the Earl of Camelot, of the reign of Charles, returned to
the old creed of his family, and they continued to fight
for it, and ruin themselves for it, as long as there was a
Stuart left to head or to instigate a rebellion.
Lady Mary Caerlyon was brought up at a Parisian
convent; the Dauphiness Marie Antoinette was her
godmother. In the pride of her beauty she had been
married--sold, it was said--to Lord Gaunt, then at Paris,
who won vast sums from the lady's brother at some of
Philip of Orleans's banquets. The Earl of Gaunt's famous
duel with the Count de la Marche, of the Grey
Musqueteers, was attributed by common report to the
pretensions of that officer (who had been a page, and
remained a favourite of the Queen) to the hand of the
beautiful Lady Mary Caerlyon. She was married to Lord
Gaunt while the Count lay ill of his wound, and came to
dwell at Gaunt House, and to figure for a short time in
the splendid Court of the Prince of Wales. Fox had
toasted her. Morris and Sheridan had written songs about
her. Malmesbury had made her his best bow; Walpole
had pronounced her charming; Devonshire had been
almost jealous of her; but she was scared by the wild
pleasures and gaieties of the society into which she was
flung, and after she had borne a couple of sons, shrank
away into a life of devout seclusion. No wonder that
my Lord Steyne, who liked pleasure and cheerfulness,
was not often seen after their marriage by the side of
this trembling, silent, superstitious, unhappy lady.
The before-mentioned Tom Eaves (who has no part
in this history, except that he knew all the great folks in
London, and the stories and mysteries of each family)
had further information regarding my Lady Steyne,
which may or may not be true. "The humiliations," Tom
used to say, "which that woman has been made to
undergo, in her own house, have been frightful; Lord
Steyne has made her sit down to table with women with
whom I would rather die than allow Mrs. Eaves to
associate--with Lady Crackenbury, with Mrs. Chippenham,
with Madame de la Cruchecassee, the French secretary's
wife (from every one of which ladies Tom Eaves--
who would have sacrificed his wife for knowing them--
was too glad to get a bow or a dinner) with the REIGNING
FAVOURITE in a word. And do you suppose that that
woman, of that family, who are as proud as the Bourbons,
and to whom the Steynes are but lackeys, mushrooms of
yesterday (for after all, they are not of the Old Gaunts,
but of a minor and doubtful branch of the house); do
you suppose, I say (the reader must bear in mind that
it is always Tom Eaves who speaks) that the Marchioness
of Steyne, the haughtiest woman in England, would
bend down to her husband so submissively if there were
not some cause? Pooh! I tell you there are secret reasons.
I tell you that, in the emigration, the Abbe de la
Marche who was here and was employed in the
Quiberoon business with Puisaye and Tinteniac, was the
same Colonel of Mousquetaires Gris with whom Steyne
fought in the year '86--that he and the Marchioness met
again--that it was after the Reverend Colonel was shot
in Brittany that Lady Steyne took to those extreme
practices of devotion which she carries on now; for she is
closeted with her director every day--she is at service
at Spanish Place, every morning, I've watched her there
--that is, I've happened to be passing there--and
depend on it, there's a mystery in her case. People are not
so unhappy unless they have something to repent of,"
added Tom Eaves with a knowing wag of his head; "and
depend on it, that woman would not be so submissive
as she is if the Marquis had not some sword to hold
over her."
So, if Mr. Eaves's information be correct, it is very
likely that this lady, in her high station, had to submit
to many a private indignity and to hide many secret
griefs under a calm face. And let us, my brethren who
have not our names in the Red Book, console ourselves
by thinking comfortably how miserable our betters may
be, and that Damocles, who sits on satin cushions and
is served on gold plate, has an awful sword hanging
over his head in the shape of a bailiff, or an hereditary
disease, or a family secret, which peeps out every now
and then from the embroidered arras in a ghastly
manner, and will be sure to drop one day or the other in the
right place.
