Wrecked in Port/Book II, Chapter II

by Edmund Hodgson Yates

Chapter II.Lady Caroline.

The Lady Caroline liked late hours. She was of a restless temperament, and hated solitude, though she was also intolerant of anything like dulness in her associates, and had sufficient taste for the accomplishments which she possessed to render her independent of society. Nevertheless she underwent an immense deal of boredom rather than be alone, and whenever she found herself in a country house, she set to work to form a coterie of late sitters, in order to avoid the early hours which were her abhorrence. She was not an empty-headed woman—far from it. She had a good deal more knowledge than most women of her class, and a great deal of appreciation, some native humour, and much of the kind of tact and knowledge of society which require the possession and the exercise of brains. Nobody would have pronounced her stupid, but every one agreed that she was supercilious and superficial. The truth was that she was empty hearted, and where that void exists, no qualities of head will fill it; and even those, who do not know what it is they miss in the individual, are impressed by the effect of the deficiency. The Lady Caroline loved no one in the world except herself, and sometimes she took that solitary object of affection in disgust, which, if transient, was deep. She had arrived at Westhope in one of these passing fits of ennui, mingled with impatience and disgust of herself, and irritation with everybody around her. She never at any time liked Westhope particularly, and her brother and his wife had no more interest for her, no more share in her affections, than any other dull lord and lady among the number of dull lords and ladies with whom she was acquainted. Her brother loved her rather more than other people loved her, and Lady Hetherington and she, though they "got on" charmingly, knew perfectly well, that the very tepid regard which they entertained for each other, had nothing in it resembling sympathy or companionship.

When the Lady Caroline retired to her own rooms after the dinner party at which Walter Joyce had learned the news from Woolgreaves, she was no more inclined than usual to try the efficacy of a "beauty" sleep; but she was much less inclined to grumble at the dulness of Westhope, to wish the countess could contrive to have another woman or two whom she might talk to of an evening, and who would not want such a lot of sleep to be resorted to so absurdly early, and to scold her maid, than usual. The maid perceived the felicitous alteration in her ladyship's mood immediately. It made an important difference to her. Lady Caroline allowed her to remove all her ornaments and to brush her hair without finding fault with her, and surprised the patient Abigail, who must have had it "made very well worth her while" to endure the fatigues of her office, by telling her she should not require her any longer, and that she was sure she must be tired. Left to herself, the Lady Caroline did not feel so impatient of her solitude as usual, but fell into a reverie which occupied her mind completely. We have seen this nobly-born and, in some respects (chiefly external), highly-gifted woman as she appeared among her brother's guests. While she sat by the fire in her dressing-room—with which she never dispensed, at any season, in "the odious English climate," as she was wont to call it—let us look into her life, and see her as she really was.

Lady Caroline Mansergh had married, or rather, her mother had married her to, a gentleman of considerable importance, wealth, and more than mature years, when she was just seventeen. Very fair and very sweet seventeen, whom it had been somewhat difficult to convince of the delights and advantages of being "an old man's darling." But Lady Hetherington had not accustomed her children to gentle or affectionate treatment, or to having their inclinations consulted in any way. She no more recognised Lady Caroline's right to choose her own husband than she would have consulted her taste in her babyhood about her own sashes; and the girl's feeble attempt at remonstrance, in opposition to the solid advantages of the proposals made by Mr. Mansergh, did not produce the least effect at the time. Her ladyship carried her point triumphantly, and the girl found her fate more endurable, on the whole, than she had expected. But she never forgave her mother, and that was rather odd, though not, when looked into, very unreasonable; Mr. Mansergh never forgave her either. The countess had accomplished his wishes for him, the countess had bestowed upon him the wife he coveted, but she had deceived him, and when he won his wife's confidence he found her mother out. He had not been so foolish as to think the girl loved him, but he had believed she was willing to become his wife—he had never had a suspicion of the domestic scenes which had preceded that pretty tableau vivant at St. George's, Hanover-square, in which every emotion proper to the occasion had been represented to perfection. Fortunately for Lady Caroline, her elderly husband was a perfect gentleman, and treated her with indulgence, consideration, and respect, which appealed successfully to her feelings, and were rewarded by a degree of confidence on her part, which ensured her safety and his peace in the hazardous experiment of their unequal marriage. She told him frankly all about herself, her tastes, her feelings—the estrangement, almost amounting to dislike, which existed between herself and her mother—the attempt she had made to avoid her marriage; in short, the whole story of her brief life, in which there had been much to deplore. Mr. Mansergh possessed much firmness of character and good sense, which, though it had not preserved him from, the folly of marrying a girl young enough to be his daughter, came to his aid in making the best (and that much better than could have been expected) of the perilous position. Lady Caroline did not, indeed, learn to love her husband in the sense in which alone any woman can be justified in becoming the wife of any man, but she liked him better than she liked any one in the world, and she regarded him with real and active respect; a sentiment which she had never entertained previously for any one. Thus it fell out, contrary to the expectations of "society," which would have acted, in the aggregate, precisely as Lady Hetherington had done, but which would also have congratulated itself on its discernment, and exulted hugely, had the matrimonial speculation turned out a failure, that Lady Caroline Mansergh was happy and respectable. She never gave cause for the smallest scandal; she was constantly with her husband, and was so naturally, unaffectedly, cheerful and content in his company, that not the most censorious observer could discover that he was used as a shield or a pretence. There was a perfectly good understanding between Mr. Mansergh and his young wife on all points, but if there was more complete accord on one in particular than on others, it was in keeping the countess at a distance. The manœuvring mother profited little by the success of her scheme. To be sure she got rid of her daughter at the comparatively trifling expense of a splendid trousseau, and the unconsidered risk of the welfare and the reputation of the daughter in question; and she had the advantage over the majority of her friends of having married her advantageously in her first season! But the profit of the transaction terminated there. In her daughter's house Lady Hetherington remained on the same ceremonious footing as any other visiting acquaintance, and every attempt she made either to interfere or advise was met by a polite and resolute coldness, against the silent obstinacy of which she would have striven unsuccessfully had she not been much too wise to strive at all. If the barrier had been reared by Lady Caroline's hands alone, though they were no longer feeble, the countess would have flung it down by the force of her imperious will, but when she found that her daughter had her husband's opinion and authority to back her, Lady Hetherington executed the strategic movement of retreat with celerity and discretion, and would never have been suspected of discomfiture had she not spoken of her daughter henceforth with suspicious effusion. Then "society" smiled and knew all about it, and felt that. Mr. Mansergh had been foolish indeed, but not immoderately, not unpardonably so. Lady Caroline was very popular and very much admired, and had her only friend's life been prolonged for a few years, until she had passed the dangerous period of youth, she might have been as worthy of esteem and affection as she was calculated to inspire admiration. But Mr. Mansergh died before his wife was twenty-three years old, and left her with a large fortune, brilliant beauty, and just sufficient knowledge of the world to enable her to detect and despise its most salient snares, but with a mind still but half educated, desultory habits, and a wholly unoccupied heart. Her grief for her husband's loss, if not poignant and torturing, was at least sincere, deep, and well founded. When he died, she had said to herself that she should never again have so true, so wise, and so constant a friend; and she was right. Life had many pleasant and some good things in store for Lady Caroline Mansergh, but such a love as that with which her husband had loved her was not among them. She acknowledged this always; the impression did not fade away with the first vehemence of grief—it lasted, and was destined to deepen. She strayed into a bad "set" before long, and to her youth and impulsiveness, with her tendency to ennui, and her sad freedom from all ties of attachment, the step from feeling that no one was so good as her husband had been, to believing that no one else was good at all, was very easy. And so Lady Caroline acquired a dangerous and demoralising trick of contempt for her fellows, which she hid under a mask of light and careless good nature indeed, and which was seriously offensive to no one, but which condemned her, nevertheless, to much interior solitude and dreariness. That she was not of the world she lived in, was due less to any exceptional elevation of sentiment than to a capricious and disdainful humour, which caused her to dismiss her associates from her thoughts after a brief scrutiny, in which their follies and foibles came into strong light, and the qualities which would have required time and patience to find out remained undiscovered.

