Lady Anne Granard/Chapter 49
LADY ANNE GRANARD;
OR
KEEPING UP APPEARANCES.
CHAPTER XLIX.
It is time now to return to the "Golden Shell," the "garden of Europe," the "matchless Italy," of which so much has been said and sung, and will continue to be till time itself shall cease, but in which (with all its beauties of surface and climate, all its charms of association, and its wonders of art) the sorrows and solicitudes which belong to human existence are felt as acutely as in less favoured countries.
It was at least thus with the daughters of Lady Anne; for, although the gentle bosom of Mary once more admitted the guest into her confidence which she had long sought to banish, her love was attended with much of apprehension and anxiety—many surmises as to the character, and especially the temper, of Lord Allerton, and not a few of the fears, which are the result of advanced judgment, and the knowledge which arises from observation. Mary could not be at twenty-six the same perfectly artless, confiding, hoping creature she had been at nineteen; nor could she expect that Lord Allerton could be the man she had known him. He knew himself to have been duped by a woman, and he might thence deem the whole sex more or less deceitful; his fortune had been injured by the extravagance of a first wife, and it would be natural for him to become suspicious, perhaps niggardly, with a second, especially the daughter of a mother whose errors were undoubtedly often descanted upon by the lady from whom he was separated. In her situation there could be no doubt that the home to which he might remove her must be much happier than the one she had long known with her mother, but it was a point for consideration whether it would be so compared with that she now enjoyed, and where she was so useful to her dear young sister. Love hides all faults, all discrepancies; but could the love felt by either party in this case effect that happy state of blindness?—she was certain it could not. Their happiness must depend on mutual esteem, the surest of all foundations, but the one most difficult to rely on, for slight inequalities might produce great effects, when neither the novelty of situation nor the charm of passion were present to soften or relieve them.
If Mary had been subject to personal vanity (which we believe she never was), Lady Anne would have effectually cured it long ago, for she had as often told her that she had lost her beauty, as she had, with equal candour, assured Isabella that she never possessed any; a circumstance that gave the eldest and youngest of her family a more than common tie to each other, although they were never envious of the rest, but, on the contrary, most affectionately attached even to the most praised and admired, a proof of great excellence in both. At this time, it had this farther effect, that each supposed there was some kind of physical similitude in their situation. As Mary could not but perceive that Isabella was amazingly improved in her person since her marriage, yet retaining all its peculiar character, when either Glentworth or her sister spoke of her own improvement she thought it was possible, which otherwise, in her long state of subdued spirits, she might not. She had therefore the consolation of believing that Lord Allerton, whom she had never seen since his marriage, would not be shocked by her appearance, often as her mother made the assertion, for she must have been a fool, instead of an humble woman, if she had not been conscious that she was at this time handsomer than she had ever been before, and externally more resembling her mother than any of her sisters, though she lacked Lady Anne's commanding height and that cast of countenance which indicated powerful intellect, but was unfortunately mingled with pride and superciliousness, which was the extreme reverse of Mary's expression.
It might therefore be truly said, that Isabella enjoyed the prospect of her sister's future honourable settlement more than she could do herself, for the wife had not yet learned to scan the good or evil inherent in matrimony with a just eye. She had suffered much, but she could not bring herself to suppose that any part of her experience belonged to the state itself, but to her own peculiar situation, and that of her dear, unhappy husband. The isolated state in which she was now living, far from her country and her friends, shut out from the society in which she had a right to move, of course prevented her from reading in the great book of human life those lessons of life which might have enlarged her views or increased her apprehensions; therefore, she saw nothing before her beloved sister but a course of unmingled and well-merited felicity.
She had still the buoyancy which belongs to girls in their teens, as well as the soberness which arises from experience; and when her spirits were oppressed with the anxiety inseparable from her situation, it was a great relief to allow her imagination to paint all possible pleasures for that beloved sister—that kind and watchful friend, whom every day made more dear and valuable to her. Sometimes she would be sensible of the great loss she should herself experience, and almost feared to be left alone without Mary to aid the conversation and soften the asperities of poor Glentworth; but she trusted the daily improving intelligence of her boy would do wonders for her in this respect; and, at all events, if Mary's happiness were secured, she could submit to the privation of her society. Reasoning on Lord Rotheles's principle, we should certainly say Lady Anne was the monopolist of selfishness in her family, for the girls had none; it may, however, be added, with great truth, that she had had enough for all.
When the Count's first letter reached them, in which he related the success of his mission, though he had spoken of the illness of Lady Anne in no alarming terms, they were convinced it was a bad one, or he would not have mentioned it at all, such had been at all times his anxiety to save them from pain; and as he knew better than any one else could the present state of Glentworth, and their apprehensions on his account, it was hardly likely that he would add to their uneasiness without a sufficient cause.
When the mind is in a state of solicitude on subjects connected with sickness and death, the well-disposed seldom attempt to fly from the contemplation of those things immediately connected with them, or seek consolation from looking beyond them. "Let us go to the Campo Santo to-day," said Mary; "I had rather contemplate among the tombs than visit the churches, fine as the music is, because I cannot think as I wish to do when so many things are going on which divert my attention."
To this magnificent edifice, wherein repose the ashes of the great during more than six hundred years, they therefore drove; and, although they had been there very often already, found much that could not fail to charm and interest them in the sombre and splendid monuments, the inscriptions, which were condensed histories of those who slept within them, or those admirable, though faded frescoes, which have been the wonder of ages. There were few persons within at the time, it being the general hour for mass; but two ladies having entered just before them, attracted their attention, in consequence of being, like themselves, unaccompanied by a gentleman, from which it was concluded they were regular inhabitants of Pisa.
