work. “If Lady Bell Trevor wish to see her husband in life, let her return at once to Trevor Court.”

A mist passed before Lady Bell’s eyes; the sunny June orchard, with the soft, fair child whom Mrs. Sundon had taken into her arms, and Mrs. Sundon herself, all grew in a moment blurred and dark, as if the very dews of death and remorse had fallen on them.

“Oh, Mrs. Sundon, what shall I do?” cried Lady Bell, wringing her hands. “I did not love him, I had no cause to love him; but I was his wife, who was yet no wife to him, and he is a dying man.”

“Go back to him immediately,” advised Mrs. Sundon, “while there is still time to wipe out your offence to him—it was light compared with his to you. But it is ill having an unsettled score with the dead. This would hang like a millstone round your neck, and weigh you down all your days.”

“I’ll go back if you counsel it,” submitted Lady Bell desperately, setting off in nervous haste to the house. “But how am I to face him? if he have strength left to lift his hand still, will he strike me as I have seen him strike his man? Or, if he is gone, must I stay in the house with the dead, I who never saw anybody die but Lady Lucie, who died blessing me? Would that I had minded her precepts better; she would not have had me leave the worst of husbands. And how many miles will it be to post cross country, Mrs. Sundon? you have a good head and may guess. Can you tell me if I shall be as long in going as I was in coming here? only I did not come straight! Oh! will you be so kind as to lend me the money you think I shall need, for I have only three crowns in my purse?”

“My dear, I shall take you,” said Mrs. Sundon quietly. “Do you think I would send you off on such an errand alone?”

“Oh, I am so thankful,” Lady Bell admitted in her relief, “now I may do my duty at last; no, I don’t mean that,” she checked herself the next moment, “I cannot hear of you doing such a thing. How could you leave your baby? You are too delicate yet for such a journey—and to go to that neighbourhood above all others. It is vastly generous of you to propose it, just what I should have expected from you; but, of course, I cannot consent; I shall manage by myself, somehow.”

“Say no more, Lady Bell,” Mrs. Sundon put an end to the discussion, “I am going with you. The child will do very well with her nurse. Do you think I would put my child, any more than myself, between me and my duty and privilege? I should call that treating my child very ill, paying her a poor compliment, for which I should hope she would never thank me. I am abler for the journey than I was for coming here. I need not fear to go near Chevely, which has been sold, as I dare say you’ve heard. You cannot tell what I can do without harm to my health,” declared Mrs. Sundon, with a little bitterness. “I travelled from what had been my home, handed into the carriage by a bailiff on starting, and went out of town when my child was no more than ten days old. I could not have slept another night under that roof. But even if I had been a weaker woman, I should not have shrunk from this poor effort, and you would not have refused me my right.”

Lady Bell had no longer the heart, any more than the will, to decline Mrs. Sundon’s support in the emergency. If Mrs. Sundon’s presence made Mr. Trevor mad—should he regard it as another act of wilful disobedience even when Lady Bell was pretending to obey him—it would be time enough then to undertake the ungracious task of refusing the elder woman’s countenance.

The great news that Mrs. Sundon and Mrs. Barlowe were to set off on horseback within the hour, availing themselves, by permission, of Miss Kingscote’s and Master Charles’s horses, in order to reach Lumley, where they were to hire a chaise to proceed on a journey of indefinite duration, fell flat. It was as nothing compared to the stunning shock inflicted on Miss Kingscote when Mrs. Sundon saw fit to communicate to the hostess the real rank and history of her companion.

“Lud! lud! a Lady Bell all the time, and I to have gone and found fault with her, and kept her pottering about my business, mending lace, and cleaning silver, lud-a-mercy, what shall I do, brother? Mayn’t I be took up by the King or the Lords, like the ‘torney was, whom I’ve heard tell of, no farther gone than father and mother’s day, afore we came down in the world, and I were a mite of a child—he gave a warrant to arrest a fine lady in her coach in the street, at the suit of a tradesman, and he himself was had up before the justices—I mean afore the Lords, for an insult to the quality. Mayn’t I be had up and put in prison, though I never knowed, nor meant it, and I’ll beg her pardon over and over again, and she was a right-down pleasant lass, madam—Lud! I’m losing my head—lady, save when she was in the tantrums.”

“Nonsense, Deb,” exclaimed Master Charles impatiently; “you did her a kindness, and helped her in her end. As it proves,” he continued a little sarcastically; “whether Miss or Madam, she has been all along far beyond our flight, and will never waste another thought on us, now that she has found birds of her own feather, and is ready to go off with them to her own perch.”

“She were a runaway wife all the same,” reflected Miss Kingscote sapiently, “though she were ten times a Lady Bell, and she had left her man as must have been hers in the face of day, which made the leaving a heap bolder in my madam—nay, my lady. I vow I as good as telled her she was no match for the Kingscotes of Nutfield.”

“You had nothing to do to say anything of the kind, even though this Lady Bell had been a simple waiting-maid or scullion. I don’t care which,” Master Charles was provoked into telling his sister, as his good-humoured indulgence gave way. “The Kingscotes have not kept their own in the world without loss, and they can ill afford to despise the humblest—I say that, if I am supposed to have anything to do with the future matching of the Kingscotes,” declared the young gentleman loftily, “and they’ll be long enough of being matched for me, since I could bring a mate to little better than a farm-house, and a farmer’s kin. I’ll thank you, Deb, not to meddle in the matter.”

