Theresa Marchmont by Mrs Charles Gore
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Mrs Charles Gore >> Theresa Marchmont
E-text prepared by Dr. Hanno Fischer
THERESA MARCHMONT,
OR,
THE MAID OF HONOUR.
A TALE.
BY MRS. CHARLES GORE
"La cour est comme un edifice bati de marbre; je veux dire
qu'elle est composee d'hommes fort durs, mais fort polis."
_LA BRUYERE._
London, MDCCCXXIV
CHAPTER I.
"Take any shape but that, and my firm nerves
shall never tremble. Hence horrible shadow!
Unreal mockery, hence!"--_MACBETH_
It was a gloomy evening, towards the autumn of the year 1676, and the
driving blasts which wept from the sea upon Greville Cross, a dreary
and exposed mansion on the coast of Lancashire, gave promise of a
stormy night and added to the desolation which at all traces pervaded
its vast and comfortless apartments.
Greville Cross had formerly been a Benedictine Monastery, and had
been bestowed at the Reformation, together with its rights of
Forestry upon Sir Ralph de Greville, the ancestor of its present
possessor. Although that part of the building containing the chapel
and refectory had been long in ruins, the remainder of the gloomy
quadrangle was strongly marked with the characteristics of its
monastic origin. It had never been a favourite residence of the
Greville family; who were possessed of two other magnificent seats,
at one of which, Silsea Castle in Kent, the present Lord Greville
constantly resided; and the Cross, usually so called from a large
iron cross which stood in the centre of the court-yard, and to which
thousand romantic legends were attached, had received few
improvements from the modernizing hand of taste. Indeed as the
faults of the edifice were those of solid construction, it would have
been difficult to render it less gloomy or more convenient by any
change that art could affect. Its massive walls and huge oaken
beams would neither permit the enlargement of its narrow windows,
nor the destruction of its maze of useless corridors; and it was
therefore allowed to remain unmolested and unadorned; unless when an
occasional visit from some member of the Greville family demanded an
addition to its rude attempts of splendour and elegance.
But it was difficult to convey the new tangled luxuries of the
capital to this remote spot; and the tapestry, whose faded hues and
moulding texture betrayed the influence of the sea air, had not yet
given plan to richer hangings. The suite of state apartments as
cold and comfortless in the extreme, but one of the chambers had
been recently decorated with more than usual cost, on the
arrival of Lord and Lady Greville, the latter of whom had never
before visited her Northern abode. Its dimensions, which were
somewhat less vast than those of the rest of the suite, rendered it
fitter for modern habits of life; and it had long ensured the
preference of the ladies of the House of Greville, and obtained the
name of "the lady's chamber," by which it is even to this day
distinguished. The walls were not incumbered by the portraits of
those grim ancestors who frowned in mail, or smiled in fardingale on
the walls of the adjacent galleries. The huge chimney had suffered
some inhospitable contraction, and was surmounted with marble; and
huge settees, glittering with gilding and satin, which in their turn
would now be displaced by the hand of Gillow or Oakley, had
dispossessed the tall straight backed-chairs, which in the olden
times must have inflicted martyrdom on the persons of our weary
forefathers.
The present visit of Lord Greville to the Cross, was supposed to
originate in the dangerous illness of an old and favourite female
servant, who had held undisturbed control over the household since
the death of the first Lady Greville about ten years before. She had
been from her infancy attached to the family service, and having
married a retainer of the house, had been nurse to Lord Greville,
whom she still regarded with something of a maternal affection.
Her husband had died the preceding year; equally lamented by the
master whom he served, and the domestics whom he ruled; and his wife
was now daily declining, and threatening to follow her aged partner
to the grave. It was imagined by the other members of the
establishment, that the old lady had written to her master, with
whom she frequently corresponded, to entreat a personal interview,
in order that she might resign her "steward-ship" into his hands
before her final release from all earthly cares and anxieties; and
in consideration of the length and importance of her services, none
were surprised at the readiness with which her request was granted.
Lord Greville had never visited the North since the death of his
first wife, a young and beautiful woman whom he had tenderly loved,
and who died and was interred at Greville Cross. She left no
children, and the heir, a fine boy in the full bloom of childhood and
beauty, who now accompanied Lord Greville, was the sole offspring of
his second marriage.
