A PRINCESS royal is always an interesting personage. The very title is charming—there is about it a supreme heiress-ship, if not of practical dominion, at least of the more delicate part of the inheritance. She has the feminine rule, the kingdom of hearts, the homage of sentiment and imagination. Even when she grows old the title retains a sweet and penetrating influence, and in youth it is the very crown of visionary greatness, an elevation without any vulgar elements. Lady Jane was the Princess Royal of her father’s house. There had been just so much poetry in his pride as to make him feel this beautifying characteristic of feminine rank to be an addition (if any addition were possible) to his dukedom. And she had been brought up in the belief that she was not as other girls were, nor even as the little Lady Marys and Lady Augustas who in the eyes of the world stood upon a similar eminence. She stood alone—the blood of the Altamonts had reached its cream of sweetness, its fine quintessence in her veins. Hungerford was very well in his way. He would be Duke when his time came. The property, and lands, and titles would be vested in him; but he had no such visionary altitude as his sister. He himself was quite aware of the fact: he laughed, and was very well content to be rid of this visionary representativeship, but he fully recognised that Jane was not to be considered as an ordinary mortal, that she was the flower and crown of so many generations, the last perfection to which the race could attain. And with infinite modesty and humility of mind Lady Jane too perceived her mission. She became aware of it very early, when other girls were still busy with their skipping-ropes. It was a great honour to fall upon so young a head. When she walked about the noble woods at Billings and dreamed as girls do of the world before her, this sense of rank was never absent from her mind: impossible to foresee what were the scenes through which it might lead her. She heard a great deal of the evil state of public affairs—the decadence of England, the advance of democracy, the approaching ruin in which everything that was great and noble must soon be engulfed; and Lady Jane took it all seriously, and felt it very possible that her fate might be that of a virgin martyr to the cruel forces of revolution. For one time of her life her favourite literature was the memoirs of those great and noble ladies, full of charity and romance, who cast a pathetic glory upon the end of the old régime in France, and died for crimes of which they were no way guilty, paying the long arrears of oppression which they had done all they could to modify. Jane took, as was natural, the political jeremiads of her father and his friends with the matter-of-fact faith of youth, and she did not think that even the guillotine was impossible. If it came to her lot—as, according to all she heard, seemed likely—to maintain the cause of nobility to the last, she was ready to walk to the scaffold like Marie Antoinette, holding her head high, and smiling upon her assassins; or if it were possible to save the country by another kind of self-devotion, she was prepared, though with trembling, to inspire a nation or lead an army. These were the kind of dreams she entertained at fifteen, which is the time when a girl is most alive to the claims of patriotism, and can feel it possible that she too may be a heroine. Older, she began to be less certain. Facts came in and confused fancy. She saw no indications such as those which her books said had been seen in France; everything was very peaceable, everybody very respectful wherever she went. The common people looked at her admiringly when by chance she drove with her mamma through the crowded streets. They seemed all quite willing to acknowledge her position. She was greeted with smiles instead of groans, and heroism seemed unnecessary.
Then there came a time when Lady Jane felt that it would probably be her mission to be, if not a martyr, a benefactress to the world. It would be right for her to move half royally, half angelically, through all the haunts of wretchedness, and leave comfort and abundance behind. She imagined to herself scenes like the great plague, times of famine and fever, in which her sudden appearance, with succour of every kind about her, would bring an immediate change of affairs and turn darkness into light. She did not know—how should she?—what squalor and wretchedness were like, and this great and successful mission never in her thoughts so much as soiled her dress, and had nothing disgusting or repulsive in it. But by-and-by, gradually there came a change also upon this phase of mind. A princess royal has always the confidence that in her own ministrations there must be a secret charm; but still she could not shut her eyes to the fact that in her mother’s charities all was not plain sailing. And it became apparent to her also, with a considerable shock, that there were many things which the Duchess wished but had not means to do; which had a painful effect upon Lady Jane’s dreams, and cut them short, confusing her whole horizon, and arresting her imagination. She then paused, with considerable bewilderment, not quite perceiving where the mission of her rank would lead her. It must give her distinct duties, and a sphere above the common quiescence of life—but what? Lady Jane was perplexed, and no longer saw her way. Vulgar contact with the world was impossible to her; she shrank from the public organisation of charity. Something else surely, something of a more magnanimous kind, was to be hers to do. But in the meantime she did not know what, and stood as it were upon the battlements of the castle wall looking out, somewhat confused, but full of noble sentiment and desire to perform the finest functions for the advantage of the world.
