Читать книгу The Ladies Lindores. Volume 1 of 3 - Маргарет Олифант, Oliphant Margaret - Страница 4

The explanation which was given to John Erskine on the highroad between Dalrulzian and Lindores, as it is still more important to us than to him, must be here set forth at more length. There are some happy writers whose mission it is to expound the manners and customs of the great. To them it is given to know how duchesses and countesses demean themselves in their moments perdus, and they even catch as it flies that airy grace with which the chit-chat of society makes itself look like something of consequence. Gilded salons in Belgravia, dainty boudoirs in Mayfair, not to speak of everything that is gorgeous in the rural palaces, which are as so many centres of light throughout England – are the scenery in which they are accustomed to enshrine the subjects of their fancy. And yet, alas! to these writers when they have done all, yet must we add that they fail to satisfy their models. When the elegant foreigner, or what is perhaps more consonant with the tastes of the day, the refined American, ventures to form his opinion of the habits of society from its novels, he is always met with an amused or indignant protestation. As if these sort of people knew anything about society! Lady Adeliza says. It is perhaps as well, under these circumstances, to assume a humility, even if we have it not; and indeed the present writer has always been shy of venturing into exalted regions, or laying profane hands upon persons of quality. But when a family of rank comes in our way by necessity, it would be cowardice to recoil from the difficulties of the portraiture. Should we fail to represent in black and white the native grace, the air noble, the exalted sentiments which belong by right to members of the aristocracy, the reader will charitably impute the blame rather to the impression made upon our nerves by a superiority so dazzling than to any defect of goodwill. Besides, in the present case, which is a great aid to modesty, the family had been suddenly elevated, and were not born in the purple. Lady Lindores was a commoner by birth, and not of any very exalted lineage – a woman quite within the range of ordinary rules and instincts; and even Lady Edith had been Miss Edith till within a few years. Their honours were still new upon them: they were not themselves much used to these honours any more than their humble chronicler; with which preface we enter with diffidence upon the recent history of the noble house of Lindores.

The late earl had been a man unfortunate in his children. His sons by his first marriage had died one after another, inheriting their mother's delicate health. His second wife had brought him but one son, a likely and healthy boy; but an accident, one of those simplest risks which hundreds are subject to, and escape daily, carried this precious boy off in a moment. His father, who had been entirely devoted to him, died afterwards of a broken heart, people said. The next brother, who was in India with his regiment, died there almost at the same time, and never knew that he had succeeded to the family honours. And thus it was that the Honourable Robert Lindores, a poor gentleman, living on a very straitened income, in a cheap French town, with his wife and daughters, and as little expecting any such elevation as a poor curate expects to be made Archbishop of Canterbury, became Earl of Lindores and the head of the family, without warning or preparation. It does not perhaps require very much preparation to come to such advancement; and the new earl was to the manner born. But Mrs Lindores, who was a woman full of imagination, with nerves and ideas of her own, received a considerable shock. She had no objection to being a countess; the coronet, indeed, was pleasant to her as it is to most people. She liked to look at it on her handkerchiefs: there is no such pretty ornament. But it startled her mind and shook her nerves just at first. And it made a great, a very great, change in the family life. Instead of strolling about as they had done for years, with one maid for the mother and daughters, and a shabby cheap French servant, who was valet and factotum; going to all kinds of places; living as they liked; and though, with many a complaint, getting a great deal of pleasure out of their lives: there was an immediate shaking of themselves together – a calling in of stray habits and fancies, – a jump into their new place, as of an inexperienced and half-alarmed rider, not at all sure how he was to get on with his unaccustomed steed. This at least was the mood of Lady Lindores. The Earl knew all about it better than she did. Even to be merely the "honourable" had fluttered her senses a little; and it had never occurred to her that anything further was possible. The family was poor – still poor, even when thus elevated as it were to the throne; but the poverty of the Honourable Robert was very different from that of the right honourable Earl. In the one case it was actual poverty, in the other only comparative. To be sure it was, when one had time to think, distressing and troubling not to have money enough to refurnish the Castle (the taste of the late lord had been execrable) and make many improvements which were quite necessary. But that was very different from not having money enough to possess a settled home of your own anywhere, which had been their previous condition. The Earl took his measures without a moment's delay. He dismissed the servants who had followed them in their poverty, and engaged others in London, who were more proper to the service of a noble family. They travelled quite humbly, indeed, in their old half-Bohemian way, until they reached London, and then all at once cast their slough. The ladies put on their clothes, which they had stopped to procure in Paris, and suddenly blossomed out (though in deep mourning) into the likeness of their rank. It was a thing to make the steadiest heart beat. Young Robin was at Chatham, a lieutenant in a marching regiment – a young nobody, pleased to be noticed even by the townsfolk; and lo! in a moment, this insignificant lieutenant became Lord Rintoul. It was like a transformation scene; he came to meet his people when they passed through London, and they could scarcely speak to each other when they met in their mutual wonder. "Poor little Rintoul, all the same, poor little beggar!" Robin Lindores said. To think of the poor boy, cut off in a moment, whose death had purchased them all these honours, affected the young people with a strange awe, and almost remorseful pain. They felt as if somehow, without knowing it, they had been the cause of that terrible sudden removal of all the hopes that had rested on their little cousin's head. Lady Lindores herself declared that she dared not think of her predecessor, the mother of that poor boy, "the dowager," alas! poor lady. The dowager was younger than her successor in the family honours, having been a second wife. They were all silent with respectful awe when her name was mentioned; but the Earl said pshaw! and thought this superfluous. He was more used to it; he had been born in the purple, and now that he had come, though unexpectedly, to his kingdom, he knew how to fill that exalted place.

