CHAPTER I.
It was the commencement of autumn. The verdure of summer stilllingered on the trees; the sky, if not so cloudless, was almost asrefulgent as Italy; and the pigeons, bright and glancing, clustered onthe roof of the hall of Cherbury. The steward was in attendance; thehousehold, all in deep mourning, were assembled; everything was inreadiness for the immediate arrival of Lady Annabel Herbert.
''Tis nearly four years come Martinmas,' said the grey-headed butler,'since my lady left us.'
'And no good has come of it,' said the housekeeper. 'And for my part Inever heard of good coming from going to foreign parts.'
'I shall like to see Miss Venetia again,' said a housemaid. 'Bless hersweet face.'
'I never expected to see her Miss Venetia again from all we heard,'said a footman.
'God's will be done!' said the grey-headed butler; 'but I hope shewill find happiness at home. 'Tis nigh on twenty years since I firstnursed her in these arms.'
'I wonder if there is any new Lord Cadurcis,' said the footman. 'Ithink he was the last of the line.'
'It would have been a happy day if I had lived to have seen the pooryoung lord marry Miss Venetia,' said the housekeeper. 'I alwaysthought that match was made in heaven.'
'He was a sweet-spoken young gentleman,' said the housemaid.
'For my part,' said the footman, 'I should like to have seen our realmaster, Squire Herbert. He was a famous gentleman by all accounts.'
'I wish they had lived quietly at home,' said the housekeeper.
'I shall never forget the time when my lord returned,' said thegrey-headed butler. 'I must say I thought it was a match.'
'Mistress Pauncefort seemed to think so,' said the housemaid.
'And she understands those things,' said the footman.
'I see the carriage,' said a servant who was at a window in the hall.All immediately bustled about, and the housekeeper sent a message tothe steward.
The carriage might be just discovered at the end of the avenue. It wassome time before it entered the iron gates that were thrown open forits reception. The steward stood on the steps with his hat off, theservants were ranged in order at the entrance. Touching their horseswith the spur, and cracking their whips, the postilions dashedround the circular plot and stopped at the hall-door. Under anycircumstances a return home after an interval of years is rather anawful moment; there was not a servant who was not visibly affected.On the outside of the carriage was a foreign servant and MistressPauncefort, who was not so profuse as might have been expected in herrecognitions of her old friends; her countenance was graver than ofyore. Misfortune and misery had subdued even Mistress Pauncefort. Theforeign servant opened the door of the carriage; a young man, who wasa stranger to the household, but who was in deep mourning, alighted,and then Lady Annabel appeared. The steward advanced to welcome her,the household bowed and curtseyed. She smiled on them for a momentgraciously and kindly, but her countenance immediately reassumed aserious air, and whispering one word to the strange gentleman, sheentered the hall alone, inviting the steward to follow her.
'I hope your ladyship is well; welcome home, my lady; welcome again toCherbury; a welcome return, my lady; hope Miss Venetia is quite well;happy to see your ladyship amongst us again, and Miss Venetia too, mylady.' Lady Annabel acknowledged these salutations with kindness, andthen, saying that Miss Herbert was not very well and was fatigued withher journey, she dismissed her humble but trusty friends. Lady Annabelthen turned and nodded to her fellow-traveller.
Upon this Lord Cadurcis, if we must indeed use a title from which hehimself shrank, carried a shrouded form in his arms into the hall,where the steward alone lingered, though withdrawn to the back partof the scene; and Lady Annabel, advancing to meet him, embraced histreasured burden, her own unhappy child.
'Now, Venetia! dearest Venetia!' she said, ''tis past; we are athome.'
Venetia leant upon her mother, but made no reply.
'Upstairs, dearest,' said Lady Annabel: 'a little exertion, a verylittle.' Leaning on her mother and Lord Cadurcis, Venetia ascended thestaircase, and they reached the terrace-room. Venetia looked aroundher as she entered the chamber; that scene of her former life,endeared to her by so many happy hours, and so many sweet incidents;that chamber where she had first seen Plantagenet. Lord Cadurcissupported her to a chair, and then, overwhelmed by irresistibleemotion, she sank back in a swoon.
No one was allowed to enter the room but Pauncefort. They revived her;Lord Cadurcis holding her hand, and touching, with a watchful finger,her pulse. Venetia opened her eyes, and looked around her. Hermind did not wander; she immediately recognised where she was, andrecollected all that had happened. She faintly smiled, and said, in alow voice 'You are all too kind, and I am very weak. After our trials,what is this, George?' she added, struggling to appear animated; 'youare at length at Cherbury.'
