CHAPTER XIII.

Mais ne savez-vous pas que notre âme est encore plus superbe que vertueuse, plus glorieuse qu’honnête, et par conséquent plus délicate sur les intérêts de sa vanité que sur ceux de son véritable honneur.—_Marivaux._

In the mean time, Lord Montreville had completely recovered his health. They left Caërwhwyddwth Castle, and established themselves at Ashdale Park for the winter. Their house was soon full, and Lucy tried to drown all sense of her cares in the succession of company, with which she was as desirous as Lord Montreville could be, to keep their house constantly replenished. They each equally dreaded finding themselves alone with the other.

The breakfast hour was late; before luncheon the excursion for the day was organised; after luncheon the preconcerted ride or drive took place; the company was constantly changing, and Lady Montreville’s presence was frequently required in the drawing-room, to speed the parting, or to greet the coming guest. It was only in the nursery that the face which in society she had learned to dress in smiles, relaxed into an expression of languor and joylessness, which astonished and distressed the faithful Milly. When the child’s gambols and caresses called forth a smile, it was so melancholy a one, that Milly’s eyes would often fill with tears as she looked upon her lady.

One day, when among the foolish questions with which poor little children are tormented, Lucy said to him, “Charlie loves mamma, does not he?” He answered, “Me love papa.” The boy meant nothing, but the words fell on Lucy’s heart, as if they doomed her to utter lonelessness and lovelessness! as if her own child cared not for her! and she burst into a passionate flood of tears, which alarmed and confounded Milly.

“La, my lady! sure you are not crying for that? Why you would not but have the dear babe love his own papa?”

“I do not believe any body or any thing loves me in this world—except you, Milly;” and Lucy’s sobs redoubled.

“Oh, my lady! how can you speak so? And to think of my lord, how he used to be asking and calling for you when he was so ill, and that’s the time when people call for them as they really love best; and ’twas then my lord could not bear you out of his sight, though may be, now he is well, he takes pleasure in the other gentlefolks too.”

Lucy had pride and dignity enough not to open the secrets of her domestic wrongs, even to Milly; and exerting all her self-control, she dried her tears, and tried to smile at her silly maternal jealousy. But Milly was not so deceived. Simple as she was, the warmth of her own feelings rendered her quick-sighted in all that regarded those of others. She was sure that her lady’s lowness of spirits had some deeper source than the child’s little speech, though she was quite at a loss to divine what the cause might be. She had been so well satisfied with Lord Montreville’s love for her, when first he recovered his recollection, that she did not suspect it could be occasioned by any unkindness on his part.

At this period of our story, Sir Charles and Lady Selcourt arrived at Ashdale Park. Lucy was overjoyed to see a face that reminded her of the happy days of her childhood, a person who was bound to her by ties of blood, who distinctly belonged to herself. Although not perhaps the one whose character was most congenial to her own, still she was her sister; they had played the same plays, wandered about the same fields, studied in the same school-room, had shared the same parental cares, and in the present desolate state of her feelings, her heart went forth towards Sophy with warmth.

Lady Selcourt was a worldly woman, and a coquette, but she was not a common-place coquette. She never made any advances towards men; she never apparently sought them; but she dressed herself quite beautifully, and sat still with an expression of conscious charms, combined with strict propriety, which seldom failed to bring all the men in the room hovering round the sofa on which she sat.

She was not witty, or learned, or talkative, but she looked very soft, and occasionally very arch; and when she did speak, implied a great deal more than she said. All girls hated her, for she occupied the gentlemen, without being so openly a flirt, that they could console themselves by thinking “any body can gain the attention of men, who will go such lengths to obtain it,” for she went no lengths. Yet most men, and all women, knew it was not simply by superior charms that she did attract them.

Pretty as Lucy was, pleasing as were her good-humour and her simplicity, much as all men admired her in speaking of her, it was round Lady Selcourt that they congregated; her dress was the subject of conversation; it was to give her their arm that they rushed when dinner was announced; it was upon her cards at _écarté_ that all were anxious to bet.

