Chapter XXIV: Stupor and Strange Recovery

I have a very dim recollection of anything that happened during the next two months. Aunt Jane says that I was in a kind of stupor, from which she was afraid to arouse me. After the dangerous illness, which would certainly have proved fatal had not Norah watched over me day and night with the most extraordinary care and skill, and then the consciousness of my most culpable and ungrateful engagement to her affianced lover, which Aunt Jane had re-awakened in my mind,--all this seemed to have paralysed my faculties. She took me down to an old half-uninhabited, and scarcely half-furnished house belonging to her niece, surrounded with fine oak woods, called Roland Grange, so called from having been formerly the dower-house of the ancient family of De Roland; but one of the gambling earls half ruined the originally vast estates, and many broad acres were sold, although the family still possessed the fine park and woods of the old Castle Hall, about three miles from the Grange, which belonged now to Cunigunda, Countess Rossi, the sole representative of the time-honoured family, which was said to have sprung from the celebrated Orlando sung by Ariosto and other poets; or Roland, the hero of old English romances. But I took, at the time I write of, no impression of, nor felt any interest about the place.

I had no impressions of anything. I could neither read nor think, nor scarcely talk. The doctor whom Aunt Jane consulted gave her very little hopes of my recovery, but she told me afterwards that she had felt convinced that, if I could become stronger, my mental disease, or rather stupor, would be removed. She used to wheel me in a little chair out among the woods, when the song of birds sometimes appeared to have a pleasant effect, and made me (as she said) look less miserable; but I could not endure the sound of music, and I shrunk away from the sight of a pianoforte with a shudder, and could not be prevailed on to open or listen to it. She also took me to visit some of the poor cottagers; and the first circumstance I remember was a visit to an old blind woman, who expressed a wish to pass her hand over my face, when, as I afterwards heard, Aunt Jane had been describing it to her.

The peculiar tone of the old woman’s voice struck my ears, and seemed to waken me up, as if from a long sleep filled with painful dreams. I looked round with surprise on the little homely room, and through its open latticed window on the garden, where the sweet-smelling flowers and beehives, and the fine oak- and beech-trees, reminded me pleasantly of some of my dear father’s cottages at the Priory.

There was a spinning-wheel near the old woman, and after passing her hand over my face, she began to spin with an abstracted and thoughtful look.

“Where am I, and who is this?” I inquired, as I looked round to Aunt Jane, and then felt as if I was astonished also even to see her.

She then looked both pleased and surprised, but, without answering my question, inquired of the old dame what she thought of my face.

“I canna tell, for it ’minds me so strong of my own children--I mean my own young ladies at the Castle Hall--that I seem to live over again the years long, long gone by. There was my Lady Jane Roland, the sweetest babe that ever gladdened a mother’s heart; and she was good, too--far too good for---- But what am I saying? Shame on me to breathe a word against any of the old family!”

Then she stopped suddenly, and her compressed lips seemed to show that she was afraid of saying anything more.

“But I have heard,” said Aunt Jane, “that Lady Jane’s brother was anything but good--indeed, very wicked--that there were two kinds in every generation since they came over at the Norman Conquest; and I am sure all the family pictures I have seen at the Castle Hall tell the same story. I never saw such a contrast as there was between old Lord de Roland and his younger brother, and that very Lady Jane you reared was his sister.”

“Alack-a-day! and so there was; and as you know so much about the family, I canna do no harm, and----”

“And I like to hear about them, and so will this young lady, whose face reminds you of them, and who is distantly related to them; for Lady Jane’s daughter married, as you well know, a foreign Count, who was a relative of her mother’s family.”

I believe it was the old woman’s mention of Lady Jane Roland that effectually woke up my attention, and roused my dormant senses, and I seemed now to comprehend for the first time that we were staying at Roland Grange, which must be near Castle Hall, the fine old family residence of the Rolands, now belonging to the fatally fascinating Cunigunda.

I then eagerly inquired whether they were staying at the Castle, and was told that they had not yet arrived, but were expected in a few days, and that one of the wings of the Castle had been fitted up for their reception.