Helen, the present Lady Greville, was by birth a Percy; and although
her predecessor had been celebrated at the Court of Charles, as one
of the most distinguished beauties of her time, there were many who
considered her eclipsed by the lovely and gentle being who now
filled her place. She was considerably younger than her husband; but
her attachment to him, and to her child, as well as her naturally
domestic disposition, prevented the ill effects often resulting from
disparity of years. Lord Greville, whose parents were zealous
supporters of the royal cause, had himself shared the banishment of
the second Charles; had fought by his side in his hour of peril, and
shared the revelries of his court in his after days of prosperity.
At an age when the judgement is rarely matured, unless by an untimely
encounter with the dangers and adversities of the world, such as
those disastrous times too often afforded, he had been employed with
signal success in several foreign missions; and it was universally
known that the monarch was ever prompt publicly to acknowledge the
benefit he had on many occasions derived from the prudent counsels of
his adherent, as well as from his valour in the field.
But notwithstanding the bond of union subsisting between them, from
the period of his first marriage, which had taken place under the
Royal auspices, Greville had retired to Silsea Castle; and resisting
equally the invitations of his condescending master, and the
entreaties of his former gay companions, he had never again joined
the amusements of the court. Whether this retirement originated in
some disgust occasioned by the licentious habits and insolent
companions of Charles, whose present mode of life was peculiarly
unfitted to the purer taste, and intellectual character of Lord
Greville; or, whether it arose solely from his natural distaste for
the parasitical existence of a courtier, was uncertain; but it was
undeniable that he had faithfully followed the fortunes of the
expatriate king, and even supplied his necessities from his own
resources; and had only withdrawn his services when they were no
longer required.
After the death of Lady Greville, his secluded habits seemed more
than ever confirmed; but when he again became possessed of a bride,
whose youth, beauty, and rank in society, appeared to demand an
introduction to those pleasures which her age had hitherto prevented
her from sharing; it was a matter of no small mortification to Lord
and Lady Percy, to perceive that their son-in-law evinced no
disposition to profit by the Royal favour, or to relinquish the
solitude of Silsea, for the splendours of the Capital. But Helen
shared not in their regrets. She had been educated in retirement; she
knew but by report the licentious, but seductive gaieties of the
Court of Charles, and she had not the slightest wish to increase her
knowledge of such dangerous pleasures. Content with loving, and being
beloved by a husband whom she regarded with profound veneration, her
happiness was not disturbed by a restless search after new
enjoyments; and her delighted parents soon forgot their
disappointment in witnessing the contentment of their child.
For some years succeeding her marriage, they perceived no change in
the state of her feelings, but at length the anxiety of parental love
led them to form surmises, which renewed their former disapprobation
of the conduct of Greville. During their frequent visits to Silsea,
they observed that his love of study and retirement had deepened
almost to moroseness; that his address, always cold and reserved,
was becoming offensively distant; and that he was subject to fits of
abstraction, and at other times to a peevish discontent, which
materially threatened the happiness of their daughter. They also
discovered that Helen, whose playful humour and gaiety of heart had
been their solace and amusement, even from her infancy, was now
pensive and dispirited. By degrees the bright expression of her
countenance had lost all that becoming joyousness of youth, which
had been its great attraction, and though still
"Sphered in the stillness of those heaven-blue eyes,
The soul sate beautiful,"
it was the soul of melancholy beauty.
Alarmed and unhappy, Lady Percy wearied her daughter with inquiries
as to the cause of this inauspicious change; but in vain. Helen
denied that any alteration had taken place in her feelings; and
declared that the new and serious tone of her character arose
naturally from her advance in life, and from the duties devolving
upon her as a wife and mother.