As the sisters were sitting one day in her boudoir, Lady Montreville remarked to Sophy that she almost wondered Sir Charles should like to see so many men fluttering around his wife, while she appeared so much more occupied with others than with him. “For Sir Charles is very fond of you, Sophy,” she added, with a sigh.

“To be sure he is, and he would not be half so fond of me, if others did not flutter around me, as you call it. Nothing keeps a man up to the mark so well, as seeing that his wife is valued by others. Do you not invariably see dawdling devoted wives, with careless indifferent husbands?”

“Indeed I am not sure that devotion is the way to fix one’s husband,” rejoined Lucy, in a desponding tone.

“It only spoils the men, Lucy. Husbands are things that ought to be kept in hot water, if one wishes to preserve one’s influence over them, which every woman of sense must perceive is one of her first duties. And I own I should not like to be considered as a domestic drudge, who have fulfilled the end of my existence when I have provided heirs to the estate, can keep my husband’s shirts mended, and know precisely when the kettle boils. Women have souls, and they have hearts” (so they have! thought Lucy), “and understandings—sometimes the best of the two; and it always makes my blood boil to see them treated as beings of an inferior order! People do not judge for themselves. If you are overlooked by others, your husband thinks nothing of you; if others admire and seek your society, he is proud that so _recherchée_ a person is his wife. Of course I would not have any woman commit herself by word or deed. As you know, I would not walk across the room for any man that breathes: no one ever saw me do any one thing derogatory to the dignity of our sex; but there is no reason why one should not dress well, and make one’s-self agreeable. _On vaut ce qu’on veut valoir_, especially in one’s husband’s eyes.”

Lucy began to think it was as much the bounden duty of every married woman to flirt, as to love, honour, and obey.

“I think,” added Lucy, “very submissive wives often have faithless husbands.”

“It stands to reason they should. Men have had flirtations, and liaisons, and love affairs of all kinds, up to the time they marry. They have been accustomed to excitement, and they can never sit down contented with a humdrum wife, always hemming and stitching quietly at home. Unless a woman has something in her, the husband will seek for amusement abroad.”

“This is rather hard upon some women though, who have never had all these flirtations, and who do not want to flirt, but would fain give their whole hearts to their husbands; at best they can only hope to be last of many loves.”

“Why you could never have expected to be your husband’s first love, my dear! Really! Lucy, you are the oddest mixture of romance and worldly wisdom, that ever I met with. One would think you had married all for love, or the world well lost. Yours is the most sentimental mode of making a good _parti_ I ever knew.”

“I was not alluding to myself,” Lucy hastily interrupted; for she dreaded to have her secret annoyances laid bare to the eyes of any one, especially to those of Sophy.

“Why I suppose not; for if you had wished to be your husband’s first love, you would have chosen a youth certainly not past nineteen. But sometimes you have such a melancholy, sentimental expression in your face, I scarcely know what to make of you.”

“You have such spirits, Sophy! I think you have ten times the spirits you had when you were a girl, which is so odd!” and she thought of the halcyon days of donkeys and puppy dogs.

“Not at all odd! When one is a girl, one does not know what one’s fate is to be; and though one has some pleasant and agreeable hours, one has mortifications also; but when one’s fortune is made, when one has a husband who is proud of one, and (though it sounds vain to say so) when one feels that one is admired and courted by others, I do not see why one should not be in spirits.”

Lady Selcourt had been gratified that morning by a noble dandy’s compliance with her request to prolong his stay at Ashdale Park, in order to join in some charades which were proposed for the evening’s amusement, when he had resisted the general solicitations of the rest of the party. If Lucy had seen her at Sir Charles’s seat in Oxfordshire, with her husband and her children around her, in the bosom of her family, she would not have thought her flow of spirits so enviable.