Aunt Jane was overjoyed to see that I took some interest in the place, and said she would drive me over there to-morrow, that we might see all the pictures, books, and curiosities it contained before the family arrived.

“And what do you think about the ghost?” inquired Aunt Jane of the blind woman. Her countenance altered, and she suddenly stopped her spinning-wheel. After a few moments, she said, in a somewhat solemn tone,

“Far be it from me to tell or to doubt. I have seen and I have heard. And now they say the present lady is not---- But maybe this beautiful young lady knows better what her relative is like.”

“Not one of the good race, I am certain,” said I, with quick decision.

“Ah! I see you don’t like her; but did you know the rightful lady? I mean the Lady Dorina, the one I heard was the very picture of my Lady Jane--she who was lost the night before she was to have married this very same Count.”

“No; but I have heard the poor lost bride was the most heavenly creature that ever lived, as well as the most lovely, and I have seen a likeness of her.”

“Oh! tell me,” inquired the old dame; “had she dark-blue eyes, with long, long lashes, and a mouth that seemed formed only to utter blessings, and light golden hair, with long, waving curls, that flowed as if they were going to twine round one’s finger in a loving embrace?”

“Yes, the picture showed all this.”

“And a voice that made one feel in heaven to hear it; and a light fairy figure, and step so cheering like, that I used to fancy the flowers bloomed sweeter under her beautiful feet.”

The old woman continued for some time to expatiate on the loveliness of her darling, also to describe her daughter, who married Count Hohenstein, and went away to foreign parts, taking as her maid one of old Dame Jestico’s own children.

This young girl had afterwards married Count Hohenstein’s groom, and her children were brought up with those of her mistress at the Castle of Hohenstein. Thus a communication had always been kept up, and the old dame of course knew all the particulars of the mysterious disappearance of the beautiful bride on the eve of her wedding-day. Her (poor Dorina’s) favourite attendant, who was old Dame Jestico’s grand-daughter, had disappeared a few days afterwards, and was said to have also perished in the cave, in a vain endeavour to find a clue to her mistress, or at least discover her body in the labyrinths of those wonderful caverns.

Although none of the neighbours, or the poor people round the old Castle of the Rolands, had ever seen its beautiful heiress, Dorina, yet their grief at hearing of her tragic end had been very great. And their regret was increased when, in the following year, the Count, her father, died, and his niece, Cunigunda, who had just married the widowed bridegroom, Count Rossi, became the next heir to the Castle and estates of the ancient family of Roland.

It was well known that she was, in every respect except beauty, the very reverse of her cousin Dorina, and vague rumours were sometimes heard that her jealousy and malice had caused the bride’s miserable end. She had planned the ball which was given in the wonderful caves near the Castle, which were said to extend as far as Adlesberg, under the Styrian mountains, where the bride had disappeared, accompanied, it was said, by an English gentleman.

For some time it was suspected by those who were not intimately acquainted with Dorina, that she had eloped with him, until, many months afterwards, it was discovered that he had fallen down into one of the hidden caverns, and was picked up in a state of insensibility by some robber, whose daughter concealed him in their secret dens, until he was sufficiently recovered to travel. And then they only allowed him to depart after he had taken a solemn vow never to disclose their abode, nor to communicate even his existence to the Hohenstein family for some time afterwards. When this gentleman, Mr., now Sir Edward, arrived in England, and appeared among his friends, who had given him up as lost in the caverns, his extraordinary escape gave some hopes to the neighbours and tenants of Castle Hall that Dorina might also have been saved.

Old Dame Jestico said that she never gave up the hope of Dorina, and her own great-grandchild, until she heard that Count Rossi had married the Lady Cunigunda; for she had heard often from her grand-daughter that he was most deeply in love with his betrothed--in fact, that he worshipped the very ground on which she trod, and had always been the most devoted lover; and it was the remark of everyone that they were made for each other. But Cunigunda was always jealous, and though she seemed to be very fond of her cousin, Ulrica said she was certain that she hated the beautiful bride.