CHAPTER IV.
_Innocence and Experience_
TO FEEL that the possessions of an illustrious ancestry are about toslide from out your line for ever; that the numerous tenantry, who lookup to you with the confiding eye that the most liberal parvenu cannotattract, will not count you among their lords; that the proud park,filled with the ancient and toppling trees that your fathers planted,will yield neither its glory nor its treasures to your seed, and thatthe old gallery, whose walls are hung with pictures more cherished thanthe collections of kings, will not breathe with your long posterity; allthese are feelings sad and trying, and are among those daily pangs whichmoralists have forgotten in their catalogue of miseries, but whichdo not the less wear out those heart-strings at which they are soconstantly tugging.
This was the situation of Mr. Dacre. The whole of his large property wasentailed, and descended to his nephew, who was a Protestant; and yet,when he looked upon the blooming face of his enchanting daughter, heblessed the Providence which, after all his visitations, had doomed himto be the sire of a thing so lovely. An exile from her country at anearly age, the education of May Dacre had been completed in a foreignland; yet the mingling bloods of Dacre and of Howard would not in amoment have permitted her to forget The inviolate island of the sage andfree! even if the unceasing and ever-watchful exertions of her fatherhad been wanting to make her worthy of so illustrious an ancestry.
But this, happily, was not the case; and to aid the development of theinfant mind of his young child, to pour forth to her, as she grewin years and in reason, all the fruits of his own richly-cultivatedintellect, was the solitary consolation of one over whose conscious headwas impending the most awful of visitations. May Dacre was gifted witha mind which, even if her tutor had not been her father, would haverendered tuition a delight. Her lively imagination, which early unfoldeditself; her dangerous yet interesting vivacity; the keen delight, theswift enthusiasm, with which she drank in knowledge, and then panted formore; her shrewd acuteness, and her innate passion for the excellent andthe beautiful, filled her father with rapture which he repressed, andmade him feel conscious how much there was to check, to guide, and toform, as well as to cherish, to admire, and to applaud.
As she grew up the bright parts of her character shone with increasedlustre; but, in spite of the exertions of her instructor, some lessadmirable qualities had not yet disappeared. She was still too oftenthe dupe of her imagination, and though perfectly inexperienced, herconfidence in her theoretical knowledge of human nature was unbounded.She had an idea that she could penetrate the characters of individualsat a first meeting; and the consequence of this fatal axiom was, thatshe was always the slave of first impressions, and constantly the victimof prejudice. She was ever thinking individuals better or worse thanthey really were, and she believed it to be out of the power of anyoneto deceive her. Constant attendance during many years on a dying andbeloved mother, and her deeply religious feelings, had first broken, andthen controlled, a spirit which nature had intended to be arrogant andhaughty. Her father she adored; and she seemed to devote to him allthat consideration which, with more common characters, is generallydistributed among their acquaintance. We hint at her faults. Howshall we describe her virtues? Her unbounded generosity, her dignifiedsimplicity, her graceful frankness, her true nobility of thought andfeeling, her firmness, her courage and her truth, her kindness toher inferiors, her constant charity, her devotion to her parents, hersympathy with sorrow, her detestation of oppression, her pure unsulliedthoughts, her delicate taste, her deep religion. All these combinedwould have formed a delightful character, even if unaccompanied withsuch brilliant talents and such brilliant beauty. Accustomed from anearly age to the converse of courts and the forms of the most polishedcircles, her manner became her blood, her beauty, and her mind. Yetshe rather acted in unison with the spirit of society than obeyed itsminutest decree. She violated etiquette with a wilful grace which madethe outrage a precedent, and she mingled with princes without feelingher inferiority. Nature, and art, and fortune were the graces which hadcombined to form this girl. She was a jewel set in gold, and worn by aking.
Her creed had made her, in ancient Christendom, feel less an alien; butwhen she returned to that native country which she had never forgotten,she found that creed her degradation. Her indignant spirit clung withrenewed ardour to the crushed altars of her faith; and not before thoseproud shrines where cardinals officiate, and a thousand acolytes flingtheir censers, had she bowed with half the abandonment of spirit withwhich she invoked the Virgin in her oratory at Dacre.
The recent death of her mother rendered Mr. Dacre and herself littleinclined to enter society; and as they were both desirous of residing onthat estate from which they had been so long and so unwillingly absent,they had not yet visited London. The greater part of their time had beenpassed chiefly in communication with those great Catholic families withwhom the Dacres were allied, and to which they belonged. The modern raceof the Howards and the Cliffords, the Talbots, the Arundels, and theJerninghams, were not unworthy of their proud progenitors. Miss Dacreobserved with respect, and assuredly with sympathy, the milddignity, the noble patience, the proud humility, the calm hope, theuncompromising courage, with which her father and his friends sustainedtheir oppression and lived as proscribed in the realm which they hadcreated. Yet her lively fancy and gay spirit found less to admire in thefeelings which influenced these families in their intercourse with theworld, which induced them to foster but slight intimacies out of thepale of the proscribed, and which tinged their domestic life withthat formal and gloomy colouring which ever accompanies a monotonousexistence. Her disposition told her that all this affectednon-interference with the business of society might be politic, butassuredly was not pleasant; her quick sense whispered to her it wasunwise, and that it retarded, not advanced, the great result in whichher sanguine temper dared often to indulge. Under any circumstances,it did not appear to her to be wisdom to second the efforts of theiroppressors for their degradation or their misery, and to seek noconsolation in the amiable feelings of their fellow-creatures for thestern rigour of their unsocial government. But, independently of allgeneral principles, Miss Dacre could not but believe that it wasthe duty of the Catholic gentry to mix more with that world which somisconceived their spirit. Proud in her conscious knowledge oftheir exalted virtues, she felt that they had only to be known to berecognised as the worthy leaders of that nation which they had so oftensaved and never betrayed.