In comparing, too, the poor man's situation with that
of the great, there is (always according to Mr. Eaves)
another source of comfort for the former. You who have
little or no patrimony to bequeath or to inherit, may be
on good terms with your father or your son, whereas the
heir of a great prince, such as my Lord Steyne, must
naturally be angry at being kept out of his kingdom, and
eye the occupant of it with no very agreeable glances.
"Take it as a rule," this sardonic old Laves would say,
"the fathers and elder sons of all great families hate each
other. The Crown Prince is always in opposition to the
crown or hankering after it. Shakespeare knew the world,
my good sir, and when he describes Prince Hal (from
whose family the Gaunts pretend to be descended, though
they are no more related to John of Gaunt than you are)
trying on his father's coronet, he gives you a natural
description of all heirs apparent. If you were heir to a
dukedom and a thousand pounds a day, do you mean to
say you would not wish for possession? Pooh! And it
stands to reason that every great man, having experienced
this feeling towards his father, must be aware that his
son entertains it towards himself; and so they can't but
be suspicious and hostile.
"Then again, as to the feeling of elder towards younger
sons. My dear sir, you ought to know that every elder
brother looks upon the cadets of the house as his natural
enemies, who deprive him of so much ready money which
ought to be his by right. I have often heard George Mac
Turk, Lord Bajazet's eldest son, say that if he had his
will when he came to the title, he would do what the
sultans do, and clear the estate by chopping off all his
younger brothers' heads at once; and so the case is,
more or less, with them all. I tell you they are all Turks
in their hearts. Pooh! sir, they know the world." And
here, haply, a great man coming up, Tom Eaves's hat
would drop off his head, and he would rush forward with
a bow and a grin, which showed that he knew the world
too--in the Tomeavesian way, that is. And having laid
out every shilling of his fortune on an annuity, Tom
could afford to bear no malice to his nephews and nieces,
and to have no other feeling with regard to his betters
but a constant and generous desire to dine with them.
Between the Marchioness and the natural and tender
regard of mother for children, there was that cruel
barrier placed of difference of faith. The very love which she
might feel for her sons only served to render the timid
and pious lady more fearful and unhappy. The gulf which
separated them was fatal and impassable. She could not
stretch her weak arms across it, or draw her children
over to that side away from which her belief told her
there was no safety. During the youth of his sons, Lord
Steyne, who was a good scholar and amateur casuist,
had no better sport in the evening after dinner in the
country than in setting the boys' tutor, the Reverend
Mr. Trail (now my Lord Bishop of Ealing) on her
ladyship's director, Father Mole, over their wine, and in
pitting Oxford against St. Acheul. He cried "Bravo,
Latimer! Well said, Loyola!" alternately; he promised
Mole a bishopric if he would come over, and vowed he
would use all his influence to get Trail a cardinal's hat
if he would secede. Neither divine allowed himself to be
conquered, and though the fond mother hoped that her
youngest and favourite son would be reconciled to her
church--his mother church--a sad and awful disappointment
awaited the devout lady--a disappointment which
seemed to be a judgement upon her for the sin of her
marriage.
My Lord Gaunt married, as every person who frequents
the Peerage knows, the Lady Blanche Thistlewood,
a daughter of the noble house of Bareacres, before
mentioned in this veracious history. A wing of
Gaunt House was assigned to this couple; for the head
of the family chose to govern it, and while he reigned to
reign supreme; his son and heir, however, living little at
home, disagreeing with his wife, and borrowing upon
post-obits such moneys as he required beyond the very
moderate sums which his father was disposed to allow
him. The Marquis knew every shilling of his son's debts.
At his lamented demise, he was found himself to be
possessor of many of his heir's bonds, purchased for their
benefit, and devised by his Lordship to the children of
his younger son.
As, to my Lord Gaunt's dismay, and the chuckling
delight of his natural enemy and father, the Lady Gaunt
had no children--the Lord George Gaunt was desired to
return from Vienna, where he was engaged in waltzing
and diplomacy, and to contract a matrimonial alliance
with the Honourable Joan, only daughter of John Johnes,
First Baron Helvellyn, and head of the firm of Jones,
Brown, and Robinson, of Threadneedle Street, Bankers;
from which union sprang several sons and daughters,
whose doings do not appertain to this story.