“There, I’ve given offence to Master Charles,” Miss Kingscote reflected glumly after she was alone. “He’s taken to hurting my feelings by twitting me with what we’ve lost, as if the worsest loss weren’t mine! not that I show it neither, for I’m sure I’m a powerful fine woman, considering my lack of education. And so she’s Lady Bell, and if she had bidden still, I mun have said my lady every blessed word, and run at her heels as I’ve never made her run at mine. But if this Squire Trevor, as she has given leg-bail to, had not come on the carpet, first and foremost, ere we set eyes on her, mightn’t she have been my Lady Bell Kingscote! That do sound fine! prodigious fine! But if there had never been no Squire Trevor, there would never have been no bolting, banding with the players, turning up at Nutfield, and making friends with Master Charles, so there is an end on’t. My Master Charles mun go to the wars, and risk a sabre’s cut spoiling his bonnie face,” mused Miss Kingscote, whimpering at the very thought, “afore he fill his chimney-corner, and bring home his lady to sit down cheek by jowl with him, while I’ll be right glad to retire to mother’s room, save when they want my company, for I ain’t teethy or prideful—I never were. That mun be the order of the day, as Master Charles ought to know.”

Even before the parting, Master Charles had cause to renounce his mortified conviction of how little he and his sister were to Lady Bell Trevor, and of how she had done with them from this day.

She was grateful for the assistance and escort as far as Lumley, which he offered so soon as he ascertained that the offer would be agreeable to her and Madam Sundon.

Lady Bell put her head out of the chaise window at the last. Her scared eyes looked with almost timid beseeching into his face. She told him, without any sign of haughtiness, but with many tokens of a retentive memory for the smallest act of consideration and kindness, of contrition for having played a part to him and his sister, and for not having trusted them in full, that she had been very well off and happy at Nutfield. She hoped that his colours would arrive soon, that he would see a campaign to his wish, and return safe and sound to cheer his sister’s heart.

Lady Bell sent Miss Kingscote her grateful duty. Lady Bell trusted they would meet again, when she would be able to finish her chair-covers. In the meantime, she would not forget to procure patterns for Miss Kingscote. Miss Kingscote must be especially kind to Lady Bell’s brood of chicks—the first brood she had seen set, seen hatched, and fed every day with her own hands.

It was plain that for the moment, in place of being eager to resume her cast-off rank and state, Lady Bell had forgotten where and why she was going, and everything about Squire Trevor and his danger. It was only when the chaise rolled off, and she sank back in her corner, that she withdrew into herself to face the grim record of the bond she had broken, and the forfeit she was called on to pay.

It was on a fresh summer morning, when, having started early to accomplish the last stage of their journey, Lady Bell and Mrs. Sundon came in sight of Trevor Court.

The gates were standing open; early as it was, the lodge seemed deserted, so that the chaise entered without parley. The dew was lying like pearls on the grass by the drive, and silvering the yews on the terrace. The spirals of smoke from the red chimney-stacks were rising straight in the clear air. A gush of birds’ song sounded far and wide. There was something light, bright, and exhilarating in the air, and in the aspect of nature, which lent a peculiar charm to what was imposing in the pile of building and its grounds.

“I have not seen Trevor Court before, save from a distance,” Mrs. Sundon let fall the remark. “You never told me, Lady Bell, what a fine old place it was.”

“I don’t think I ever noticed it till the last time I saw it,” Lady Bell replied almost in a whisper; she recalled vividly that last time sitting on the September morning in the travelling chariot beside its master, who lingered in taking a short leave of his treasure.

The next moment Lady Bell gave a shriek and put her hands before her face. The chaise had turned into the sweep before the house, where, in sombre contrast to the summer morning, the windows were all shrouded, and the hatchment was up.

CHAPTER II.

FREED BY THE VISITATION OF GOD.

It was as a quailing widow, and not as a reluctant wife, that Lady Bell re-entered the old oak parlour, where she still trembled lest she should hear her husband’s loud, rough accents stuttering with rage, and his stick, when gout confined him to his chair, savagely beating the floor.

Mrs. Walsh, in her towering cap and starched frill, received Lady Bell, and spoke to the point, without softening or reservation. “Yes, it is all over, Lady Bell, the Squire died last night at ten o’clock. He was took with a jaundice on Wednesday se’en night; but no danger was apprehended till five days ago, when Mr. Walsh writ the notice for the papers—to no purpose, so far as the Squire’s desiring to see and speak with you once more was concerned. You and he will not see and speak with each other on this side of the judgment day.”

“Oh, Mrs. Walsh, I came as fast as ever I could.” Lady Bell humbled herself in the dust before her ancient enemy. “I know now I was a bad, bad wife. I would give all I have in the world to be able to live the last year over again, and do my duty by your cousin, who is lying stiff and cold in one of these rooms, where I shall never hear him say that he forgives me, that he makes allowance at last for my youth, my wounded pride—what had a sinful creature to do with pride?—my forced inclinations. Oh! tell me he did not lay his curse upon me with his last breath?” implored Lady Bell, ready to sink down with grief and terror, while she clasped her hands and looked up, her distended eyes brimming over with scalding tears, in Mrs. Walsh’s inflexible face.

“Yes, Lady Bell, you were a bad wife, and you would not take a telling while it was in your power,” declared the uncompromising woman, standing bolt upright, her very mittens bristling with her righteous protest.

“Madam,” interposed Mrs. Sundon with rising indignation, “it is monstrous to reproach this poor child at such a time. She is sufficiently crushed by the nature of the event which has taken place, following on her rashness. She will not be likely to forget it, even without your accusations to embitter the blow. I vouch for Lady Bell’s having lived in safety and honour since she quitted her husband. Madam, you will not refuse my voucher?”

“Madam, I have not heard your honesty questioned, therefore I grant that Lady Bell has come back in honest company,” acknowledged Mrs. Walsh stiffly, “which is more than might have been hoped, from her flying in the face of law and duty, and exposing herself to the worst perils.”

“Though you are the late Mr. Trevor’s kinswoman, you must know,” said Mrs. Sundon, “that Lady Bell Trevor has been more sinned against than sinning.”