This was the aspect which pride of birth took in the pure and high-toned spirit of the Duke’s daughter. She accepted undoubtingly the creed of her race, and never questioned the fact that she was something entirely removed from the crowd, elevated above the ordinary level of humanity. The Duchess had little of this inborn conviction, but yet a duchess is a duchess, and unless she is of a quite remarkable order of intelligence, it is very unlikely that she should be able to separate herself from the prejudices of her rank. As a matter of fact, the members of a duke’s household are not ordinary mortals. Limits which are natural to us have nothing to do with them. It must require a distinct independence and great force of mind to realise that they are just of the same flesh and blood as the scullery-maid and the shoe-boy; nay—for these are extravagant instances out of their range of vision—even as the groom of the chambers and the housekeeper, who are entirely devoted to their service. To doubt this, accordingly, never entered the mind of Lady Jane; but anything resembling personal pride had no existence in her. She did not know what it meant. There is no such beautiful scope for pure humility of spirit as in the mind of a creature thus fancifully elevated. It never occurred to her that it was her own excellence which gave her this place. She was unfeignedly modest in every estimate of herself, docile, ready to be guided, deferring to everybody. Never had there been so obedient a child to nurses and governesses, nor one who accepted reproof more sweetly, nor sought with more anxious grace to gain approbation. It was difficult to rouse her to the exercise of her own judgment at all. “Do you think so?” she would say to the humblest person about her, with a sincere desire to please that person by accepting his or her view rather than her own. Some people thought she had no opinion of her own at all, but that was a mistake—though the pain it gave her to cross, or vex, or contradict (in fact: in words she never was guilty of such a breach of charity) any one, made her act upon her own opinion only in the very direst necessity. But when her gentle foot struck against the limits of the sphere which she thought boundless, Lady Jane remained for a long time perplexed, confused, not knowing what the object might be which was to fill her life. It was during this period that her cheek, though still so young, began to own the slightest possible departure from the oval. It might have been only the touch of a finger—but there it was. A slight line over Lady Jane’s eyes appeared about the same time. She had become anxious, almost wistful, wondering and perplexed. What was she to do with her life? England (though, as they all said, going to destruction) showed no signs of immediate ruin. In all likelihood the guillotine would not be set up in Lady Jane’s time, and there would be no occasion for any sacrifice on her part. She looked abroad into the world, and saw no need of her. She shrank, indeed, from any actual step, notwithstanding her dreams and her conviction that something great ought to come of her; and if she had attempted to take any step whatever, she knew that the Duke and the Duchess, and Hungerford and Susan, and all the connections and retainers to the hundredth degree, would have rushed with dismay to prevent her. Was it possible that by sitting calmly upon her elevated seat, and smiling sweetly or frowning (as best she could) as the occasion required, she was doing all she was called upon to do? In that case Lady Jane acknowledged to herself with a sigh, that it was scarcely worth while being a princess royal at all.
The reader will think it strange that all this time no idea of marriage, or of the great preliminary of marriage, had entered her head. Perhaps it would be rash to say that this was the case. But she had known from an early period that there were very few people in the world who could pretend to Lady Jane Altamont’s hand. She laughed when it was proposed to her to marry the Marquis of Wodensville. “Oh no, papa, thank you,” she said.
“We have made alliances with his family before now. He has some of the best blood in England in his veins,” said the Duke.
“Oh no, papa, thank you,” said Lady Jane. She did not ask any one’s advice on this point. When there was that negotiation with Mr Roundel, of Bishop’s Roundel, she was more interested, but not enough to disturb her equilibrium when it was found he had gone off in disgust, and married his sister’s governess. “I thought he could not be pure blood,” the Duke said. Lady Jane smiled, and, it is to be feared, thought so too. The worst of high rank is that it destroys perspective. She could not see the gradations below her in the least. She knew the difference between her father’s rank and that of a prince of the blood; and she knew exactly how countesses and marchionesses ought to go in to dinner; but of the difference between governesses and housekeepers and other attendants she knew little. The one and the other were entirely out of her sphere. Her own old governess, whose name was Strangford, she had always called Stranghy and been extremely fond of—but then she was fond of all her old attendants, and thought of them much in the same way. Then Lord Rushbrook, who was a Cabinet Minister, had presented himself to her. She did not wish to marry him, but she felt that here was something which was not rank (for he was only a baron), and yet was equal to rank. It was almost the first gleam of such enlightenment that came into her mind.
About this time, however, it certainly began to enter into Lady Jane’s head that it is a general thing to marry, and that this is the way in which most women solve the problem of their life. Perhaps because of the “offers” she had received: perhaps because she had met at Lady Germaine’s, quite promiscuously, on one of the many occasions on which she went there, a—gentleman. She had met a great many gentlemen there and elsewhere before; but on the particular occasion in question, she had gone by accident, without design, and with no expectation of meeting any one. Fate thus lies in wait for us, round a corner, when we think of it least. The gentleman was nobody in particular. He had never been meant to meet the Duke’s daughter. Indeed, had Lady Germaine had but the slightest prevision of what was coming, she would have locked him into a closet, or tripped him over into the river, rather than permitted such a thing to happen in her house. But she did not know any more than other mortals, and the train was laid by the Fates without any sort of connivance on the part of any human creature. They all fell blindly, stupidly, accidentally into the net.