"Be satisfied, dear madam," said she, "that I am still a happy and
adoring wife. You well know that my affections were not won by an
outward show of splendour and gay accomplishments, nor by the common
attraction of an idle gallantry. It was on Greville's high
reputation for just and honourable principles, and on his manly and
noble nature, that my love was founded, and these will never change;
--and if, at times, unpleasant circumstances should arise,
into which my sex and age unfit me to inquire to throw a cloud over
his features, or a transient peevishness into his humour, it would
ill become me--in short," continued she in a trembling voice, and
throwing her arms around Lady Percy's neck, to conceal her tears,
"in short, dear Madam, you must remember that dearly, tenderly,
dutifully, as Helen loves her mother, the wife of Greville can have
no complaints to make to the Countess of Percy*." *[See "The family
Legend"]
But however well the suffering wife might succeed in disguising the
bitterness of wounded affection from her inquiring family, she could
not conceal it from herself. She had devoted herself, in the pride of
youthful beauty, to the most secluded retirement, through romantic
attachment for one who had appeared to return her love with at least
an equal fervour. Her father's house--her own opening and brilliant
prospects--her numerous family connexions and "troops of friends,"--
she had deserted all for him, in her generous confidence in his
future kindness. "His people had become her people, and his God, her
God!" She had fondly expected that his society would atone for every
loss, and compensate every sacrifice; that in the retirements she
shared with him, he would devote some part of his time to the
improvement of her mind, and the development of her character, and
that in return for her self devotion, he would cheerfully grant
her his confidence and affection. But there--"there where she had
garnered up her heart,"--she was doomed to bear the bitterest
disappointment. She found herself, on awaking from her early dream
of unqualified mutual affection, treated with negligence, and at
times with unkindness, and though gleams of his former tenderness
would sometimes break through the sullen darkness of his present
disposition, he continually manifested towards both her child and
herself, a discontented and peevish sternness, which wounded her
deeply, and filled her with inquietude. She retained, however, too
deep a veneration for her husband, too strong a sense of his
superiority, to permit her to resent, by the most trifling show of
displeasure, the alteration in his conduct. She forbore to indulge
even in the
"Silence that chides, and woundings of the eye."
Helen's was no common character. Young, gentle, timid as she was,
the texture of her mind was framed of "sterner stuff;" and she
nourished an intensity of wife-like devotion and endurance, which no
unkindness could tire, and a fixedness of resolve, and high sense of
moral rectitude, which no meaner feeling had yet obtained the power
to blemish.
"Let him be as cold and stern as he will," said she to herself in her
patient affliction, "he is my husband--the husband of my free
choice--and by that I must abide. He may have crosses and
sorrows of which I know not; and is it fitting that I should pry
into the secrets of a mind devoted to pursuits and studies in which
I am incapable of sharing? There was a time when I fondly trusted
he would seek to qualify me for his companion and friend; but the
enchantment which sealed my eyes is over, and I must meet the common
fate of woman, distrust and neglect, as best I may."
Anxious to escape the observation of her family, she earnestly
requested Lord Greville's permission to accompany him with her son,
when he suddenly announced his intention of visiting Greville Cross.
Her petition was at first met with a cold negative; but when she
ventured to plead the advice she had received recently from several
physicians, to remove to the sea coast, and reminded him of her
frequent indispositions, and present feebleness of constitution, he
looked at her for a time with astonishment at the circumstance of
her thus exhibiting so unusual an opposition to his will, and
afterwards with sincere and evident distress at the confirmation
borne by her faded countenance to the truth of her representation.
"Thou art so patient a sufferer," he replied "that I am somewhat
too prone to forget the weakness of thy frame--but be content--I
must be alone in this long and tedious journey."
The tears which rose in her eyes were her only remonstrance, and
her husband stood regarding her for some minutes in silence, but with
the most apparent signs of mental agitation on his countenance.
"Helen," said he at length, in a low, earnest tone, "Helen, thou
wert worthy of a better fate than to be linked to the endurance of
my waywardness; but God who sees thine unmurmuring patience, will
give thee strength to meet thy destiny. Thou hast scarcely enough of
womanly weakness in thee to shrink from idle terrors, or I might
strive to appall thee," he added faintly smiling, "with a description
of the gloom and discomfort of thine unknown northern mansion; but if
thou art willing to bear with its scanty means of accommodation, as
well as with thy husband's variable temper, come with him to the
Cross."
Helen longed to throw herself into his arms as in happier days,
when he granted her petition, but she had been more than once
repulsed from his bosom, and she therefore contented herself with
thanking him respectfully; and in another week, they became inmates
of Greville Cross.