“I know that she is not too young or fair or fine to be accountable for her errors to a Power before which the most wilful lady will not dare to plead her daintiness,” maintained Mrs. Walsh doggedly. “But I know, too, that you were sinned against, Lady Bell,” she added candidly, turning to the overwhelmed offender. “So far as that goes, Squire Trevor did not deserve your duty. But you had the will of a higher than my poor cousin to consider, and where should we all be, if we got our due, and no more? It was on the Squire’s mind at the last that he had wronged you; and he sought to receive, as well as to bestow, forgiveness, before he could die in peace.”

“I did not merit it,” said Lady Bell; “but you told him, dear Mrs. Walsh—oh, say that you told the old man that I forgave him, as I hope to be forgiven?”

“I charged him to repent, and if he had done any wrong to a fellow-creature which he could atone for, to make amends. Then I bade him turn for forgiveness for that, and all his sins, to the great God and Saviour, against whom he had chiefly sinned, but who would never refuse him forgiveness, since, in the very act of his seeking it, they were pledged for his salvation.”

“Oh, thank God! that he died in peace with me,” broke in Lady Bell impetuously.

“Rather thank God that he died in peace with his Maker, madam,” Mrs. Walsh did not fail to rebuke her. “I think he did; I am fain to hope he did, though he was not able to fulfil his part of the obligation here; the will must stand for the deed. ‘Torney Kenyon, who did all the Squire’s business, was from home, at the wedding of his son in Bristol. We sent twice, but we could not get hold of the man in time. I think it is better to tell you at once, Lady Bell, what you will hear later.”

“As you will, madam,” replied Lady Bell dejectedly.

“The Squire’s will was executed long before he ever saw your face, when his estate was bequeathed, failing any heir of his body, to my eldest son Jack. The substance of that will has been repeated since you offended the Squire, and it has neither been revoked nor altered, as my cousin certainly desired it to be altered, in his dying moments. But Mr. Walsh and me, expecting that you, or some one for you, would answer our summons, if you were in the country, have made up our minds, and will answer for Jack at his college, to take your wishes on the matter.”

“I have no wishes, Mrs. Walsh,” exclaimed Lady Bell hastily.

“We shall let you have whatever compensation you desire,” went on Mrs. Walsh, paying no heed to the demur, “being well aware that such were Squire Trevor’s intentions while he was yet in the body, and in his right mind, so that you are indebted to no bounty, but to bare justice for your share of the worldly inheritance that our cousin has left behind him.”

“Madam, this honourable conduct does you and Mr. Walsh infinite credit.” Mrs. Sundon could not refrain from awarding her hearty approbation to her late antagonist.

“Mrs. Sundon, I repeat that ‘tis but justice,” argued Mrs. Walsh with a stateliness of her own, winding up with her own favourite axiom, “The world and I have shaken hands long ago.”

“You are all a great deal too kind to me,” wept Lady Bell, “a rebel who deserted my post. But indeed I had liefer, if you do not think it an impertinence in me to make an objection, that Mr. Trevor’s goods went to you and your son Jack, his friends. I am sure I have no right to a single sixpence.”

“Beware of pride and sauciness still under the garb of disinterestedness, Lady Bell,” Mrs. Walsh said severely.

“Nay, I’ll do whatever you will,” Lady Bell hastened to amend her statement, quite subdued, and feeling sadly as if she would never have the heart to have a will of her own again.

“Madam, a second time everything shall be as you will, and as your friends—such as Madam Sundon and your man of business, if you will please to name him—may decide for you,” Mrs. Walsh laid down the law.

Lady Bell knew that she was not and never would be mistress of Trevor Court. Not that she desired it; she even recoiled from it as from a sacrilege.

After the funeral, when the two ladies happened to be alone together, Mrs. Sundon said to Lady Bell—

“They are good people, these Walshes, my dear. I should think very good people to deal with and to raise a country parish sunk in rude ignorance and gross transgression. That was not your case exactly, but I think you might have got on with them, and been the better and not the worse for them. To be plain with you, I cannot help saying, though it may be presumptuous, that I think I could have got on with them. I could acquire a great regard for that woman, and I fancy I might have a still greater for her good man. As for Sally, I should have sought to soften her brusqueness; yet brusqueness is not so great a fault when it comes to weighing faults. But you were too young, and you were petulant between youth and hard usage.”

“I shall get on with them now,” said Lady Bell wistfully, looking incredibly young and very fair in the weeds which had been provided for her, and which she had hastened to put on with her trembling frightened fingers, as a mark of respect for the dead, doing it the more eagerly because she had failed in respect for the living.

“I see the servants look sourly on me, and no wonder,” confided Lady Bell to her friend, “for they stood by their master, whom his wife left. But I’ll bear it, and try to bring them to think better of me, though Trevor Court is not mine, and I cannot stay here, and keep the old people and ask them to serve me. Mrs. Walsh will see to her cousin’s household, that is my comfort. I will do everything Mrs. Walsh bids me from this time. I’ll be good, Mrs. Sundon,” promised Lady Bell, with a faint smile at her own childishness. “But seriously, Mrs. Walsh took my place, and saved me from a grievous reflection which would have haunted my death-bed. She will teach me to be a self-denying, devoted Christian woman like herself. I believe I did not judge Sally Walsh justly,” Lady Bell finished with a little sigh of compunction and doubt. “I dare say she was not so pert and rude as I thought her. I know she was far more dutiful than I have been.”