It was perhaps then, we say, when Lady Jane declined, either by her own will or her father’s, her other matrimonial prospects, or perhaps when she met the aforesaid gentleman, that it first really occurred to this high and visionary maiden to take into consideration that which is the leading incident in the lives of most women, the event which decides the question whether their lives shall be lonely and in great measure objectless, or busy and full of interest and occupation. Generally it is at a very early age that girls first approach this question. But Lady Jane had been a stately little person even in her cradle. She had not chosen to be kissed and caressed as most children are. She had been gently proud and reticent through all her girlhood. She had no youthful intimates to breathe into her mind this suggestion—no girl-friend about to be married to initiate her into the joyous fuss, the importance, the applauses and presents, the general commotion which every wedding produces. She had, indeed, been present at a marriage, but never at one which touched her at all in her immediate circle. So that Lady Jane was nearly eight-and-twenty when it occurred to her as possible that she too might marry and carry out in her own person the universal lot. At first she had been shocked at herself, and had driven the thought out of her mind with a delicacy which cannot but be called false, though she was not conscious of its fictitious character. But the idea came back: it caught her at unawares, it came over her sometimes with soft, delicious suggestions. When she met a young mother with her children, a sigh that was as soft as the west wind in spring would come out of Lady Jane’s heart. How happy was that woman! how delightful all the cares that beset her, the calls from this one and that, the constant demand upon her! She had no time to ask what her life was worth, no leisure to speculate how she could best fulfil its duties: all that and many another question was solved for her. Lady Jane watched the happy mother with an interest which was almost envy. And there were other thoughts which crossed her fancy too, and awakened much that was dormant in her. Once when she was sitting by her mother it suddenly came into her mind to contrast the Duchess’s life with her own. She looked at her Grace’s fair and genial presence, and watched her going over her accounts, and settling the affairs of her great house. There were many lines on the Duchess’s brow. She was an excellent economist on a great scale, as became her rank, but she had the disadvantage of being thwarted on every side by the prodigalities of her husband. It was not a happy moment at which to regard her; yet Lady Jane, looking at her mother, was suddenly moved to ask herself whether the Duchess would have been better, balancing all her outcomings and incomings serenely without any one to disturb her, had she never married. The question seemed a ludicrous one, but Lady Jane was prone to imaginations. She conjured up before herself a picture of this lady in a house where no one thwarted her; where there was no family to provide for, no Susan to keep a watchful eye upon what she was doing, no Jane to reflect upon her as an example of fate. She laughed to herself softly at the impossibility of this imagination.
“What are you laughing at?” the Duchess asked, pausing with her pen in her hand and a look which was indicative of anything but an easy mind.
“I was thinking—what if you had never married, mamma?”
The Duchess turned round upon her, opening her eyes wide with wonder. “What if I had never married? Are you taking leave of your senses?” she said. And indeed the idea was entirely ludicrous, for if she had never married where would Jane herself have been? Jane laughed again very softly, and a sudden wave of colour came over her face. She thought, though her mother was not very happy, that it was better to be less happy so, than more happy alone. It seemed to her that the absence of care would have made her Grace much less interesting. Her comely figure seemed to shrink and fall away as Jane thought, looking at it—and then her mind slid imperceptibly from that fancy to a sudden realisation of herself. After all, she had been thinking of herself all her life, what she should do, how she should occupy herself, which theory of life was the best. But the young woman whom she had met among her children had got that problem solved for her; she had no time to think of herself at all: there were so many claims upon her, soft little arms, voices like the birds, as well as bigger appeals, more articulate; the chances were that from morning to night she had no leisure in which to speculate on what was best for herself. The Duchess, though a great lady, was in the same position. Even the least self-regarding whose hands are free, think more about themselves than the selfish, whose time and thoughts are taken up with other matters, can be able to do. This thought made a great impression upon Lady Jane. Perhaps even these ideas would have moved her little had it not been for that encounter at Lady Germaine’s—but it was long before she brought herself so far as to acknowledge that. She considered the question in the abstract form long before she approached it in the concrete. And thus she came candidly to conclude and acknowledge that the woman who is married has a career before her which the unmarried woman can scarcely command. It was a new idea to Lady Jane, but her mind was very candid, and she received this as she received every other conclusion justified by reason. It would be good that she should marry; and then she had met at Lady Germaine’s—a gentleman. But who this gentleman was must be left for another chapter.