Once more at Cherbury! It was, indeed, an event that recalled athousand associations. In the wild anguish of her first grief, whenthe dreadful intelligence was broken to her, if anyone had whisperedto Venetia that she would yet find herself once more at Cherbury, shewould have esteemed the intimation as mockery. But time and hope willstruggle with the most poignant affliction, and their influence isirresistible and inevitable. From her darkened chamber in theirMediterranean villa, Venetia had again come forth, and crossedmountains, and traversed immense plains, and journeyed through manycountries. She could not die, as she had supposed at first that shemust, and therefore she had exerted herself to quit, and to quitspeedily, a scene so terrible as their late abode. She was the veryfirst to propose their return to England, and to that spot where shehad passed her early life, and where she now wished to fulfil, inquiet and seclusion, the allotment of her remaining years; tomeditate over the marvellous past, and cherish its sweet and bitterrecollections. The native firmness of Lady Annabel, her long exercisedcontrol over her emotions, the sadness and subdued tone which theearly incidents of her career had cast over her character, herprofound sympathy with her daughter, and that religious consolationwhich never deserted her, had alike impelled and enabled her to bearup against the catastrophe with more fortitude than her child. Thearrow, indeed, had struck Venetia with a double barb. She was thevictim; and all the cares of Lady Annabel had been directed to sootheand support this stricken lamb. Yet perhaps these unhappy women musthave sunk under their unparalleled calamities, had it not been for thedevotion of their companion. In the despair of his first emotions,George Cadurcis was nearly plunging himself headlong into the wavethat had already proved so fatal to his house. But when he thought ofLady Annabel and Venetia in a foreign land, without a single friend intheir desolation, and pictured them to himself with the dreadful newsabruptly communicated by some unfeeling stranger; and called upon,in the midst of their overwhelming agony, to attend to all theheart-rending arrangements which the discovery of the bodies of thebeings to whom they were devoted, and in whom all their feelings werecentred, must necessarily entail upon them, he recoiled from what hecontemplated as an act of infamous desertion. He resolved to live, ifonly to preserve them from all their impending troubles, and with thehope that his exertions might tend, in however slight a degree, notto alleviate, for that was impossible; but to prevent the increaseof that terrible woe, the very conception of which made his brainstagger. He carried the bodies, therefore, with him to Spezzia, andthen prepared for that fatal interview, the commencement of which wefirst indicated. Yet it must be confessed that, though the bravestof men, his courage faltered as he entered the accustomed ravine. Hestopped and looked down on the precipice below; he felt it utterlyimpossible to meet them; his mind nearly deserted him. Death, somegreat and universal catastrophe, an earthquake, a deluge, that wouldhave buried them all in an instant and a common fate, would have beenhailed by George Cadurcis, at that moment, as good fortune.
He lurked about the ravine for nearly three hours before he couldsummon up heart for the awful interview. The position he had takenassured him that no one could ap
proach the villa, to which he himselfdared not advance. At length, in a paroxysm of energetic despair, hehad rushed forward, met them instantly, and confessed with a whirlingbrain, and almost unconscious of his utterance, that 'they could nothope to see them again in this world.'
What ensued must neither be attempted to be described, nor evenremembered. It was one of those tragedies of life which enfeeble themost faithful memories at a blow shatter nerves beyond the faculty ofrevival, cloud the mind for ever, or turn the hair grey in an instant.They carried Venetia delirious to her bed. The very despair, andalmost madness, of her daughter forced Lady Annabel to self-exertion,of which it was difficult to suppose that even she was capable. AndGeorge, too, was obliged to leave them. He stayed only the night. Afew words passed between Lady Annabel and himself; she wished thebodies to be embalmed, and borne to England. There was no time to belost, and there was no one to be entrusted except George. He had tohasten to Genoa to make all these preparations, and for two days hewas absent from the villa. When he returned, Lady Annabel saw him, butVenetia was for a long time invisible. The moment she grew composed,she expressed a wish to her mother instantly to return to Cherbury.All the arrangements necessarily devolved upon George Cadurcis. Itwas his study that Lady Annabel should be troubled upon no point. Thehousehold were discharged, all the affairs were wound up, the feluccahired which was to bear them to Genoa, and in readiness, before henotified to them that the hour of departure had arrived. The mostbitter circumstance was looking again upon the sea. It seemed sointolerable to Venetia, that their departure was delayed more than oneday in consequence; but it was inevitable; they could reach Genoa inno other manner. George carried Venetia in his arms to the boat, withher face covered with a shawl, and bore her in the same manner to thehotel at Genoa, where their travelling carriage awaited them.
They travelled home rapidly. All seemed to be impelled, as it were,by a restless desire for repose. Cherbury was the only thought inVenetia's mind. She observed nothing; she made no remark during theirjourney; they travelled often throughout the night; but no obstaclesoccurred, no inconveniences. There was one in this miserable societywhose only object in life was to support Venetia under her terriblevisitation. Silent, but with an eye that never slept, George Cadurciswatched Venetia as a nurse might a child. He read her thoughts, heanticipated her wishes without inquiring them; every arrangement wasunobtrusively made that could possibly consult her comfort.
They passed through London without stopping there. George would notleave them for an instant; nor would he spare a thought to his ownaffairs, though they urgently required his attention. The change inhis position gave him no consolation; he would not allow his passportto be made out with his title; he shuddered at being called LordCadurcis; and the only reason that made him hesitate about attendingthem to Cherbury was its contiguity to his ancestral seat, which heresolved never to visit. There never in the world was a less selfishand more single-hearted man than George Cadurcis. Though the death ofhis cousin had invested him with one of the most ancient coronets inEngland, a noble residence and a fair estate, he would willingly havesacrificed his life to have recalled Plantagenet to existence, and tohave secured the happiness of Venetia Herbert.
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