Mrs. Sundon said nothing more at the time; but she determined that she would not leave Lady Bell with the Walshes, though Mrs. Sundon was able to do them justice. “They were never the people, however good their intentions, to have the guidance of Lady Bell,” reflected the lady. “Now that Lady Bell’s spirit is broke and her conscience burdened, she would become their slave. I had almost as soon put her into a nunnery, where in the present state of her feelings, she would be content to take refuge, but where in time she would be driven either into fanaticism or hypocrisy, my generous, tender Lady Bell! Just when she is freed too, by the judgment of God, from her cruel gaoler (God forgive him!) and restored to hope and happiness. Why, there is a bright life before Lady Bell which nothing has come to spoil beyond recall. So help me, I will make it bright and safe for her as I would make it for my little Caro, since Lady Bell came forward of her own sweet will and did what she could to keep me in Paradise. Oh! it is well for Lady Bell that with all her early trials she has not taken forbidden fruit into her mouth, and found it turn to dust and ashes between her teeth. There is no great good under the sun, but I will pursue the lesser good for my Lady Bell when she begins to look up and smile again. Bless the child! what is the loss by honest death of such a husband as Squire Trevor, though she was desperate enough to run away from him, compared to what some women have to bear? I will keep the knowledge of evil from her, as I would keep it from Caro. She shall not fail to be, so far as I can help her, a devoted Christian woman; but it shall be after her own kind. ‘Wisdom shall be justified of all her children.’”

The Squire’s funeral sermon was preached. It was not without its unvarnished allusions, even though they were in the mouth of Mrs. Walsh’s mild spouse, and not of the most redoubtable champion of truth in the parish, to the evils of stout spirits, stormy passions, and family discord. It was listened to with penitent humiliation and meekness.

A decent interval passed, and the arrangements were completed, by which Lady Bell was put into possession of a moderate jointure, in addition to her marriage settlement, from her deceased husband’s estate.

Then Mrs. Sundon hurried her friend just a little on the plea of the necessity of Mrs. Sundon’s return to her child, and carried Lady Bell back to Nutfield in the first place.

CHAPTER III.

KEEPING HOUSE TOGETHER.

Lady Bell and Mrs. Sundon were so well pleased with each other, that they agreed finally to take up house together. They liked the air and aspect of Nutfield so well, that they fixed on dwelling in the neighbourhood, though no longer under the wing of Miss Kingscote.

The two ladies rented one of the cottages ornés which were beginning to be built between the town of Lumley and Nutfield.

Summerhill had for its nucleus a one-storeyed erection of black and white timber, to which a wooden verandah had been added all round. The whole was set in a large enough garden and paddock to afford room for ingenuity to propose and execute a number of wonderful performances in the shape of winding walks, mounds, grottos, bowers, even a dovecot and a dairy.

The house was unfurnished, so that the tenants had another gain in fitting it up according to their tastes. Everything that Lady Bell and Mrs. Sundon ordered for their use was bright and tasteful. There was a good deal of white painted wood and white dimity, relieved by warm, deep-coloured carpet-work and rich embroidery.

The ladies gave evidence in the decorations of their house of ability and refinement, according to the standard of their day. There were home-manufactured brackets, sconces, card-baskets, and music-trays in abundance. These things supplied Lady Bell with endless employment, and were sources of pride and delight to her.

Lady Bell had thought to herself, first when she became a widow, that she should go softly mourning for her sins and her strife with Squire Trevor all her days. She was perfectly sincere then, as well as afterwards, and she did not cease to be sorry for having done wrong; but to her surprise, and a little to her shame, not only did her youthful spirits soon recover their elasticity and throw off the load of contrition and melancholy reflections; but in addition she was very happy—happier than she had ever been in her life before, not even excepting her early days with Lady Lucie Penruddock.

Lady Bell was not merely like one of those graceful creatures of the air which, casting the slough of the chrysalis, rises buoyant in its elegance and beauty. She had found a true mate, a companion and friend, a natural equal and ally.

Eventful as the last year had been, and calculated to develop her nature, Lady Bell was not past the age when girls like her have the strongest tendency to contract friendship with members of their own sex, and when indeed for the most part the closest, firmest, womanly friendships are formed. And that was the generation of women’s friendships, crowned by the sacrifice of the world for each other, made by the two ladies of Llangollen.

There was just the amount of superiority in years, experience, and acquirements on Mrs. Sundon’s part, and the kind of essential difference between the young women to confirm Lady Bell’s romantic admiration for her friend, without preventing a free and full interchange of sentiment and opinion.

Lady Bell resumed gladly and with grateful acknowledgment of the support which she received from Mrs. Sundon, all Lady Bell’s native pursuits, which had been so continually interrupted and baulked.

A modern girl commanding a thousand modes of cultivation, until she is oppressed by them, will find it hard to comprehend the self-respect and satisfaction with which Lady Bell returned to her studies; her French—in which Mrs. Sundon was a better qualified assistant, so far as speaking went, than Mr. Greenwood at St. Bevis’s—her thrumming on a spinet, her warbling of “Hark, the lark,” and “Waft her, angels.”

Mrs. Sundon kept up her connection with town and the world, and had not only fashions, but newspapers and parcels of books forwarded to her by the carrier and the bookseller in Lumley.

The ladies were abreast of their times (in which the war with America was taking more and more serious proportions), and of the literature of the day.

“Sir Charles Grandison” was becoming an oldish book, and “Evelina” had not yet come out. But Mr. Brooke’s “Fool of Quality” was making its mark, and was warmly welcomed as a step in the right direction by all good men and women, including Mrs. Sundon and Lady Bell. In sermons the ladies read Porteous or Blair. In poetry they studied Mason’s “Flower Garden” and Goldsmith’s “Deserted Village,” while in travels, Pennant’s “Tour” seemed to them to have extended to the extremity of the civilised world.

The absence, except at short intervals, of even a provincial theatre, which figured so largely as an intellectual influence at the close of the last century, was supplied in a degree to Mrs. Sundon and Lady Bell. They had the vigorous notices and criticisms of the most popular plays and players in the town newspapers; so that even while living at a distance, the ladies could enjoy at second-hand the heroics of “Douglas” and the nonsense of “Polly Honeycomb.”

