The Two Admirals (71 page)

"If my niece prove but half as acceptable in appearance, as my
nephew
,
Sir Gervaise," observed the duchess, when the young Virginian was
introduced to her, and laying stress on the word we have
italicised—"nothing can be wanting to the agreeables of this new
connection. I am impatient, now, to see my niece; Sir Wycherly
Wychecombe has prepared me to expect a young woman of more than common
merit."

"My life on it, duchess, he has not raised your expectations too high.
The poor girl is still dwelling in her cottage, the companion of her
reputed mother; but it is time, Wychecombe, that you had claimed your
bride."

"I expect to find her and Mrs. Dutton at the Hall, on my return, Sir
Gervaise; it having been thus arranged between us. The sad ceremonies
through which we have lately been, were unsuited to the introduction of
the new mistress to her abode, and the last had been deferred to a more
fitting occasion."

"Let the first visit that Lady Wychecombe pays, be to this place," said
the duchess. "I do not command it, Sir Wycherly, as one who has some
slight claims to her duty; but I solicit it, as one who wishes to
possess every hold upon her love. Her mother was an
only
sister; and
an
only
sister's child must be very near to one."

It would have been impossible for the Duchess of Glamorgan to have said
as much as this before she saw the young Virginian; but, now he had
turned out a person so very different from what she expected, she had
lively hopes in behalf of her niece.

Wycherly returned to Wychecombe, after this short visit to Mildred's
aunt, and found his lovely bride in quiet possession, accompanied by her
mother. Dutton still remained at the station, for he had the sagacity to
see that he might not be welcome, and modesty enough to act with a
cautious reserve. But Wycherly respected his excellent wife too
profoundly not to have a due regard to her feelings, in all things; and
the master was invited to join the party. Brutality and meanness united,
like those which belonged to the character of Dutton, are not easily
abashed, and he accepted the invitation, in the hope that, after all, he
was to reap as many advantages by the marriage of Mildred with the
affluent baronet, as if she had actually been his daughter.

After passing a few weeks in sober happiness at home, Wycherly felt it
due to all parties, to carry his wife to the Park, in order that she
might make the acquaintance of the near relatives who dwelt there. Mrs.
Dutton, by invitation, was of the party; but Dutton was left behind,
having no necessary connection with the scenes and the feelings that
were likely to occur. It would be painting the duchess too much
en
beau
, were we to say that she met Mildred without certain misgivings
and fears. But the first glimpse of her lovely niece completely put
natural feelings in the ascendency. The resemblance to her sister was so
strong as to cause a piercing cry to escape her, and, bursting into
tears, she folded the trembling young woman to her heart, with a fervour
and sincerity that set at naught all conventional manners. This was the
commencement of a close intimacy; which lasted but a short time,
however, the duchess dying two years later.

Wycherly continued in the service until the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle,
when he finally quitted the sea. His strong native attachments led him
back to Virginia, where all his own nearest relatives belonged, and
where his whole heart might be said to be, when he saw Mildred and his
children at his side. With him, early associations and habits had more
strength, than traditions and memorials of the past. He erected a
spacious dwelling on the estate inherited from his father, where he
passed most of his time; consigning Wychecombe to the care of a careful
steward. With the additions and improvements that he was now enabled to
make, his Virginian estate produced even a larger income than his
English, and his interests really pointed to the choice he had made. But
no pecuniary considerations lay at the bottom of his selection. He
really preferred the graceful and courteous ease of the intercourse
which characterized the manners of James' river. In that age, they were
equally removed from the coarse and boisterous jollity of the English
country-squire, and the heartless conventionalities of high life. In
addition to this, his sensitive feelings rightly enough detected that he
was regarded in the mother-country as a sort of intruder. He was spoken
of, alluded to in the journals, and viewed even by his tenants as the
American
landlord; and he never felt truly at home in the country for
which he had fought and bled. In England, his rank as a baronet was not
sufficient to look down these little peculiarities; whereas, in
Virginia, it gave him a certain
éclat
, that was grateful to one of the
main weaknesses of human nature. "At home," as the mother-country was
then affectionately termed, he had no hope of becoming a privy
councillor; while, in his native colony, his rank and fortune, almost as
a matter of course, placed him in the council of the governor. In a
word, while Wycherly found most of those worldly considerations which
influence men in the choice of their places of residence, in favour of
the region in which he happened to be born, his election was made more
from feeling and taste than from any thing else. His mind had taken an
early bias in favour of the usages and opinions of the people among whom
he had received his first impressions, and this bias he retained to the
hour of his death.

Like a true woman, Mildred found her happiness with her husband and
children. Of the latter she had but three; a boy and two girls. The care
of the last was early committed to Mrs. Dutton. This excellent woman had
remained at Wychecombe with her husband, until death put an end to his
vices, though the close of his career was exempt from those scenes of
brutal dictation and interference that had rendered the earlier part of
her life so miserable. Apprehension of what might be the consequences to
himself, acted as a check, and he had sagacity enough to see that the
physical comforts he now possessed were all owing to the influence of
his wife. He lived but four years, however. On his death, his widow
immediately took her departure for America.