The Earl was a man of a character which never, up to this time, had been estimated as it deserved. He had been quite an easy-going sort of person in his former estate. In his youth he was said to have been extravagant. Since his marriage – which had been an imprudent marriage, in so far that he might perhaps have got a richer wife had he tried, but which was wise so far that the income upon which they lived chiefly came from that wife – he had let himself go quietly enough upon the current, there being no motive to struggle against it. The very best that they could make of it was simply to "get along;" and get along they did without putting any force upon their inclinations. He was always able to secure his comforts, such as were indispensable; and as he liked the easier routine of a wandering life, he did not object, as he said, to make a sacrifice for the education of his children and their amusement, by living in places where the pleasures were cheap and there was no dignity to keep up. He had in this sense been very complying, both as a husband and a father, and had allowed himself to be guided, as his family thought, by their wishes quite as much, at least, as by his own. He had not in these days been in the least a severe father, or shown marks of a worldly mind. What was the use? The girls were too young as yet to have become valuable instruments of ambition, and he had not learnt to think of them as anything but children. But when this extraordinary change came in their existence, the easy dilettante– whose wants were limited to a few graceful knick-knacks, an elegant little meal, good music, when procurable, and a life undisturbed by vulgar cares – altered his very nature, as his family thought. Hitherto his wife and his girls had done everything for him, aided by the ubiquitous, the handy, the all-accomplished Jean or François, who was half-a-dozen men in one – cook, valet, footman, pattern man-of-all-work. They arranged the rooms in every new place they went to, so that the fact that these rooms were those of a hotel or lodging-house should be masked by familiar prettinesses, carried about with them. They gave a careful supervision to his meals, and arranged everything, so that papa should get the best out of his limited existence, and none of its troubles. And as there was nothing against Mr Lindores – no bad repute, but with an honourable at his name – every English club, every cercle, was open to him. He always dressed carefully; now and then he helped a wealthier friend to a bargain in the way of art. He saw a great deal of society. On the whole, perhaps, for a man without ambition, and upon whom neither the fate of his children nor the use of his own life pressed very heavily, he got as much satisfaction out of his existence as most men; and so might have lived and died, no man knowing what was really in him, had not poor young Rintoul broken his neck over that fence, and drawn his father with him into the grave. From the moment when the letter, placed calmly by Mr Lindores's plate at breakfast, as though it meant nothing particular, had its black seals broken, he was another man. How distinctly they all recollected that scene! – a lofty French room, with bare white walls and long large windows, the green Persians closed to keep out the sunshine, one long line of light falling across the polished floor, where one of these shutters had got unfastened; the spacious coolness in the midst of heat, which is characteristic of such houses, like the atmosphere in M. Alma Tadema's pictures; the white-covered table with its flowers and pretty arrangements; the girls in their white cool dresses; and François lifting the small silver cover from his master's favourite dish. All the composure and quiet of this interior had been broken in a moment. There had been a sudden stifled cry, and Mr Lindores, pushing the table from him, disordering the dishes, over-setting his heavy chair as he sprang to his feet, had finished reading his letter standing upright, trembling with excitement, his face flushed and crimson. "What is it?" they had all cried. "Robin?" Naturally, the son who was away was the first thought of the women. For a minute the father had made no reply, and their anxiety was beyond words. Then he put down the letter solemnly, and went to his wife and took her hand. "There is nothing wrong with Robin," he said; "but it comes by trouble to others, if not to us. My dear, you are the Countess of Lindores." It was some minutes before the real meaning of this communication penetrated their astonished minds; and the first proof of understanding which the new Lady Lindores gave was to cover her face and cry out, "Oh, poor boy! oh, poor Jane, poor Jane!" with a pang at her heart. It was not all grief for the other – could any one expect that? – but the poignant state of emotion which this strange terrible good fortune caused her, had a sharpness of anguish in it for the moment. The girls went away hushed and silenced, unable to eat their breakfasts, to find some black ribbons instead of the bright ones they wore. They wept a few tears as they went to their rooms over poor young Rintoul; but they had known very little of the boy, and the strange excitement of the change soon crept into their veins. Lady Caroline and Lady Edith! instead of the humble Miss Lindores. No wonder that it went to their heads.