Lady Bell made many charming new attainments, and that season at Summerhill was, after all, in the fullest sense, the spring-time of her life, when she was learning something new every day, and was fast budding into fresh promise.

All Lady Bell’s fine-lady gifts and graces had been originally overmuch of the town, townish. But Mrs. Sundon had been a fine lady of the country, as well as of the town, and could lead Lady Bell into elegant rurality, and even inoculate the girl with a true love of the country and of country life.

Under Mrs. Sundon’s superintendence, Lady Bell became a lady gardener, and advanced with rapid strides from an apprentice to a journeyman, until, in addition to her old power of embroidering facsimiles of leaves and flowers, she could make carpets and canopies of the plants themselves, hang the verandah with them, and grow living orange-trees in the window alcove of the sitting-room. She laid carnations and budded roses, and was as intent on getting seeds of Canterbury bells and slips of geraniums, as ever she had been on procuring patterns for aprons and chair-covers.

Lady Bell and Mrs. Sundon had a kitchen as well as a flower-garden. They had a white cow in the paddock in summer for their own and their baby’s use, and they borrowed a brood of chickens from Miss Kingscote, that they might be sure of new-laid eggs for breakfast.

The ladies did not commit these acquisitions to their establishment entirely to the care of their modest retinue of two maids and a man.

Lady Bell learnt, and did not dream that the learning was derogatory to her, to pull peas and pick gooseberries—actually to milk the cow (in a perfunctory and not very effectual manner, it must be confessed), so that she could aver from her personal knowledge that the syllabub, which she had also made with her own hands, was compounded as it ought to have been, of milk warm from the cow. She made gooseberry-fool, as well as syllabub, and was very conceited about the deed and its success.

Had poor Squire Trevor been alive and at Summerhill, his flighty young wife could even have supplied him with his desiderated tansy pudding, at this higher stage of her education, and in her greater wisdom.

Mrs. Sundon and Lady Bell dabbled in all sorts of washes, balsams, simples, hot drinks, blackberry cheeses, and sticks of saffron. Not being godless selfish unbelievers, and having ignorant and helpless poor neighbours, the two ladies became in their own way unquestionable Christian Ladies Bountiful—clothing the naked, feeding the hungry, tending the sick, and softening the rude, so far as their light and power went.

Lady Bell and Mrs. Sundon were the two women of highest rank and polish for a considerable circuit of miles, but they were not on that account disdainful and unsocial in their intercourse with their middle-class neighbours, such as the Vicar and Mayor of Lumley, the retired military or naval officers and their families, who occupied good houses in the town, and cottages similar to Summerhill on the outskirts. On the contrary, the two ladies were rightly judged models of urbanity, a reputation which no doubt they enjoyed, being gracious where nobody presumed on their graciousness, while they countenanced the Lumley weddings, house-warmings, and christenings.

Mrs. Sundon and Lady Bell had a hay-making on their own lawn, to which the whole population, so far as the Summerhill grounds would hold them, were invited, and came and went in ecstasies with the entertainment.

Mrs. Sundon and Lady Bell became the reigning toasts of the neighbourhood.

It does not follow that the old world and the old town were sycophantish; consider the women and their circumstances.

Lady Bell Trevor, the daughter of Lord Etheredge and the widow of Squire Trevor, of Trevor Court, in the adjoining shire, was a beautiful, graceful, intelligent young woman of seventeen.

Mrs. Sundon was not more than four years older, at twenty-one very handsome, with an air of command, which had been born with her—command too well assured to be other than simple and self-denying, or to require haughtiness and arrogance to back its claims.

Mrs. Sundon was a woman living in separation from her husband, it is true, but by an act quite different from poor Lady Bell’s hushed-up escapade. Mrs. Sundon’s separation from Gregory Sundon did not affect her social position in the least—in effect rather elevated it.

It was perfectly well understood through the Mayor that the details did the greatest honour to Mrs. Sundon’s dignity and discretion. And dignity and discretion were qualities very highly, but not unjustly, valued in a generation liable to run into extravagant flights and excesses.

Mrs. Sundon showed the same appreciable discretion in refraining from accusing her husband, and in adopting, along with a chosen friend, a life of retirement as well as of virtue in the flower of her youth, and in bringing up her little girl—as it was quite understood Mrs. Sundon was bringing up the child, when Caro was not yet three months old—in the most meritorious manner.

The very peculiarity of the two ladies’ position with the union of their forces, gave them a freedom and weight in the society in which they moved that they could not have commanded had they been single women, that they could hardly have possessed had they been separate, though each had dwelt in the house of her husband.

With Nutfield Lady Bell and Mrs. Sundon maintained the most kindly, cheerful relations, long after use and wont had hardened Miss Kingscote to the sound of “my lady.” When the ladies of Summerhill wished a little variety in their domestic routine, they had only to stroll over to Nutfield to bask in its homely cordiality, and to get a little permissible fun out of Miss Kingscote’s uncouth whimsicalities.

Lady Bell and Mrs. Sundon could not have managed for themselves without Master Charles to act the part of a brother to them.

In those days, when walking on country roads was not always safe for ladies, when they could not attend a single public place with propriety, unless they were supported by male attendance, a gentleman who was a privileged friend proved indispensable in every household of women.

Sometimes the friendships thus entertained were of a peculiarly gentle and chivalrous character, which the very scandal-loving world admitted and respected. Thus it saw no objection—not even that of age—in the intimate association of a young man like Master Charles with two charming young women only a little above him in rank, since the one was a wife and the other a widow, and both were deprived of their natural protectors.

CHAPTER IV.

FRIENDS IN NEED.

Only once was there an interruption threatened to the brother and sister relations between Master Charles and the ladies of Summerhill, and that began and ended among themselves, and had nothing to do with on-lookers.

