Chapter IX: The Duchess of Dromoland

The Duchess of Dromoland often drove over to lunch, to spend a long day with us; and when Dorina became a little stronger, she persuaded us all to go and stay a week with them at Lorton Grange. She promised that there should be no party in the house, and we were to be quite at home, and sit all day up in our rooms if we were not inclined to come down. But she felt sure that the change to a more bracing air, and new and utterly different bedrooms to sleep in, would do us all good.

“If you should be inclined for more society than ours, I will ask some of my dear old fogey neighbours, as Lady Horatia calls them, of whom I am very fond; you know I’m dreadfully _vulgar_, as Selina Bugginfield calls me, and I like people of all ranks, and never can forget, when I was one of fourteen children, and my father very poor, how much we used to enjoy a day spent with just such regular country neighbours as these. So I wish to give them all the enjoyment we can now so well afford, in gratitude for the pleasure they used to give me. Besides, I think it is very wrong to shut oneself up and neglect one’s country neighbours.”

So we went to Lorton Grange, and found ourselves in the prettiest and most cosy set of little apartments, with a passage leading into them all, which seemed to belong only to ourselves.

“I think you will find these rooms comfortable,” said the Duchess, as she showed us into the first, which was destined for Dorina, “for I make it a point to sleep once a year for a night or two in every spare bedroom in the house, that I may ascertain by real experience that everything is comfortably placed and nothing wanting.”

We certainly found them so, and enjoyed our visit immensely.

I had many pleasant walks and talks with the Duchess, who had, more than any one I ever met with, the faculty of making the person to whom she talked feel as if she were her “_première pensée_.”

She entered so quickly into one’s character, and seemed to have remedies for all one’s faults and misfortunes. She saw that I had rather more misgivings about Carlo than was quite compatible with perfect happiness; and she also discovered that want of faith in Religion was now my chief misery.

“It is because you have had too much time at your disposal,” she said, one day, “and so few positive and plain duties. My life has been, on the contrary, so full of plain necessary duties--my path was always so unmistakably plain before my eyes--the endeavour to fill each day as it ought to be has been so satisfactory, that I had no time for vague speculations or misgivings--first as a poor girl, to help my father and numerous sisters in the difficult task of high-born poverty; and then, after marrying my cousin, the dear John Bull Duke, to help him to use and dispose of his great riches in the manner he--we both willed, for we are wonderfully alike--two such thoroughly English people.”

“Yet how different your positions before marriage must have been! Was he not always rich?”

“Yes; he has had great trials and temptations--a long minority, with no parents to guide or advise him, or even an effectual guardian; and he passed as Duke through school and college life--successfully, upon the whole,” she added, after a short pause; while her usually sunny face assumed rather a solemn look. “But when he proposed to me on his one-and-twentieth birthday, I did not despair of him, although you seem to have doubted your betrothed Marchese. I gave him two years’ probation before I would even promise to accept him.”

“What an awful time of suspense these two years must have been!”

“They were indeed; and all the more because I acted in this instance contrary to my father’s express wishes and advice, for he remarked that it was wrong of me to subject such a great _parti_ as he was to all the dangers and fascinations of the great world; but I maintained that unless his love for me was sufficiently strong to keep him faithful and stand the trial, I should never possess sufficient influence over him to ensure his happiness and my own; and I was such an odd little thing at nineteen, the eldest of six sisters and five brothers, with no mother since the birth of my youngest sister, so I became extraordinarily independent, and, as the Duke calls it, self-sufficing--not self-sufficient, I hope, for I hate to be alone. Luckily--very luckily, for there are the children all bearing down upon us; and I must now regularly play with them. What is it to be?” she asked, as the eldest girl of about twelve years old bounded up, with a large silk handkerchief in her hand. “Oh! blind man’s buff. Well, then, I’ll be blind man--or will you, Miss Vivian?”

“Oh! Miss Vivian,” said Lady Julia, “for she is so nice and tall; and--and I should think she looks as if she could run and skip about half as quick again as mamma does.”

“Well, come into the lower grass terrace--you will spoil the rose-trees on this one.”

We were all soon in the height of the play--the three girls and two fine strong little boys hovering round me, catching at my dress, and shouting in my ears, but for a long time eluding all my attempts to catch one of them.

“Oh! here comes Miss Springgrass and Mrs. Gaysford! How delightful!” I heard one of the young voices exclaim. “Come down--come down here! Now, Miss Vivian, pray catch dear Mrs. Gaysford--she is so large you can’t fail, and she makes such a capital blind-man!”

Mrs. Gaysford, whom I had not before seen, but who I knew was one of those kind-hearted neighbours called by Lady Horatia “the old fogies,” soon allowed herself to be caught. At least, I caught hold of some ringlets, which remained in my hand, amid peals of youthful laughter; and when the handkerchief was removed from my eyes, the first object I saw was a brown, good-humoured face, surmounted by a skull-cap, on which I immediately began to place the front which had come off in my hands.

“It is a great shame!” said the Duchess, with a graver face than I had yet seen her wear.

“You are very wrong to laugh, children, for if Mrs. Gaysford was not so very good and kind, it would have made her and all of us very uncomfortable. Remember, Julia, for you are old enough to know better now, you must grow old if you live, and just ask yourself how you would like to expose your head in that kind of way if you had the very common misfortune to lose your hair.”

“No, I am sure I should not like it,” said Lady Julia, with a penitent look, “not at all; I should not be able to bear it half as well as dear Mrs. Gaysford does;” and she reverently kissed the old brown hand which Mrs. Gaysford kindly held out in token of forgiveness.

All the other children came up and did the same, and humbly begged pardon for their thoughtless impertinence.

“All right,” said the old lady; “now only take care of my new bonnet; there, put it up on the top of that statue, and then tie the handkerchief tight over my curls, or I shall peep, and catch that little rogue, Lord Lorton. Yes, the old lady will catch the young Marquis.”