The evening whose stormy and endless commencement I have before
described, was the fourth after her arrival in the North; and
notwithstanding the anxiety she had felt for a change of habitation,
she could not disguise from herself that there was an air of
desolation, a general aspect of dreariness about her new abode which
justified the description afforded by her husband. As she crossed the
portal, a sensation of terror ill-defined, but painful and
overwhelming, smote upon her heart, such as we feel in the presence
of a secret enemy, and Lord Greville's increasing uneasiness and
abstraction since he had returned to the mansion of his forefathers,
did not tend to enliven its gloomy precincts. The wind beat wildly
against the casement of the apartment in which they sat, and which
although named "the lady's chamber," afforded none of those feminine
luxuries, which are now to be found in the most remote parts of
England, in the dwellings of the noble and wealthy. By the side of
a huge hearth, where the crackling and blazing logs imparted the
only cheerful sound or sight in the apartment, in a richly-carved
oaken chair emblazoned with the armorial bearings of his house, sat
Lord Greville, lost in silent contemplation. A chased goblet of wine
with which he occasionally moistened his lips, stood on a table
beside him, on which an elegantly-fretted silver lamp was burning;
and while it only emitted sufficient light to render the gloom of
the spacious chamber still more apparent, it threw a strong glare
upon his expressive countenance and noble figure, and rendered
conspicuous that richness of attire which the fashion of those
stately days demanded from "the magnates of the land;" and which we
now only admire amid the mummeries of theatrical pageant, or on the
glowing canvas of Vandyck. His head rested on his hand, and while
Lady Greville who was seated on an opposite couch, was apparently
engrossed by the embroidery-frame over which she leant, his attention
was equally occupied by his son, who stood at her knee, interrupting
her progress by twining his little hands in the slender ringlets
which profusely overhung her work, and by questions which betrayed
the unsuspicious sportiveness of his age.
"Mother," said the boy, "are we to remain all winter in this ruinous
den? Do you know Margaret says, that some of these northern sea
winds will shake it down over our heads one stormy night; and that
she would as soon lie under the ruins, as be buried alive in its
walls. Now I must own I would rather return to Silsea, and visit my
hawks, and Caesar, and--"
"Hush! sir, you prate something too wildly; nor do I wish to hear you
repeat Margaret's idle observations."
"But mother, I know you long yourself to walk once again in your own
dear sunshiny orangery?"
"My Hugh" said Lady Greville without attending to his question, "has
Margaret shewn you the descent to the walk below the cliffs, and have
you brought me the shells you promised to gather?"
"How? with the spring tide beating the foot of the rocks, and the sea
raging so furiously that the very gulls dared not take their
delicious perch upon the waves. Tomorrow perhaps--"
"What now, my Hugh, afraid to venture? When I walked on the sands at
noon, there was a bowshot spare."
"No! mother, no, not afraid, not afraid to venture a fall, or meet a
sprinkling of sea spray, and good truth I have enough to do with
fears in doors, here in this grim old mansion, without--"
"Fears?"--
"Yes, fears, dear mother," said the boy, looking archly round at his
attendant, who waited in the back ground, and who vainly sought by
signs to silence her unruly charge.
"Do you know that the figure of King Herod, cruel Herod, the murderer
of his wife, and the slayer of the innocents, stalks down every night
from the tapestry in my sleeping room and wanders through the
galleries at midnight; and than the cross, where the three Jews were
executed a long, long time ago, in the reign of King John I think;
they say that it drops blood on the morning of the Holy Friday;--and
then mother, and this is really true," continued the child, changing
from his playful manner to a tone of great earnestness, "there is
the figure of a lady in rich attire, but pale, very pale, who glides
through the apartments--yes; Herbert and Richard and several of the
serving men have seen it; and mistress Alice, poor old soul once was
seen to address it, but she would allow no one to question her on the
subject; and they say it was her doom, and that she must therefore
die of her present sickness. Ay: 'twas in this very room too--the
lady's chamber."
"Boy," interrupted Lord Greville sternly, "if thou canst find no
better subject for thy prate, than these unbecoming fooleries, be
silent--Helen! why should you encourage his forwardness, and girlish
love of babbling? Go hence, sirrah! take thyself to rest; and you,
Margaret," added he, turning angrily to the woman, "remember that
from this hour I hear no more insolent remarks, on any dwelling it
may suit your betters to inhabit, nor of this imp's cowardly
apprehensions."