Master Charles called on his friends one day in a moody frame of mind. He looked over some debatable accounts which belonged to Mrs. Sundon’s department of the joint housekeeping. He undertook to see and settle with the offending tradesman, and bring him to reason. He agreed to stay to the three-o’clock dinner, and relieve Lady Bell from the chicken carving. Still his mind was not lightened, so that his friends felt it necessary to press him to make a clean breast of it.

The young man admitted that he had been with a party of gentlemen on the previous evening, when horse-racing had been discussed, and bets had been freely given and taken over the wine.

He had been flushed and excited like the rest, and he had made such a book as he feared, without the greatest good luck, would be ruinous to him, when he had not yet got his property into his own hands, and any disgrace in money matters would put a stop to the exertions of the friends who were seeking to procure for him a pair of colours.

He was mad with himself, for he was by no means without sense and shrewdness as well as principle. He heartily wished that he had joined the army as a volunteer, sailed for Quebec or Boston in the first transport, and been taken prisoner by the Indians, before worse happened to him, and before he baulked the expectations of all who had taken an interest in so foolish a fellow. He hung his head as he made the confession.

“Worse shall not happen,” Mrs. Sundon interposed with decision. “You are right in consenting to confide in us; indeed, we value your confidence, sir, and women are not always the worst councillors. I shall speak to the Mayor to come forward and help you, if the worst come to the worst; he will do something for my sake, as well as for yours. I shall have a little loan at your service.”

“And I shall club every shilling I can muster with Mrs. Sundon’s,” proposed Lady Bell eagerly; “so pray don’t be down-hearted, Master Charles.”

The young man only hung his head lower. He hated to lay women under contribution to pay for his recklessness, while he dared not, were it but for the sake of another woman—his sister Deb—decline the assistance offered to him in case of necessity.

The ready generosity of his friends melted him, so that he faltered with feeling, in place of declaiming glibly in the expression of his thanks.

“Don’t speak of it,” Mrs. Sundon forbade him; “only let this be a lesson to you in the future,” she added with soft earnestness.

The young man went away subdued in his gratitude, but when the crisis was over, he presented himself in a state of riotous glee, to free the ladies from their promises, and demand their congratulations.

Master Charles’s three to one and five to two had turned out, after all, on the winning side. He had had amazing pieces of luck.

“By George! you ladies must wish me joy, and allow me the honour and felicity, as the town sparks say, of treating you to whatever takes your fancy, a prince’s plume, my Lady Bell, a lace apron, Madam Sundon; sure you richly deserve it, and I can afford to please myself for once in my life, since in place of coming to grief by this little transaction, I vow I have made a very good thing of it,” and he thrust his hands braggingly into the pockets of his frock coat.

“Yes, I claim my right to a return for my willingness to befriend you, Master Charles,” cried Mrs. Sundon, before Lady Bell could speak. “I thought you were to have a lesson, but I find it to be a snare. I want no lace aprons, though I shall be happy to take one from you, if you like to grant what I ask. Promise me solemnly, sir, on the word of a gentleman, that you will both now and after you have entered the army, do your best to resist betting on cards and horses, at least round a supper-table in the heat of conviviality.”

“But—but, Mrs. Sundon,” objected Master Charles, taken aback, becoming immediately crest-fallen, and colouring violently. “No fellow of spirit could be expected to give and keep such a promise. I am not soft in these matters, I think for a novice I have shown myself as sharp as my neighbours,” he drew himself up and laughed, though the laugh was a little forced. “I think—I beg your pardon, but I do think you take advantage of your kindness—I own it was very great, to seek to bind me, as no man not a Molly Coddle and a nincompoop would be bound in the circumstances.”

“Oh, Master Charles, think of Henry, Earl of Morland, in the ‘Fool of Quality,’” implored Lady Bell, “and how you were of opinion he was a fine character, and ought to be imitated in this dissipated world.”

“Such conduct is very fine in a book and in theory, but it won’t do for bloods in real life and in practice,” he put her off impatiently.

“Master Charles, I trust you will know that there are brave men and gallant soldiers too, that no man would dare call Molly Coddles and nincompoops, who yet set their faces against the indiscriminate betting and gambling of this gambling age,” Mrs. Sundon told him plainly; but that was not all. “Charles Kingscote,” she said, appealing to him, face to face and soul to soul, as it were, when she addressed him thus by his Christian name and surname, and with her own fine pale face working with emotion and the anguish of remembrance. “If you only knew the misery and degradation wrought by this curse of gambling—what generous natures have been undone, what happy homes have been cast down in ruins, never to be built up again. Shall I lay bare the sorrows of my life to enlighten you and save you, if I can?”

“No, Mrs. Sundon,” declared the young man quickly, and with pain in his moodiness. “I shall not allow such sacrilege for my fancied needs, and I should be an ingrate to deny your request as you put it, however difficult it may seem to me. I give you my word, as you desire, without farther parley—and now you will permit me to take my leave.”

The moment he was gone, Lady Bell asked with a puzzled, pensive, rather scared anxiety, “Will he keep his word, think you?”

“I hope and trust he will,” replied Mrs. Sundon, looking troubled still; “granting that it will cost him a great effort, he is manly and honourable enough in his youth to make such an effort; and he has not seen much bad company, that is a blessing, to corrupt him from the beginning. Poor boy! he was so happy when he came in, and we disappointed and mortified him. Do you know how he will regard me from this hour, Bell?” Mrs. Sundon inquired abruptly, with a certain wistfulness and piteousness for herself thrilling through her tones. “He is not bumptious or quarrelsome, he is a fine, warm-hearted, good-natured lad, but he will begin to hate the sight of me.”

“No, no,” exclaimed Lady Bell energetically.

