CHAPTER XVIII.

HER GRACE OF RIBBLESDALE.

“I CONGRATULATE you, my dear,” said Miss Strong to her companion, as they passed along the cloisters at the conclusion of their visit, “that you have secured the friendship of one of the best women in the world. I knew what her intentions towards you were the moment we entered the room. Didn’t you see that the Duchess wore the great Scarswicke Emerald? And I knew that she had resolved to carry out her intentions when she took you into her own boudoir. I have never been in there myself; but then, you see, I wasn’t, as it were, born quite in the purple. Lady Lavinia would give her shoulders to be so distinguished, and she hates you already with the excess of jealousy. My dear, your position in Hampton Court Palace is established, and I heartily wish you joy.”

It is now high time that the reader should be informed who the great lady was who had accorded such a kind reception to Evelyn Manwaring.

Catharine, Duchess of Ribblesdale, Baroness Scarswicke in her own right (she was sixteenth in succession to that ancient dignity), succeeded her father, the late Baron, at the early age of fifteen. Left to the charge of an old spinster aunt, and with somewhat narrow means, she passed the greater part of her youth in the ancient family seat, and in comparative seclusion. One of the young Baroness’s trustees was John, fourth Duke of Ribblesdale, a nobleman of mature years, great experience, and very considerable talents. He had served his country well upon many critical occasions, and had more than once filled a high office of State. The Duke was one whose patriotism was acknowledged and respected by even his bitterest political opponents, and men of all parties recognised him, as they recognised the late Earl of Derby, as a high-minded nobleman of the fine old English type. Had he desired it, he might have aspired to the office of Prime Minister, but the Duke of Ribblesdale, who was one of the most unselfish men in existence, did not aspire, but was content to work, and see others reap the fruit of his labours. A man of wide reading and wider experience, and of the soundest practical sense, he stood high in the esteem of his Sovereign, and the advice of no one on any difficult point was more sought for and more valued than that of the Duke. Wise, however, as he was as regards the interests of others, he was the very reverse of wise as regards his own. In any matter which seemed in any way to involve the promotion of philanthropic schemes, the Duke was the dupe and the victim of speculators. He was perpetually investing large sums in concerns which did not and could not pay. Artizans’ Clothing Improvement Societies, Associations for Providing Country Milk at the Houses of the Labouring Classes, Waste Lands and Heaths Remunerative Cultivation Leagues--these and such as these were gulfs into which the Duke cast his money, with the almost invariable result of seeing it lost to him for ever, while the Secretaries and the Floaters of the bubble-schemes retired to the United States of America with large fortunes, and occasionally returned as Consuls-General and Ambassadors to the Continental Powers. At length it became generally known that the Duke was seriously embarrassed. He resigned office, retired to his seat in the country, and--married. The lady upon whom he fixed his choice was no other than his ward, the young Baroness Scarswicke, who at that time was barely turned eighteen years of age. She had long loved the Duke as her father’s friend, and had long admired him for his personal character, and there was a great charm in his manner when--which was seldom--he was in the company of women. Lady Scarswicke, who lived a retired life with her aunt in a somewhat remote country-house in Lancashire, had seen but few desirable young men; and when the Duke, who of course was many years her senior, proposed to her, after taking a week for the consideration of the offer, she accepted him, and never regretted she had done so. Little by little they became an extremely attached couple, but years elapsed before an heir was born to the castle and broad lands of Ribblesdale. In fact, the Duke’s first cousin, Colonel de Lacy, late of the Coldstream Guards, and now a dissipated man about town, had actually succeeded in impressing his own conviction upon the Jews--that an heir was out of the question, and that he himself would succeed to the title and estates--and had negotiated a loan in proportion to his great expectations, when the Duchess (after a winter passed in a Dahabeyeh on the Nile) astonished the world by giving birth to a son. Colonel de Lacy was furious, and there was wailing and gnashing of teeth in Jewry, when this unexpected event occurred, and this rage was increased when it was reported that the young Earl of Preston (for such was the Duke’s second title) was a strong little brat, and likely to make a considerable stay in the world he had so lately entered. Colonel de Lacy’s friends, too, like Job’s comforters as they were, represented to him that now the Duchess had once begun there was no knowing when she would stop, and they quoted, on the highest medical authority, a formidable array of cases of ladies who had not had a single child until they were forty, but who had ended by having a round dozen. Colonel de Lacy, nevertheless, refused to be comforted, and thereupon went utterly to the dogs. The Duchess, however, spite of the medical authorities, _did_ stop when the little Earl was born; and when the boy was ten years old, the Duke himself went the way of all flesh, leaving the Duchess sole guardian of his son, and heir to all his estates, until the lad should reach the age of twenty-one. Shortly after her husband’s death, the Duchess, who wished to retrench and nurse up the revenues of the estate for her son, accepted the offer made to her by Her Majesty, and came to live at Hampton Court.

