CHAPTER XXVI.
"The ample proposition that hope makes
In all designs begun on earth below,
Fails in the promised largeness."
SHAKESPEARE.
THERE is no saying whether the Doctor's system might not have been resorted to had not Lady Juliana's wrath been for the present suspended by an invitation to Altamont House. True, nothing could be colder than the terms in which it was couched; but to that her Ladyship was insensible, and would have been equally indifferent had she known that, such as it was, she owed it more to the obstinacy of her son-in-law than the affection of her daughter. The Duke of Altamont was one of those who attach great ideas of dignity to always carrying their point; and though he might sometimes be obliged to suspend his plans, he never had been known to relinquish them. Had he settled in his own mind to tie his neckcloth in a particular way, not all the eloquence of Cicero or the tears of O'Neil would have induced him to alter it; and Adelaide, the haughty, self-willed Adelaide, soon found that, of all yokes, the most insupportable is the yoke of an obstinate fool. In the thousand trifling occurances of domestic life (for his Grace was interested in all the minutiae of his establishment), where good sense and good humour on either side would have gracefully yielded to the other, there was a perpetual contest for dominion, which invariably ended in Adelaide's defeat. The Duke, indeed, never disputed, or reasoned, or even replied; but the thing was done; till, at the end of six weeks, the Duchess of Altamont most heartily hated and despised the man she had so lately vowed to love and obey. On the present occasion his Grace certainly appeared in the most amiable light in wishing to have Lady Juliana invited to his house; but in fact it proceeded entirely from his besetting sin, obstinacy. He had propose her accompanying her daughter at the time of her marriage, and been overruled; but with all the pertinacity of a little mind he had kept fast hold of the idea, merely because it was his own, and he was now determined to have it put in execution. In a postscript to the letter, and in the same cordial style, the Duchess said something of a hope, that if her mother did come to town, Mary should accompany her; but this her Ladyship, to Mary's great relief, declared should not be, although she certainly was very much at a loss how to dispose of her. Mary timidly expressed her wish to be permitted to return to Lochmarlie, and mentioned that her uncle and aunt had repeatedly offered to come to Bath for her, if she might be allowed to accompany them home; but to this her mother also gave a decided negative, adding that she never should see Lochmarlie again, if she could help it. In short, she must remain where she was till something could be fixed as to her future destination. "It was most excessively tiresome to be clogged with a great unmarried daughter," her Ladyship observed, as she sprang into the carriage with a train of dogs, and drove off to dear delightful London.
But, alas! the insecurity of even the best-laid schemes of human foresight! Lady Juliana was in the midst of arrangements for endless pleasures, when she received accounts of the death of her now almost forgotten husband! He had died from the gradual effects of the climate, and that was all that remained to be told of the unfortunate Henry Douglas! If his heartless wife shed some natural tears, she wiped them soon; but the wounds of disappointment and vanity were not so speedily effaced, as she contrasted the brilliant court-dress with the unbecoming widow's cap. Oh, she so detested black things—it was so hateful to wear mourning—she never could feel happy or comfortable in black! and, at such a time, how particularly unfortunate! Poor Douglas! she was very sorry! And so ended the holiest and most indissoluble of human ties!
The Duchess did not think it incumbent upon her to be affected by the death of a person she had never seen; but she put on mourning; put off her presentation at Court for a week, and stayed away one night from the opera.
On Mary's warm and unpolluted heart the tidings of her father's death produced a very different effect. Though she had never known, in their fullest extent, those feelings of filial affection, whose source begins with our being, and over which memory loves to linger, as at the hallowed fount of the purest of earthly joys, she had yet been taught to cherish a fond remembrance of him to whom she owed her being. She had been brought up in the land of his birth—his image was associated in her mind with many of the scenes most dear to her—his name and his memory were familiar to those amongst whom she dwelt, and thus her feelings of natural affection had been preserved in all their genuine warmth and tenderness. Many a letter, and many a little token of her love, she had, from her earliest years, been accustomed to send him; and she had ever fondly cherished the hope of her father's return, and that she would yet know the happiness of being blest in a parent's love. But now all these hopes were extinguished; and, while she wept over them in bitterness of heart, she yet bowed with pious resignation to the decree of heaven.