Arguments, the unsoundness and sophistry of which would be apparent enough at other times, appear conclusive and convincing when they are in accordance with the feelings of the moment. Lucy was thoroughly discontented with her husband, and her own manner of life; her mind was unsettled—she was in a state of mortification, while at the same time she thought more highly of her own charms than she had ever done before. She saw Sophy with half her personal beauty, but with an adoring husband (for she had succeeded in making Sir Charles admire, as well as fear her; she had enthralled him, and he dared not even struggle in his shackles, but appeared to look on them as precious ornaments); and she also saw her receiving the incense of that conventional complimentary manner which all women can command, if they choose to require it.

If she had been happy at home, she would have despised and condemned such unmeaning homage; but as it was, she did not like to be altogether eclipsed by Sophy, and her manner instinctively assumed a tone which encouraged men to talk to her. There was a characteristic simplicity in her view of subjects, and in her mode of expressing herself, which amused, as being peculiar to herself. She ventured to be droll. She was pleased at success, her spirits rose, and she began to think that, after all, one might make oneself very tolerably happy without the romantic affection which Milly’s story had taught her to sigh after.

Another spring arrived, and Lady Montreville went to London with the full intention of shining as the most attractive of women, and of having a train of admirers—humble admirers, who should be kept at a most respectful distance, but who might show her husband what others thought of her.

She had little difficulty in succeeding in her object. With rank and beauty, a lively manner, and a husband so much older than herself, the difficulty was to keep them off, not to attract them. Lionel Delville became a frequent visiter in St. James’s Square. He no longer found it impossible to pay her a compliment, although, as yet, he dared go no farther. Captain Lyon claimed acquaintance as an old friend. Although he had scarcely found out she was alive as the fourth daughter of Colonel Heckfield, he proclaimed her the most fascinating of her sex, as the Marchioness of Montreville. Indeed, he insinuated that he had been the first to discover these fascinations, and to point them out to Lord Montreville. He affected to patronise her to all his friends.

Statesmen, warriors, poets, were to be found in her train. Among others, Lord Thorcaster, a deep politician, who was particularly strong on political economy, the bullion question, the poor laws, and free trade. She was quite pretty enough to be exceedingly agreeable to this man of deep reading and comprehensive mind. He did not make love—no: he talked politics; but her eyes were so blue, and her teeth so white, that he thought her political _aperçus_ astonishingly luminous; especially when one day that the question of free trade was discussed, she exclaimed in her simple manner,—

“Why can they not let it all alone! and then every body, and every country, will naturally manufacture what they can do best, and what they are most fitted for; and everybody will buy where they can get the best things for the least money. That must be good for all parties, and there would be an end of all this fuss about duties on imports and exports.”

“My dear Lady Montreville, you have in one sentence condensed all the arguments that it has taken the two houses of Parliament years to discuss. I have urged this very train of reasoning myself. If our legislators were but endowed with the clear and powerful understanding of a certain young and beautiful woman, it would be well for our poor country! But it is not every mind that can thus grapple with a subject, divest it of all the false colouring thrown over it by sophistry, and at once seize the real point at issue.”

“Dear me! have I done all this? It seemed very natural to say what I said.”

“Very natural to persons of decision, who can shake themselves free from the trammels of prejudice.”

“But I never thought upon the subject before, so I had no prejudices to shake off; I merely said what struck me as plain and obvious.”

“Indeed! astonishing you should at once seize all the bearings of the case.”

Lucy felt a little like M. Jourdain, when he discovered that he had been speaking prose all his life; and was rather elated at finding she was so clever. She had heard she was pretty, and had perceived she was attractive, and had sometimes felt that she amused, but she had never before been told she was clever.

Lord Thorcaster was a man who stood high with a certain set; his suffrage was decidedly worth having, for he was reckoned very fastidious; and Lucy was much exalted in her own estimation by his opinion of her talents. She now listened with attention to political discussions; fancied she greatly preferred such subjects to the frivolous conversation of women; she occasionally retailed the arguments she heard adduced by others, and sometimes hazarded an opinion of her own. Lord Thorcaster was charmed; but as he was neither young nor handsome, the degree in which he frequented St. James’s Square gave no umbrage to Lord Montreville, nor ground for scandal to the world.