chapter 4.
innocence and experience
to feel that the possessions of an illustrious ancestry are about to slide from out your line for ever; that the numerous tenantry, who look up to you with the confiding eye that the most liberal parvenu cannot attract, 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 that the old gallery, whose walls are hung with pictures more cherished than the collections of kings, will not breathe with your long posterity; all these are feelings sad and trying, and are among those daily pangs which moralists have forgotten in their catalogue of miseries, but which do not the less wear out those heart-strings at which they are so constantly tugging.
this was the situation of mr. dacre. the whole of his large property was entailed, and descended to his nephew, who was a protestant; and yet, when he looked upon the blooming face of his enchanting daughter, he blessed the providence which, after all his visitations, had doomed him to be the sire of a thing so lovely. an exile from her country at an early age, the education of may dacre had been completed in a foreign land; yet the mingling bloods of dacre and of howard would not in a moment have permitted her to forget the inviolate island of the sage and free! even if the unceasing and ever-watchful exertions of her father had been wanting to make her worthy of so illustrious an ancestry.
but this, happily, was not the case; and to aid the development of the infant mind of his young child, to pour forth to her, as she grew in years and in reason, all the fruits of his own richly-cultivated intellect, was the solitary consolation of one over whose conscious head was impending the most awful of visitations. may dacre was gifted with a mind which, even if her tutor had not been her father, would have rendered tuition a delight. her lively imagination, which early unfolded itself; her dangerous yet interesting vivacity; the keen delight, the swift enthusiasm, with which she drank in knowledge, and then panted for more; her shrewd acuteness, and her innate passion for the excellent and the beautiful, filled her father with rapture which he repressed, and made him feel conscious how much there was to check, to guide, and to form, as well as to cherish, to admire, and to applaud.
as she grew up the bright parts of her character shone with increased lustre; but, in spite of the exertions of her instructor, some less admirable qualities had not yet disappeared. she was still too often the dupe of her imagination, and though perfectly inexperienced, her confidence in her theoretical knowledge of human nature was unbounded. she had an idea that she could penetrate the characters of individuals at a first meeting; and the consequence of this fatal axiom was, that she was always the slave of first impressions, and constantly the victim of prejudice. she was ever thinking individuals better or worse than they really were, and she believed it to be out of the power of anyone to deceive her. constant attendance during many years on a dying and beloved mother, and her deeply religious feelings, had first broken, and then controlled, a spirit which nature had intended to be arrogant and haughty. her father she adored; and she seemed to devote to him all that consideration which, with more common characters, is generally distributed among their acquaintance. we hint at her faults. how shall we describe her virtues? her unbounded generosity, her dignified simplicity, her graceful frankness, her true nobility of thought and feeling, her firmness, her courage and her truth, her kindness to her inferiors, her constant charity, her devotion to her parents, her sympathy with sorrow, her detestation of oppression, her pure unsullied thoughts, her delicate taste, her deep religion. all these combined would have formed a delightful character, even if unaccompanied with such brilliant talents and such brilliant beauty. accustomed from an early age to the converse of courts and the forms of the most polished circles, her manner became her blood, her beauty, and her mind. yet she rather acted in unison with the spirit of society than obeyed its minutest decree. she violated etiquette with a wilful grace which made the outrage a precedent, and she mingled with princes without feeling her inferiority. nature, and art, and fortune were the graces which had combined to form this girl. she was a jewel set in gold, and worn by a king.
her creed had made her, in ancient christendom, feel less an alien; but when she returned to that native country which she had never forgotten, she found that creed her degradation. her indignant spirit clung with renewed ardour to the crushed altars of her faith; and not before those proud shrines where cardinals officiate, and a thousand acolytes fling their censers, had she bowed with half the abandonment of spirit with which she invoked the virgin in her oratory at dacre.