It would be substituting pure images of the fancy for a picture of sober
realities, were we to say that Lady Wychecombe and her adopted mother
never regretted the land of
their
birth. This negation of feeling,
habits, and prejudices, is not to be expected even in an Esquimaux. They
both had occasional strictures to make on the
climate
, (and this to
Wycherly's great surprise, for
he
conscientiously believed that of
England to be just the worst in the world,) on the fruits, the servants,
the roads, and the difficulty of procuring various little comforts. But,
as this was said good-naturedly and in pleasantry, rather than in the
way of complaint, it led to no unpleasant scenes or feelings. As all
three made occasional voyages to England, where his estates, and more
particularly settlements with his factor, compelled the baronet to go
once in about a lustrum, the fruits and the climate were finally given
up by the ladies. After many years, even the slip-shod, careless, but
hearty attendance of the negroes, came to be preferred to the dogged
mannerism of the English domestics, perfect as were the latter in their
parts; and the whole subject got to be one of amusement, instead of one
of complaint. There is no greater mistake than to suppose that the
traveller who passes
once
through a country, with his home-bred, and
quite likely
provincial
notions thick upon him, is competent to
describe, with due discrimination, even the usages of which he is
actually a witness. This truth all the family came, in time, to
discover; and while it rendered them more strictly critical in their
remarks, it also rendered them more tolerant. As it was, few happier
families were to be found in the British empire, than that of Sir
Wycherly Wychecombe; its head retaining his manly and protecting
affection for all dependent on him, while his wife, beautiful as a
matron, as she had been lovely as a girl, clung to him with the tenacity
of the vine to its own oak.

Of the result of the rising in the north, it is unnecessary to say much.
The history of the
Chevalier's
successes in the first year, and of his
final overthrow at Culloden, is well known. Sir Reginald Wychecombe,
like hundreds of others, played his cards so skilfully that he avoided
committing himself; and, although he lived and eventually died a
suspected man, he escaped forfeitures and attainder. With Sir Wycherly,
as the head of his house, he maintained a friendly correspondence to the
last, even taking charge of the paternal estate in its owner's absence;
manifesting to the hour of his death, a scrupulous probity in matters of
money, mingled with an inherent love of management and intrigue, in
things that related to politics and the succession. Sir Reginald lived
long enough to see the hopes of the Jacobites completely extinguished,
and the throne filled by a native Englishman.

Many long years after the events which rendered the week of its opening
incidents so memorable among its actors, must now be imagined. Time had
advanced with its usual unfaltering tread, and the greater part of a
generation had been gathered to their fathers. George III. had been on
the throne not less than three lustrums, and most of the important
actors of the period of '45, were dead;—many of them, in a degree,
forgotten. But each age has its own events and its own changes. Those
colonies, which in 1745 were so loyal, so devoted to the house of
Hanover, in the belief that political and religious liberty depended on
the issue, had revolted against the supremacy of the parliament of the
empire. America was already in arms against the mother country, and the
very day before the occurrence of the little scene we are about to
relate, the intelligence of the battle of Bunker Hill had reached
London. Although the gazette and national pride had, in a degree,
lessened the characteristics of this most remarkable of all similar
combats, by exaggerating the numbers of the colonists engaged, and
lessening the loss of the royal troops, the impression produced by the
news is said to have been greater than any known to that age. It had
been the prevalent opinion of England—an opinion that was then general
in Europe, and which descended even to our own times—that the animals
of the new continent, man included, had less courage and physical force,
than those of the old; and astonishment, mingled with the forebodings of
the intelligent, when it was found that a body of ill-armed countrymen
had dared to meet, in a singularly bloody combat, twice their number of
regular troops, and that, too, under the guns of the king's shipping and
batteries. Rumours, for the moment, were rife in London, and the
political world was filled with gloomy anticipations of the future.

On the morning of the day alluded to, Westminster Abbey, as usual, was
open to the inspection of the curious and interested. Several parties
were scattered among its aisles and chapels, some reading the
inscriptions on the simple tablets of the dead which illustrate a
nation, in illustrating themselves; others listening to the names of
princes who derived their consequence from their thrones and alliances;
and still other sets, who were wandering among the more elaborate
memorials that have been raised equally to illustrate insignificance,
and to mark the final resting-places of more modern heroes and
statesmen. The beauty of the weather had brought out more visiters than
common, and not less than half-a-dozen equipages were in waiting, in and
about Palace Yard. Among others, one had a ducal coronet. This carriage
did not fail to attract the attention that is more than usually bestowed
on rank, in England. All were empty, however, and more than one party of
pedestrians entered the venerable edifice, rejoicing that the view of a
duke or a duchess, was to be thrown in, among the other sights,
gratuitously. All who passed on foot, however, were not influenced by
this vulgar feeling; for, one group went by, that did not even cast a
glance at the collection of carriages; the seniors of the party being
too much accustomed to such things to lend them a thought, and the
juniors too full of anticipations of what they were about to see, to
think of other matters. This party consisted of a handsome man of
fifty-odd, a lady some three or four years his junior well preserved and
still exceedingly attractive; a young man of twenty-six, and two lovely
girls, that looked like twins; though one was really twenty-one, and the
other but nineteen. These were Sir Wycherly and Lady Wychecombe,
Wycherly their only son, then just returned from a five years'
peregrination on the continent of Europe, and Mildred and Agnes, their
daughters. The rest of the family had arrived in England about a
fortnight before, to greet the heir on his return from the
grand tour
,
as it was then termed. The meeting had been one of love, though Lady
Wychecombe had to reprove a few innocent foreign affectations, as she
fancied them to be, in her son; and the baronet, himself, laughed at the
scraps of French, Italian, and German, that quite naturally mingled in
the young man's discourse. All this, however, cast no cloud over the
party, for it had ever been a family of entire confidence and unbroken
love.

"This is a most solemn place to me," observed Sir Wycherly, as they
entered at the Poets' corner, "and one in which a common man unavoidably
feels his own insignificance. But, we will first make our pilgrimage,
and look at these remarkable inscriptions as we come out. The tomb we
seek is in a chapel on the other side of the church, near to the great
doors. When I last saw it, it was quite alone."