Margaret led her young charge from the room; who, however sad his
heart at being thus abruptly dismissed, walked proud and erect with
all the welling consciousness of wounded pride. Helen followed him
to the door with her eyes; and when they fell again upon her work,
they were too dim with tears to distinguish the colours of the
flowers she was weaving. Lord Greville had again relapsed into silent
musing; and as she occasionally stole a glance towards him, she
perceived traces of a severe mental struggle on his countenance; the
muscles of his fine throat worked convulsively, his lips quivered,
yet still he spoke not. At length his eyes closed, and he seemed as
if seeking to lose his own reflections in sleep.
"I will try the spell which drove the evil spirit from the mind of
the King of Israel," thought the sad and terrified wife; "music hath
often power to soothe the darkness of the soul;" and she tuned her
lute, and brought forth the softest of its tones. At length her
charm was successful; Lord Greville slept; and while she watched
with all the intense anxiety of alarmed affection, the unquiet
slumbers which distorted one of the finest countenances that sculptor
or painter ever conceived, she affected to occupy herself with her
instrument lest he should awake, and be displeased to find her
attention fixed on himself.
With the sweetest notes of a "voice ever soft and low, an excelling
thing in woman," she murmured the following song, which was recorded
in her family to have been composed by her elder brother, on parting
from a lady to whom he was attached, previous to embarkment on the
expedition in which he fell, and to which it alludes:
Parte la nave
Spiegan le vele
Vento crudele
Mi fa partir.
Addio Teresa,
Teresa, addio!
Piacendo a Dio
Ti rivedro.
Non pianger bella,
Non pianger, No!--
Che al mio ritorno
Ti sposero.
Il Capitano
Mi chiama a bordo;
Io faccio il sordo
Per non partir!
Addio Teresa,
Teresa, Addio!
Piacendo a Dio
Ti rivedro.
Non pianger bella,
Non pianger, No!--
Che al mio ritorno
Ti sposero.
Vado a levante
Vado a ponente
Se trovo gente
Ti scrivero.
Addio Teresa,
Teresa, Addio;
Piacendo a Dio
Ti rivedro.
Non pianger bella,
Non pianger, No!--
Che al mio ritorno
Ti sposero.
Helen had reached the concluding cadence of her soft and melancholy
song, when raising her eyes from the strings to her still sleeping
husband, she beheld with panic-struck and breathless amazement, a
female figure, standing opposite resting her hand on the back of his
chair--silent, and motionless, and with fixed and glassy eyes gazing
mournfully on herself. She saw--yes!--distinctly saw, as described
by little Hugh, "a Lady in rich attire, but pale, very pale;" and in
the stillness and gloom of the apartment and the hour,
"'Twas frightful there to see
A lady richly clad as she,
Beautiful exceedingly."
The paleness of that pensive face did not lessen its loveliness, and
the hair which hung in bright curls on her shoulders and gorgeous
apparel, was white and glossy as silver. Helen gazed for a moment
spell-bound; for she beheld in that countenance without the
possibility of doubt, the resemblance of the deceased Lady Greville,
whose portrait, in a similar dress, hung in the picture gallery at
Silsea Castle. She shuddered; for the eyes of the spectre remained
steadfastly fixed upon her; and its lips moved as if about to address
her--"Mother of God--protect me!" exclaimed Helen convulsively, and
she fell insensible on the floor.
CHAPTER II.
"Sorrow seems pleased to dwell with so much sweetness;
And now and then a melancholy smile
Breaks loose like lightning on a winter's night
And shows a moment's day."--_DRYDEN_
On the succeeding morning, when Lady Greville recovered sufficiently
from a succession of fainting fits to collect her remembrances of
the dreadful cause of her illness, she eagerly demanded of her
attendants in what manner, and by whom, she had been placed in her
usual sleeping-room. They replied, that Lord Greville had conveyed
her there insensible in his arms; and had summoned them in great
agitation to her assistance. He had since frequently sent to
inquire after her health, and had expressed great delight when the
last message, announcing her recovery, had reached him. But he came
not himself to watch over her; and though the shock she had received,
had brought on an alarming degree of fever, which confined her for
several days to her room, he never visited her chamber. Helen was
the more surprised and pained by this neglect, as she knew he made
frequent visits to the sick bed of old Alice, and she wept secretly
and bitterly over this fresh proof of his alienated love.