Chapter III (1)
Great things were vouchsafed on Saturday, the 14th of December, 1832, to Mrs. Polly White, sister and correspondent of Mrs. Martha Kemblet, for, it being the day on which she went to “do” at the Rectory, she was enabled to combine the fine drawing of a tablecloth (an art in which she was proficient) with the sight of the arrival of Miss Horatia and the Rector, the precious babe and her own sister. Mr. Grenville had gone to Dover to meet the packet, and the party was expected from Oxford, by chaise, some time in the afternoon.
The village was all agog about Horatia’s return, and some spirits, lacking delicacy rather than enthusiasm, had entertained the idea of an evergreen arch across the Rectory gate, to bear the words “Welcome Home,” and to be adorned with such decorations as had survived from the Coronation festivities fifteen months before. The impropriety of so receiving a newly-made widow having been pointed out, gossip had then spent itself in speculations as to how Miss ‘Ratia would look, not only in her weeds, poor dear, but in the status of a French countess, or whatever she was, for it was felt that in some way she would be a different person from the Miss ‘Ratia they had known. One old man, however, dratting them all, announced his unalterable intention of putting a couple of lighted candles in his window, for if his darter had taken and married a Frenchy, and had come home again after so disastrous a step, widder or no widder, he should consider it a clear case of “This my darter wur dead, and be alive again; and wur lost and be found.” Such was indeed the general feeling in Compton Regis, where only a few impressionable damsels were found to remark that Miss ‘Ratia’s husband had been a proper young man, and that ’twas a gurt pity he had been killed in them foreign wars.
Mrs. White deplored all this chatter though she would fain have contributed to it. When, therefore, about four o’clock, Ellen rushed into the room where she was working to say that the chaise was turning in at the gate, she flew with the rest of the domestics to the front door. And thus, curtseying like them, she was privileged to see the black and yellow post-chaise from the Angel at Oxford draw up at the steps, to behold the Rector emerge and assist to alight, first a lady in the deepest mourning, a long crape veil such as Mrs. White had never seen covering her from head to foot, secondly, a foreign-looking nurse or nursemaid (disliked by Mrs. White on the spot, though bearing a priceless burden), and lastly her own dear comfortable, capable sister, not changed a bit. And she saw the Comtesse put back her long veil, and come up the steps on her father’s arm, looking that sweet, but so sad! The Rector, poor dear gentleman, seemed moved, as who wouldn’t be. Miss ‘Ratia, when you saw her in the light, was older, a little, and thin in the cheeks, but the weeds set off her hair and complexion beautiful. As for the lovely infant, he was asleep, and Mrs. White preferred in any case to view him when Martha could act as show-woman. And so, as the party mounted the stairs, she returned to her napery, hoping that her sister would shortly appear.
But Martha was indeed unchanged, and it was not until things were “to her liking,” the nurse properly installed, the child in bed, her mistress’s trunks unpacked, and her mistress at table with his Reverence, that she permitted herself to seek out and to embrace her sister. Then, due greeting and inquiries having passed, Mrs. Kemblet, seated in a restful chair, began her desired narration.
“I wish I could have got my lamb to go to bed at once, and have her dinner there. However, she’s a sight stronger than she was, and has stood the journey wonderful, considering. Rough it was, too, and the packet rolling something horrible. But here we all are safely, thanks to One Above, and the infant none the worse, though a trifle fractious, bless his heart!”
“Ah, but what she must have been through, Martha!” said Mrs. White feelingly.
This was a whip to a willing horse. “You may well say that, Polly,” responded her sister. “What with being fetched like that all sudden at night, to find the poor young gentleman weltering in an agony—for he was shot something terrible, they said—and him dying in her arms (all unprepared, too, I’m afraid), and then going back to Paris with his body, and the household off their heads, and the funeral—I don’t know what we should have done without the elder one, the Marquis as they call him...”
“Dear, dear!” ejaculated Mrs. White, as the narrator paused for breath. “And where was the poor young man buried, then?”
“At the grand family place where we was during the cholera time.... Well, to go back to the dreadful occurrence” (impossible to deny that there was relish in Mrs. Kemblet’s tone over these words) “when Miss Horatia gets this letter and rushes off to this place, St. Clair, without even telling me where she was going, we couldn’t none of us do anything till the Marquis comes back next morning early. Off he goes then to St. Clair; then he comes back and says his brother is lying dead in the big house there, having been shot in the wood by the Government soldiers, and that he is going to have him brought away, and to fetch Miss Horatia too. And, by and by, they brought him, carrying him on a bier with a flag over him, not that red, white, and blue thing they use now in France, but the old one, the white one. And they laid him in the chapel at his own place, where we was, with candles all burning; hardly Christian in a way, not being in a coffin, but I must say he looked beautiful, and when I went in to see him, I cried like a baby; for though I always begrudged him having Miss Horatia, and never trusted him, it did seem dreadful him being cut off like that, so young; and I daresay he would have settled down if he had been spared.”
Mrs. White wiped her sympathetic eyes, but caught at the last words. “He wasn’t what you’d call a good husband to Miss Horatia then?”
“I don’t say that,” returned Martha, slightly stiffening. “All them young men over there are wild,” she explained, with an air of profound acquaintance with Gallic youth. “The less said about it the better, that’s my motto. And really I begun to wonder if I’d not been mistook, seeing the state my poor lamb was in after he was killed. For weeks after we got back to Paris she could not sleep without I was in the little room off hers—always seeing him in her dreams she was, and calling out that he was bleeding to death, and begging him to forgive her—the Lord knows why—and imploring someone to go to him. She fainted on the day of the funeral; a grand funeral it was, with a Bishop to bury him, and a sermon saying he was a martyr for the altar and the throne, whatever that meant. The old Madam nearly went out of her mind over it all, she was that fond of the Count. Then when she—the old one—was quieted down a bit nothing would serve but she must be having the child up in her nasty stuffy bedroom at all hours of the day, saying it was all that was left her, and things like that.”
“But surely Miss Horatia had something to say to that?”
Martha leant forward very impressively. “You mark my words, Polly, there’s going to be a tussle over that child! You and me thinks he’s English, bless him, because he’s Miss Horatia’s, but by law he’s French, and belongs over there, and you wouldn’t believe the difficulty there’s been about our leaving Paris. I’ve not been told, and it’s not for me to ask, whether we’re coming here on long visits, or whether my Lady will make her home here. But this I do say, they’ve got their eye on him, the poor innocent, and it’ll be worse as he grows up.”
“What a shame!” said Mrs. White indignantly. “And he no older than my Harriet’s Willy!”
Mrs. Kemblet rose with majesty, and with majesty she replied, “That’s as it may be, but I don’t think you realise, Polly, that when the old Duke and his son dies, there’ll be only one life between the Count asleep upstairs and the dukedom.”
“Lor!” ejaculated Mrs. White.
And by the child upstairs there stood his grandfather and his mother, looking down at him in his rosy abandonment of slumber.
“Papa, he was very fond of him,” said Horatia at last, and turning, she threw herself weeping into her father’s arms.