The marriage at first was a happy and prosperous one.
My Lord George Gaunt could not only read, but write
pretty correctly. He spoke French with considerable
fluency; and was one of the finest waltzers in Europe. With
these talents, and his interest at home, there was little
doubt that his lordship would rise to the highest dignities
in his profession. The lady, his wife, felt that courts were
her sphere, and her wealth enabled her to receive
splendidly in those continental towns whither her husband's
diplomatic duties led him. There was talk of appointing
him minister, and bets were laid at the Travellers' that
he would be ambassador ere long, when of a sudden,
rumours arrived of the secretary's extraordinary behaviour.
At a grand diplomatic dinner given by his chief, he
had started up and declared that a pate de foie gras was
poisoned. He went to a ball at the hotel of the Bavarian
envoy, the Count de Springbock-Hohenlaufen, with his
head shaved and dressed as a Capuchin friar. It was not
a masked ball, as some folks wanted to persuade you. It
was something queer, people whispered. His grandfather
was so. It was in the family.
His wife and family returned to this country and took
up their abode at Gaunt House. Lord George gave up
his post on the European continent, and was gazetted to
Brazil. But people knew better; he never returned from
that Brazil expedition--never died there--never lived
there--never was there at all. He was nowhere; he was
gone out altogether. "Brazil," said one gossip to another,
with a grin--"Brazil is St. John's Wood. Rio de Janeiro
is a cottage surrounded by four walls, and George Gaunt
is accredited to a keeper, who has invested him with the
order of the Strait-Waistcoat." These are the kinds of
epitaphs which men pass over one another in Vanity
Fair.
Twice or thrice in a week, in the earliest morning, the
poor mother went for her sins and saw the poor invalid.
Sometimes he laughed at her (and his laughter was more
pitiful than to hear him cry); sometimes she found the
brilliant dandy diplomatist of the Congress of Vienna
dragging about a child's toy, or nursing the keeper's
baby's doll. Sometimes he knew her and Father Mole,
her director and companion; oftener he forgot her, as he
had done wife, children, love, ambition, vanity. But he
remembered his dinner-hour, and used to cry if his
wine-and-water was not strong enough.
It was the mysterious taint of the blood; the poor
mother had brought it from her own ancient race. The
evil had broken out once or twice in the father's family,
long before Lady Steyne's sins had begun, or her fasts
and tears and penances had been offered in their
expiation. The pride of the race was struck down as the
first-born of Pharaoh. The dark mark of fate and doom was
on the threshold--the tall old threshold surmounted by
coronets and caned heraldry.
The absent lord's children meanwhile prattled and
grew on quite unconscious that the doom was over them
too. First they talked of their father and devised plans
against his return. Then the name of the living dead man
was less frequently in their mouth--then not mentioned
at all. But the stricken old grandmother trembled to think
that these too were the inheritors of their father's shame
as well as of his honours, and watched sickening for the
day when the awful ancestral curse should come down
on them.
This dark presentiment also haunted Lord Steyne. He
tried to lay the horrid bedside ghost in Red Seas of wine
and jollity, and lost sight of it sometimes in the crowd
and rout of his pleasures. But it always came back to
him when alone, and seemed to grow more threatening
with years. "I have taken your son," it said, "why not
you? I may shut you up in a prison some day like your
son George. I may tap you on the head to-morrow, and
away go pleasure and honours, feasts and beauty, friends,
flatterers, French cooks, fine horses and houses--in
exchange for a prison, a keeper, and a straw mattress like
George Gaunt's." And then my lord would defy the ghost
which threatened him, for he knew of a remedy by which
he could baulk his enemy.
So there was splendour and wealth, but no great
happiness perchance, behind the tall caned portals of Gaunt
House with its smoky coronets and ciphers. The feasts
there were of the grandest in London, but there was not