“Yes, yes,” contradicted Mrs. Sundon quietly, shaking her head, “I know all about it. A man pretends sometimes to call a woman his mistress, but he cannot forgive her, if she ever really play the part. He will excuse almost any error in a woman sooner than her finding him wrong, and telling him so. She has humbled him then in his own eyes, and he cares for that still more than being humbled in hers. She becomes irksome to him, and he half fears her, half strives to deceive her, himself sinking lower and lower till he ends by hating her outright. When you marry again, Bell, if your main object be to preserve your husband’s love, fondle and defer to him, and never admit by word or look that you recognise he has forfeited your esteem, as well as that of every honest man and woman, and is on the high road to destruction, carrying you and your unborn child along with him.”

“I shall do nothing of the kind,” protested Lady Bell, half crying at the idea. “I shall speak the truth and clear my conscience, whether I shame the devil or no. But on second thoughts, I shall not need, for I shall never think of marrying again and leaving you and little Caro, and ending our happy life here, dear,” declared Lady Bell, turning eagerly to caress her friend.

“You will not think of it perhaps, but you will do it all the same,” said Mrs. Sundon as she gave back the caress; “however, we may let sleeping dogs lie and not anticipate evil. To return to Master Charles; see if he do not avoid me from this day.”

For several weeks it seemed as if Mrs. Sundon’s prognostications were to prove correct. It was not that Master Charles intermitted his visits to Summerhill, and he was even punctilious in his continued offers of service to the ladies; but somehow there was a change in the nature of the intercourse, and there was a dryness approaching to sullenness in the young gentleman’s manner to Mrs. Sundon.

But at the close of these weeks Master Charles thought better of it, and came looking shame-faced, yet, but frank and ingenuous as ever, and told Mrs. Sundon, “I have been compelled to be a little more particular in my company since the promise you made me give you, which, of course, I was resolved to keep, come what like of it. But I have reaped the benefit of it already, I have discovered that there are plenty of gentlemen of parts and spirit, good judges of horse-flesh besides, who will not play at higher than half-crown points, and will not lay a wager on a horse, or a dog, unless it be so trifling a one that they have no anxiety about it, and have all their minds to bestow on their proper affairs. They are ready to welcome me to their company when they see that I prefer it. You were quite right, Mrs. Sundon, I add my poor testimony to my promise.”

The dryness and sullenness disappeared from that day.

Lady Bell was jubilant at the issue, and the restoration of their comrade, and disposed to crow over Mrs. Sundon.

“Oh! he is a good sort, as Miss Kingscote says,” confessed the authority, “he is more generous than his brethren. I am thankful to have been of use to him.” This was all that Mrs. Sundon said to Lady Bell, but in her own mind she reflected with apparent incoherence, “I could wish that he had been higher in rank, and Miss Kingscote more presentable. I don’t think that his being a little countrified would have mattered to her else.”

As a supplement to all other interests and entertainments, Mrs. Sundon and Lady Bell had little Caro to play with—to plan for with the deepest seriousness, to build castles in the air for with the highest hopefulness.

But Mrs. Sundon was different from many mothers. Mrs. Sundon not only did not expect Lady Bell to be engrossed with her little daughter, Mrs. Sundon herself would have thought it exceedingly ill-judged and ill-bred to bring forward the child, and cause her to fill the first place in the circle, forcing every other interest and satisfaction to give way to Caro’s interest and satisfaction.

No, little Caro, while she was dearly prized and petted, was kept quite in her proper and purely subordinate sphere, and that under wholesome discipline, and was decidedly a happier as well as a more modest and artless child then and afterwards in consequence of her mother’s public spirit in combination with her common sense.

Mrs. Sundon would not permit Caro, unless it were absolutely unavoidable, to interfere with a single study or pursuit, though the mother cared for the child incessantly, and spared no thought or pains upon her, from consecrating to Miss Caro’s wardrobe Mrs. Sundon’s most exquisite needlework, to being the child’s first teacher in health, and nurse in sickness. Mrs. Sundon would not allow Caro’s presence in the morning-room—the company-room of the house, except at stated and limited intervals. Mrs. Sundon put an interdict on Caro and her nurse being a drag on walking and riding excursions.

Mrs. Sundon did not carry Caro to any public place whatever, but did not on that account withdraw from public places. Mrs. Sundon had an old-fashioned notion that society and her friends had a claim upon her, just as Caro had a claim, and though Caro’s claim, as her mother delighted to acknowledge, was the greater, Mrs. Sundon did not conceive that it ought on that account to swallow up the smaller. Mrs. Sundon sent Caro to bed betimes, and would not suffer this, or other excellent rules to be infringed on any pretence.

The desirable result was twofold, Caro from her earliest infancy was one of the healthiest, most natural, and “prettily behaved” of children. Mrs. Sundon had the reward of being assured that the child was regarded by all the friends of the family as a boon to be welcomed, and not as a bore or plague to be endured.

So summer suns and winter moons rose and set on the house at Summerhill, and the two friends were “Bell” and “Sunny,” like sisters to each other.

“Oh, Bell, this peaceful, rational, God-fearing time is good after the distractions of passion and the storms of life,” Mrs. Sundon would say, stifling all yearning in her voice, and setting her strong will to make the best of the alleviations of her lot.

“Yes, Sunny,” Lady Bell would answer brightly. “I get a better gardener every month. Our place will be a spectacle next year, only the French honeysuckle don’t smell like our common honeysuckle, exactly as lupins are not sweet as blossoming beans. I am improving in my drawing. I propose to try painting when the weather will allow. Mayne in Lumley is to come out and give me open-air lessons. I shall paint our Caro nursing her foot in its red shoe under an apple-tree—you shall see what you shall see. But now I must tie on my hood, and run down the lane to Goody Amos’s, with the plaster for her burn. Don’t forget that there is a puppet-show in the town-hall, which we promised to attend this afternoon, before drinking a dish of tea, and staying for a bit of supper with Captain Craddock and his wife.”

