Chapter VI: Cunigunda’s Success

For a wicked person, Cunigunda was, or rather had been, unusually happy. She had succeeded in most of her wishes, and her life had been an incessant series of triumphs. Her deepest feeling, or rather greatest passion, had been excited by the man she succeeded in marrying, and yet from the moment of that marriage began to date the decline of her prosperity. She was not satisfied with the depth of his love, for she began gradually to perceive that she could not inspire the same devotion, the all-absorbing, reverential adoration he had evinced for his affianced Dorina.

Then she flirted, and endeavoured to excite his jealousy, little understanding the high tone of his mind, but judging him by the standard of her own. She was first surprised, then alarmed to see the feeling of disgust her efforts produced. She soon became tired of the unsuccessful game she was playing, and strove to throw herself heartily into every kind of dissipation and excitement. A triumphant season at Rome, and then at Paris, was succeeded by one in London. At the end of the last, having heard of the delights of English country-house society, she thought a few months passed at the place to which she had succeeded after the death of her cousin Dorina, might be an agreeable change. She therefore made a great merit of going there, in order to gratify her husband’s wishes, who, since their arrival in England, had passed several weeks there, since which time he had often expressed a wish that she would live at it, and restore the beauty of the somewhat ruinous house and place.

I afterwards heard that Carlo was at that time the chief among her numerous adorers. He had come to London after I had been taken ill, and he, with a few other men and two ladies in high society, but with rather damaged reputation, went to Castle Hall towards the end of August.

Some modern furniture had been sent, and a few necessary repairs suggested by Count Rossi had been made, and the gay party were enchanted with the grand old house, its fine terraced gardens and glowing parterres. The extensive view from the battlements of the old ruined castle above was so thoroughly English in its rich loveliness that its novelty surprised Cunigunda, and seemed to give her that great requirement of a _blasé_ distraction-seeker, or (what is usually miscalled pleasure-seeker) a new sensation. Neighbours of various kinds flocked in to see and become acquainted with the celebrated beauty; and as there was in those days a large and gay neighbourhood, there was no end of morning and evening parties, besides some regular balls, which were given in the larger houses, or at the town of Darlingford, ten miles off.

I think I said there was a fine old half-ruined banqueting-hall, which joined the present house--an Elizabethan structure, with the lower buildings of the old castle. Part of this castle had been destroyed in the various wars from the time of the Roses down to the period when it was regularly besieged by Cromwell. Numerous dinners and some good private theatricals had been given at Castle Hall to the neighbours; but the party staying in the house, as well as the neighbours, declared that the beautiful Countess ought to give a ball.

“Yes, certainly, and let it be a fancy ball, or, better still, a masquerade,” said the lovely Countess; “but where?”

The long gallery, with its beautifully-carved ceiling, which extends for a hundred feet above the western wing of the house, would do very well for theatricals, but it would be impossible to have a good valse in a room not more than twenty-five feet wide, and the large wainscoted dining-room, though large enough, would be wanted for supper. The tapestried drawing-room was both lofty and spacious, but it was so full of old china and _pietra-dura_ cabinets and curiosities, collected during the last century, since the family had been connected with Italy, that there was no room for dancing.

“Why not repair that splendid old banqueting-hall?” said Carlo, one evening after dinner. “A good floor might soon be put in, and the ceiling and windows mended. It is quite a sin to leave it in that dilapidated state. Did you ever look at the splendid old oak carving on the gallery at the farther end, and the curious little corner-room or oriel at one side with a most elaborate canopy?” he inquired of Cunigunda.

“No, for I thought it so very dismal and melancholy that I only just peeped in at the door.”

“Come, then, let us go and inspect it now; let us take lights and torches; we shall see it as well or better than by day, for some of those fine old Gothic windows seem to have been boarded up.”

Lights were then called for, and the merry party, each taking a couple of candles, declared they would all go and inspect the old hall.

“But I scarcely know the way,” said Cunigunda. “I only looked into the place through a kind of window in the wall of an old room beyond the library, a horrible kind of stone hall called the dead-room, and I don’t know that there is any door that leads into it.”

“There is from the outside, I know,” said Carlo; “for, as I once climbed up the steepest side of the Castle hill, I came upon it--a fine arched doorway, with a crossbar over it. This I knocked in, and I then saw there was another arched doorway near the window you speak of, looking into that dead-room. Moreover, I am sure the old housekeeper has the key of that, and knows how to get in, for she was very angry, I saw, when I told her I had been in it. She declared it was not safe, and nobody had ventured under that old roof for a century or more.”

“Let us have her in, and make the dear old lady show us the way,” said one of the ladies.