the recent death of her mother rendered mr. dacre and herself little inclined to enter society; and as they were both desirous of residing on that 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 been passed chiefly in communication with those great catholic families with whom the dacres were allied, and to which they belonged. the modern race of the howards and the cliffords, the talbots, the arundels, and the jerninghams, were not unworthy of their proud progenitors. miss dacre observed with respect, and assuredly with sympathy, the mild dignity, the noble patience, the proud humility, the calm hope, the uncompromising courage, with which her father and his friends sustained their oppression and lived as proscribed in the realm which they had created. yet her lively fancy and gay spirit found less to admire in the feelings which influenced these families in their intercourse with the world, which induced them to foster but slight intimacies out of the pale of the proscribed, and which tinged their domestic life with that formal and gloomy colouring which ever accompanies a monotonous existence. her disposition told her that all this affected non-interference with the business of society might be politic, but assuredly was not pleasant; her quick sense whispered to her it was unwise, and that it retarded, not advanced, the great result in which her sanguine temper dared often to indulge. under any circumstances, it did not appear to her to be wisdom to second the efforts of their oppressors for their degradation or their misery, and to seek no consolation in the amiable feelings of their fellow-creatures for the stern rigour of their unsocial government. but, independently of all general principles, miss dacre could not but believe that it was the duty of the catholic gentry to mix more with that world which so misconceived their spirit. proud in her conscious knowledge of their exalted virtues, she felt that they had only to be known to be recognised as the worthy leaders of that nation which they had so often saved and never betrayed.
she did not conceal her opinions from the circle in which they had grown up. all the young members were her disciples, and were decidedly of opinion that if the house of lords would but listen to may dacre, emancipation would be a settled thing. her logic would have destroyed lord liverpool’s arguments; her wit extinguished lord eldon’s jokes. but the elder members only shed a solemn smile, and blessed may dacre’s shining eyes and sanguine spirit.
her greatest supporter was mrs. dallington vere. this lady was a distant relation of mr. dacre. at seventeen she, herself a catholic, had married mr. dallington vere, of dallington house, a catholic gentleman of considerable fortune, whose age resembled his wealth. no sooner had this incident taken place than did mrs. dallington vere hurry to london, and soon evinced a most laudable determination to console herself for her husband’s political disabilities. mrs. dallington vere went to court; and mrs. dallington vere gave suppers after the opera, and concerts which, in number and brilliancy, were only equalled by her balls. the dandies patronised her, and selected her for their muse. the duke of shropshire betted on her always at écarté; and, to crown the whole affair, she made mr. dallington vere lay claim to a dormant peerage. the women were all pique, the men all patronage. a protestant minister was alarmed; and lord squib supposed that mrs. dallington must be the scarlet lady of whom they had heard so often.
season after season she kept up the ball; and although, of course, she no longer made an equal sensation, she was not less brilliant, nor her position less eminent. she had got into the best set, and was more quiet, like a patriot in place. never was there a gayer lady than mrs. dallington vere, but never a more prudent one. her virtue was only equalled by her discretion; but, as the odds were equal, lord squib betted on the last. people sometimes indeed did say — they always will — 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 say that 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 in everything, 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 relations were going to set aside the will, on the plea that it was written with a crow-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, and only twenty-three. the duke of shropshire wished he were disembarrassed. such a player of écarté might double her income. lord raff advanced, trusting to his beard, and young amadée de rouerie mortgaged his dressing-case, and came post from paris; but in spite of his sky-blue nether garments and his hessians, he followed my lord’s example, and recrossed 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 to gain by reentering paradise, which matrimony, of course, is; and so she determined to remain mistress of herself. she had gained fashion, and fortune, and rank; she was young, and she was pretty. she thought it might be possible for a discreet, experienced little lady to lead a very pleasant life without being assisted in her expenses or disturbed in her diversion by a gentleman who called himself her husband, occasionally asked her how she slept in a bed which he did not share, or munificently presented her with a necklace purchased with her own money. discreet mrs. dallington vere!
she had been absent from london during the past season, having taken it also into her head to travel.
she was equally admired and equally plotted for at rome, at paris, and at vienna, as at london; but the bird had not been caught, and, flying away, left many a despairing prince and amorous count to muse over their lean 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 ladies became great allies. she was to assist miss dacre in her plans for rousing their catholic friends, as no one was better qualified to be her adjutant. already they had commenced their operations, and balls at dallington and dacre, frequent, splendid, and various, had already made the catholic houses the most eminent in the riding, and their brilliant mistresses the heroines of all the youth.