She did not conceal her opinions from the circle in which they had grownup. All the young members were her disciples, and were decidedly ofopinion that if the House of Lords would but listen to May Dacre,emancipation would be a settled thing. Her logic would have destroyedLord Liverpool's arguments; her wit extinguished Lord Eldon's jokes.But the elder members only shed a solemn smile, and blessed May Dacre'sshining eyes and sanguine spirit.
Her greatest supporter was Mrs. Dallington Vere. This lady was a distantrelation of Mr. Dacre. At seventeen she, herself a Catholic, had marriedMr. Dallington Vere, of Dallington House, a Catholic gentleman ofconsiderable fortune, whose age resembled his wealth. No sooner had thisincident taken place than did Mrs. Dallington Vere hurry to London, andsoon evinced a most laudable determination to console herself for herhusband's political disabilities. Mrs. Dallington Vere went to Court;and Mrs. Dallington Vere gave suppers after the opera, and concertswhich, in number and brilliancy, were only equalled by her balls. Thedandies patronised her, and selected her for their Muse. The Duke ofShropshire betted on her always at ecarte; and, to crown the wholeaffair, she made Mr. Dallington Vere lay claim to a dormant peerage. Thewomen were all pique, the men all patronage. A Protestant ministerwas alarmed; and Lord Squib supposed that Mrs. Dallington must be theScarlet Lady of whom they had heard so often.
Season after season she kept up the ball; and although, of course, sheno longer made an equal sensation, she was not less brilliant, norher position less eminent. She had got into the b
est set, and was morequiet, like a patriot in place. Never was there a gayer lady than Mrs.Dallington Vere, but never a more prudent one. Her virtue was onlyequalled by her discretion; but, as the odds were equal, Lord Squibbetted on the last. People sometimes indeed did say--they alwayswill--but what is talk? Mere breath. And reputation is marble, and iron,and sometimes brass; and so, you see, talk has no chance. They did saythat Sir Lucius Grafton was about to enter into the Romish communion;but then it turned out that it was only to get a divorce from his wife,on the plea that she was a heretic.
The fact was, Mrs. Dallington Vere was a most successful woman, lucky ineverything, lucky even in her husband; for he died. He did not only die;he left his whole fortune to his wife. Some said that his relationswere going to set aside the will, on the plea that it was written with acrow-quill on pink paper; but this was false; it was only a codicil.
All eyes were on a very pretty woman, with fifteen thousand a year, andonly twenty-three. The Duke of Shropshire wished he were disembarrassed.Such a player of ecarte might double her income. Lord Raff advanced,trusting to his beard, and young Amadee de Rouerie mortgaged hisdressing-case, and came post from Paris; but in spite of his sky-bluenether garments and his Hessians, he followed my Lord's example, andre-crossed the water. It is even said that Lord Squib was sentimental;but this must have been the malice of Charles Annesley.
All, however, failed. The truth is, Mrs. Dallington Vere had nothing togain by re-entering Paradise, which matrimony, of course, is; and so shedetermined to remain mistress of herself. She had gained fashion, andfortune, and rank; she was young, and she was pretty. She thought itmight be possible for a discreet, experienced little lady to lead a verypleasant life without being assisted in her expenses or disturbed in herdiversion by a gentleman who called himself her husband, occasionallyasked her how she slept in a bed which he did not share, or munificentlypresented her with a necklace purchased with her own money. DiscreetMrs. Dallington Vere!
She had been absent from London during the past season, having taken italso into her head to travel.
She was equally admired and equally plotted for at Rome, at Paris, andat Vienna, as at London; but the bird had not been caught, and, flyingaway, left many a despairing prince and amorous count to muse over theirlean visages and meagre incomes.
Dallington House made its fair mistress a neighbour of her relations,the Dacres. No one could be a more fascinating companion than Mrs.Dallington Vere. May Dacre read her character at once, and these ladiesbecame great allies. She was to assist Miss Dacre in her plans forrousing their Catholic friends, as no one was better qualified to beher adjutant. Already they had commenced their operations, and balls atDallington and Dacre, frequent, splendid, and various, had already madethe Catholic houses the most eminent in the Riding, and their brilliantmistresses the heroines of all the youth.