Mary did not pay them any particular attention beyond noticing that the younger was a beautiful olive-complexioned woman about thirty, and her companion apparently from the northern part of her own country, as she had, though aged, a fair complexion, ruddy cheeks, and high cheek-bones, with small piercing eyes, well calculated for the office of a duenna. Both were well dressed, and were, probably, relations, notwithstanding the difference of country exhibited in their persons; the superiority of the Italian style of feature struck Mary much, but that was all.
Isabella, on the contrary, felt a real interest in the strangers, at least in one of them, of whose face she did not get so good a view as her sister had done, and though her spirits were by no means in tone for forming acquaintance with a stranger, and she was really much engaged with the solemn and beautiful objects by which she was surrounded, yet still, from time to time, she could not forbear looking towards the younger. When she approached an old monument, as if to decipher the epitaph, Isabella went towards it also, and on the lady turning quickly away, because she found herself incapable of reading it, they suddenly faced each other, and Isabella exclaimed,
"It is—I am sure it is dear Mrs. Cranstoun!"
"And you are, certainly, a Granard; but it cannot be little Isabella?"
"Yes, indeed, dear lady, I am Isabella, but no longer a Granard: this is my sister Mary, but I believe she was not one of those to whom you were so good."
"No, I knew only your mamma's three youngest daughters; is it possible that all my little girls are married."
"Oh, no! Helen and Georgiana are neither of them married: Louisa is, but she was the second only."
The lady smiled, and perhaps wondered; nevertheless, she had already said to herself, "What a very fine young woman that poor child is become!" she now put the very natural question, "By what name, my young friend, shall I now address you?"
"I am Mrs. Glentworth," answered Isabella, blushing. "Glentworth! Glentworth!" both ladies exclaimed, looking at each other, with great surprise, the elder adding, "you'll no mean to say ye are married to Francis Glaintworth, wha formerly lived at Marseilles?"
"Yes, indeed, I am; after our marriage we came out to Marseilles, to settle his affairs."
"Affairs! did not the old mon, his uncle, leave him a rich mon?"
"He made no will, and my husband succeeded, as a matter of course."
"He did reight, varry reight; but guid traith, that's more than I can jist say a' yer mither, wha garr'd ye marry Frank, becase o' the money, and I shuld not ha thought he'd a ta'en the advantage, fra what I've hard say."
"I love my husband, dearly; I have loved him all my life, but never so well as at the time I married him, unless it is now, when he is travelling to regain his health, and I cannot be with him on account of my little boy."
"It may be sae, an I'm glad ye've got a wee mon to take down the Glaintworth estates to posterity, ye ken; its aw as it shuld be; ye have naithing but good wishes frae us, I'm sartin, natheless it's better we meet no more, or meet as strangers."
"It must be so, indeed, my sweet Isabella," said Mrs. Cranstoun, taking her hand.
That hand was instantly withdrawn; poor Isabella felt as "if there were two Richmonds in the field," for every trait of person which had belonged to the late Marchioness di Morello, and had been so insisted upon by Glentworth in his descriptions of the beautiful, were the express characteristics of the delicate and fascinating woman before her. She well remembered the mystery that shrouded her years ago at Brighton; the certainty, that if she had a husband he was residing at a great distance, and that she was at that time under the decided care of her Scotch aunt. "Could Glentworth have been that husband or that protector who had so placed her, and could he, in a distant country, have forgotten her for the sake of Margarita Riccardini?"
There was an agony in that thought, which went far beyond all she had ever known of sorrow, for it showed her the reverenced, the idolized being, who ruled her destiny, as unfeeling and worthless. Turning on Mary a look of unutterable anguish, she threw herself forward on the tomb before her, laid her forehead on the marble, grasping it with her hands as if seeking support from the representation of death itself.
"We had better go now," said the old lady, looking at her watch, "the carriage is waiting."
"Whoever you may be, madam," said Mary, stepping forward, and laying her hand on the arm of the younger, with a pressure that made itself felt, "you shall not go till you have so far explained your situation and connexion with Mr. Glentworth, as to clear his character or to prove his guilt; you have awakened in Isabella's breast the agonies of jealousy; I see you have, and I appeal to your humanity to relieve her tortures, for I declare, upon my honour, that I think them natural and even justifiable."
"Oh, God!" cried the lady, "why did I not foresee this? Isabella, my dear child, I have never beheld your husband, never; he knows not there is such a woman in existence as myself; I have wronged him, but most innocently, for I was a school-girl at the time; I am his relation, and, in my heart, his friend, but I am a married woman, was so when you knew me first, although a very young one; look at me, dear Isabella, and forgive me, if I have given you pain; I dare appeal to your memory for all the lessons I taught you, whether deception was not abhorrent to my nature? At that time I was, it is true, a mystery, and as such allied to guilt, though myself innocent and blameless; 'a child of misery baptized in tears.'"
Mary remembered, that, at the time to which she alluded, Lady Anne had received notes from Mrs. Cranstoun, which she had said "were perfectly satisfactory," but she knew also that circumstances, which might be so to her mamma, in a case where her younger daughters were receiving daily benefits, would by no means be so in the eyes of Mr. Glentworth, in an acquaintance of his wife's, and she evidenced a desire to separate as decidedly as the old lady.
But the words, "I have never beheld Mr. Glentworth," at once obliterated all fears from Isabella's mind, and brought back all sweet and grateful memories, and she flung herself unreservedly into the stranger's arms. She cared for nothing at the moment but her husband's fame; if he were guiltless she was satisfied; but to have seen her venerated, her adored idol, hurled from his pedestal, as false to Margarita, and to his own professions; to suppose he could, by possibility, be classed with the common herd, her fond and proud attachment could not endure; she knew him to have been unfortunate, but she believed him to have been the most virtuous of men, and gloried in that virtue; she did well to exult, for she was right.