It had occurred to Lady Caroline Mansergh, on several occasions of late, to wonder, whether she was destined ever to experience the passion called love. She had not remained ignorant of the science of flirtation up to her present time of life, but, she had not been beguiled, ever so briefly, into mistaking any of her flirtations for love. So she was accustomed to wonder wearily, when in an unusually desultory mood, whether she should ever feel that there existed in the world a human being for whom she should be willing to suffer, with whom life would be happy, without whom it would be intolerable, and whose welfare she could deliberately and practically prefer to her own. Of late she had begun to think that fate was against her in this particular. The idea of the possibility of feeling love for one of the men whom she was in the habit of meeting, was quite preposterous; she did not hold her favourite followers half so dear as Jehui, her black barb, or like them half so well as Gelert, her greyhound. Her life would, doubtless, continue to be the bright, fashionable, flimsy, careless, rather ennuyé existence it had hitherto been, and she should never know anything of the power, the pain, the engrossing influence of love. So much the better, she would think, in her more hopeful moods; it must be a narrowing kind of influence, bounding all one's horizon within such small limits, shutting up one's mortal vista with one figure.

When the Lady Caroline dismissed her maid, and resigned herself to reverie, on this night, it was not, after her accustomed fashion, to dwell in her thoughts on the dulness, staleness, flatness, and unprofitableness of the world in general, and the section of it in which she lived, in particular. She had quite a distinct subject for thought, she had a figure and a face in her fancy, a voice in her memory, which filled them wholly. What if she had been wrong, if not only love were coming to her, to fill her life with delight, and turn its weariness with purpose and meaning, but love at first sight? A ridiculous notion, entertained by schoolgirls, housemaids, novelists, and poets, but scouted by all reasonable people of the world, and "in society." She knew this, but she did not care; there was a strange delicious thrill about her heart, and in the swift flight of her thoughts she swept the beams of happy possibilities, and felt that she could, and would, and did despise society and its notions on this point.

What did she know about Walter Joyce? Absolutely nothing, but that he was young, handsome, brightly intelligent, presumably poor, and socially insignificant, or he would not be her silly brother's secretary. Her attention had been directed to him at first, because she felt a compassionate curiosity about the person whom circumstances had oppressed so cruelly as to oblige him to purvey ideas, and language in which to express them, for Lord Hetherington. Curiosity and compassion had been replaced, within a few minutes, by admiration; which the difference between the manners and bearing of Walter, and those of the men with whom she was accustomed to associate, rather tended to increase. There was no awkwardness about Walter, but neither was there the slightest pretence. He was at ease in the unaccustomed company he found himself among, but he did not affect to be other than an observant stranger in it.

"He has an intellect, and a heart," said Lady Caroline, half aloud, as she rose from her seat by the fireside, and brought her reverie to a conclusion, "and why should I care for the world's opinion? It could not make me happy, if I conciliated it; but I think he could, if I defied it for his sake."