The Duchess, spite of her retirement, was still a considerable social power. Her rank, the remains of a once splendid beauty, her singular aptitude for business, her wide charity, and her genuine kindness of disposition, all conspired to make her a very great personage indeed. But in addition to all this, she was famous as the possessor of the Ribblesdale Diamonds, these magnificent stones which Geoffrey, second Duke, had brought from Russia when he was Ambassador at St. Petersburgh, which were currently reported to have belonged to the Empress Catharine, and which had never been re-set. These Diamonds, too, were the Duchess’s own possession, they were not entailed with the property; the Duke had given them to her outright on the morning of their marriage, and she was free to chuck them into the Thames, if she so willed it, or--which you will agree with me would be the better course--to leave them to you or me.

More famous, however, even than the Ribblesdale Diamonds, was another possession of the Duchess’s, that superb stone known as “the Great Scarswicke Emerald,” which had been named in wills and settlements for hundreds of years, and which was believed to be without its equal in Europe. It was indeed a glorious stone, and merits a particular description.

The Scarswicke Emerald then was of scarabæoid form and of vast size. Though not free from flaws, these seemed rather to increase than to diminish the flashing lustre of the gem. The upper surface was of rounded form, the lower flat, and on the under side was engraved, by the cunning hand of some long-haired Greek of Alexandria, the contemporary bust of Cleopatra, with her twisted hair and full, luscious Egyptian lips, and wearing, like Isis herself, the vulture head-attire of a Queen. Below the bust, a cartouch or oval contained the delicately engraved name of the Queen in the hieroglyphs of the ancient cult of the land of Khem. A thin band of ancient gold encircled the jewel, on which were several inscriptions. The first, in minute Cufic characters, contained the words, “_Suleiman-ibn-Am’r Kul: Allahu Ahad. Allahu-s-Samad._ (_Say, God is One, God the Eternal._”--Kuran, cxii. i.), followed by the double triangle, the favourite Muslim charm called the Seal of Solomon, and esteemed sovereign against evil spirits. Then in beautiful Gothic letters appeared AMAVRIVS: HIER: REX, and lastly IOHAN DE SCARSVVIKE, followed by a Cross. It thus appears that the Emerald had been owned and used as a talisman by the son of the first Mohammedan Conqueror of Egypt; that it had fallen into the hands of Amaury, the Latin King of Jerusalem; and family tradition asserted that it had been given by that monarch to that Sir John de Scarswicke who, returning from the Crusades, was buried on the South side of the Chancel of Scarswicke Church, under an altar tomb which supports his effigy clothed in chain armour. But the story of this marvellous jewel is not even yet complete. It appears that, some two hundred years later, a Baron Scarswicke was sent as ambassador to an Italian State, and taking the Emerald with him, delivered it into the hands of no less a craftsman than Benvenuto Cellini himself, who wrought for it, with his matchless skill, in gold and enamels, a frame in the shape of a pendant, in which, since that time, it had hung, revolving, so as to show either side at will to the admiring beholder. Such was the great “Scarswicke Emerald,” and it was observed that, while the Duchess of Ribblesdale wore her superb Diamonds on state occasions when she received her acquaintances, she wore the Emerald when she received her kindred and friends.

On the death of the Duke, the Duchess had been left sole guardian of their son, for whom, on his leaving Dr. Massenger’s, which he did at the end of the term of Wilfred Manwaring’s expulsion, a commission had been obtained in the Royal Life Guards, and the young Duke lived in handsome chambers in Arlington Street, with a back view over the park. The great, gaunt mansion in St. James’s Square, known as Ribblesdale House, was let until such time as he should come of age. It is scarcely too much to say that there was no finer young fellow in all England than the Duke of Ribblesdale. To begin with, he was extremely good-looking. Of middle height and good figure, he was at once strong and agile. He had bright, open, hazel eyes, brown hair just waving at the end, though it was seldom long enough to allow a curl to form, and a brown, ruddy complexion. Fun and good-humour lurked at the corners of his well-shaped lips, which were shaded by short, well-trimmed moustachios of a sunny brown. Everyone pronounced him a capital fellow all round. His brother-officers, or at all events the better part of them, found him the best and cheeriest of comrades, and the private soldiers of his regiment loved him to a man. Above all, there was not a grain even of affectation about him. Young as he was, he was a thorough _Man_, which in these days of languid, effete, lackadaisical æsthetes, is saying a good deal. Unlike many other young nobles of his class, he did not drink, he did not gamble, he did not bet--except sometimes with ladies, and then he was miserable if he won--and he did not go shares with any millionaire Jew financier in the venal affections of a French actress or Italian ballet-dancer. No one, however, could come near the young Duke at polo; he was a good shot; could hold his own with most competitors by the side of a salmon river; and, lastly, he adored his mother, and was an excellent and attentive son. Not a week elapsed, when he was quartered in London, without his riding down to Hampton Court, or pulling up the river in order to visit the Duchess, who, it need scarcely be said, was wrapt up in her only son.