Very busy was Lady Bell—the true secret of happiness. Yet, walking home that same evening, escorted by the gallant Captain and the Summerhill man with a lantern, Lady Bell fell behind Mrs. Sundon and her cavalier, and began dreaming under the stars.

The dreams were not in the style of Dr. Young, though Lady Bell had been lately reading his “Night Thoughts,” and admiring them greatly, as everybody admired them then.

The dreams implied rather a vague sense of waiting and of want, and of stirring in the unfathomable depths even of a girl’s nature. Was unruffled tranquillity, after all, the secret of life’s best fulfilment?—whether was it worse to have been torn by warring passions like Mrs. Sundon, or that passion should never be awakened in the dead calm within? Might not the last be a greater loss to Lady Bell than the first had proved to her friend?

Was Lady Bell to pass through life and have adventures, be sad and glad, poor and in comparative affluence, friendless and with many friends, a wife and a widow, and her heart still remain void of a history?

CHAPTER V.

BOW BELLS AND THE FAMILY IN CLEVELAND COURT.

“Bell,” said Mrs. Sundon one morning, looking up from a letter which she had been reading, “here is something for you. The Sundons of Sundon Green, who have always been on good terms with me, write to invite us to pay them a visit in town, as they have taken a house in Cleveland Court, St. James’s, for the winter and spring. What have I to do with town sights and gaieties till Caro is a finished young lady? But your day is only beginning. This invitation is the very thing for you, since I hate to think of you being moped up here continually.”

Lady Bell protested that she did not pine for change, and that to spend her life with her beloved, excellent, agreeable Sunny ought to be more than enough for her, as it would at one time have been beyond her wildest wishes.

But Mrs. Sundon was bent on the change for Lady Bell. “You have no friends of your own to take you out,” Mrs. Sundon pursued the theme, “but Lady Sundon will be quite pleased and proud to usher into the great world a young lady of title above that of a country baronet’s wife. She is a worthy, cordial soul, in spite of weakness for rank, and will be really kind to you.”

Lady Bell tried to look indifferent, but her eyes sparkled, and Mrs. Sundon was resolute in carrying out the proposal. Nevertheless, Lady Bell was sentimental and almost rueful the night before she was to start for town, to which happily the Mayor of Lumley was bound in order to figure in a deputation, and Lady Bell with a young waiting-woman who was to be about her person, was to make the journey with the Mayor in his semi-official capacity.

“Caro will have forgotten me in three months,” reflected Lady Bell a little disconsolately as she sat idle, for a wonder, in the bright, pleasant room. “Goody Martin may have been carried off to a better world with her cough and rheumatism. Master Charles may have got his colours, and have marched to t’other end of this world, and been engaged in an ‘affair,’ as the newspapers call it, like the one at Lexington which we were reading of. Your imitation Japan screens will be finished, but I shan’t have seen every stage of the process.”

“You won’t miss much there, Bell,” said Mrs. Sundon.

Lady Bell continued her catalogue. “You will have read out Plutarch’s Lives, and I shall not have had the advantage of hearing your remarks as you went along. The spring will have come back, and be well established, but I shall have taken a leap over the first snowdrops, crocuses, primroses, and violets. I wonder if I shall gain enough to make up for the loss? I begin to wonder even if I shall be permitted to come back, and find everything as I left it here, after I have been so mad as to quit, of my own free will, our dear, sweet home?”

“It is not in that you need fear change,” asserted Mrs. Sundon cheerfully, “if you come back to us unchanged yourself, Bell, that is the question.”

“Oh, as to that there is no fear,” declared Lady Bell confidently, recovering her spirit. “I must ever be true to Summerhill. But ah, Sunny!” she relapsed the next moment, “we have been so happy here—so much happier than I ever was before. Does it not seem doubtful whether the same happiness can be again in this troublous world?”

“If not the same, then let us trust that there may be happiness of another kind to supply the place of the past happiness,” Mrs. Sundon encouraged the girl. “Come, Bell, I will not have you low on this our last night.”

Lady Bell forgot all her forebodings when she found herself drawing near to London again.

A hundred years ago, when communication was slow and difficult, and knowledge little spread, the civilisation of the country centered peculiarly in the capital. It was the source of every public movement, the winter seat of the court, the high place of noble and splendid society, the chosen resort of wisdom, wit, learning, and accomplishments under every guise. It had its gross evils, no doubt, but so great were its counterbalancing advantages and its general irresistible fascination, that even the most modest and sober moralists and philosophers, of all ages and both sexes, sighed longingly to enjoy the benefits and charms of town life.

And Lady Bell was town bred. The very smoke smelt sweet, and the cries sounded melodious to her ears.

“Oh, sir!” she addressed the Mayor as they were drawing near the great city, while she was unable to resist putting her head out of the coach windows. “Let us try to catch the first sound of Bow bells; let us make my woman Rogers hear them. They do jingle so tunefully, one cannot wonder that they caused Whittington to return, even without the cat.”

Lady Bell’s arrant native propensity for the life, the stir, and the variety of the town, had only been subdued into a grateful, intelligent acknowledgment that the country also had its charms, it was not routed out of her. She was inclined to return to her first love.

Then, to add to the gladness of Lady Bell’s return, she was coming back under different and happier auspices. Instead of the helpless, penniless child, driven off to the cold welcome of St. Bevis’s, Lady Bell was an independent woman; and though she was not a rich young widow, as Mrs. Greenwood and Sneyd had once hoped for her, she was a young widow, with a modest but sufficient jointure, going to her friend’s friends, who were to consider it a credit and satisfaction to entertain her.

The members of the Sundon family, who were in Cleveland Court, St. James’s, were Sir Peter and Lady Sundon and her two step-daughters. The only son of the family was a boy at school.

Sir Peter was sixty-four, lank and lantern-jawed, and ailing, as his appearance betokened. He had come up to town to be under some of the medical faculty there.