"And who the d----," she wrote to her bosom-friend, Lady Susan, "would not be happy with a pretty place, a good house, good horses, greyhounds for hunting, so near Newmarket, what company we please in the house, and 2,000 a year to spend? Pray now, where is the wretch who would not be happy?"

And no doubt she was happy, with her dogs and horses, her peac.o.c.ks and silver-pheasants, and her genial sport-loving husband who simply idolised her. Even after five years of this rustic life she wrote to Lady Susan, who was now also a wife:

"Good husbands are not so common, at least I see none like my own and your description of yours, from which I reckon that we are the two luckiest women living. As for me, I should be a monster of ingrat.i.tude if I ever made a single complaint and did not thank G.o.d for making me the happiest of beings."

It was fortunate that she had an idolatrous husband; for even in Arcadia she could not, or would not, keep her coquetry within decent bounds. She flirted outrageously with the neighbouring squires and with such men of rank as drifted her way; but the baronet saw no cause for alarm or resentment. He was frankly delighted that his wife had so many admirers.

He basked genially in the reflected glory of his wife's conquests!

And Lady Sarah might have lived and died the baronet's adored wife had not Lord William Gordon crossed her path. Lord William was young, handsome, full of romance, a dangerous rival to the bucolic and stolid baronet, under whose un.o.bservant eyes he carried on an open flirtation with his wife. Before Lady Sarah realised her danger, she had drifted into a _liaison_ with the handsome Scot, which could only have one termination. One morning in February 1769 Sir Thomas awoke to find his nest empty. Lady Sarah had flown, and Lord William with her.

Then followed for Lady Sarah a brief period of fearful joy, of intoxicating pa.s.sion. Far away near the Scottish border she and her lover spent halcyon days together. Their favourite walk by the banks of the Leader is known to-day as the "Lovers' Walk." It was a foolish paradise in which they were living, and a rude awaking was inevitable.

After three months of bliss Lord William's family brought such pressure to bear on him that the lovers were compelled to separate--he to travel abroad, she to find a refuge from her shame under the roof of her brother, Charles, Duke of Richmond, at Goodwood, where, with her child (but not Sir Thomas Bunbury's), she spent a dozen years in penitence and isolation.

The life which had dawned so fairly seemed to be finally merged in night. Her betrayed husband had procured a divorce; and although he was chivalry itself in his forgiveness of and kindness to her, she realised that there was no hope of reunion with him. Days of weeping, nights of remorse, were her portion. But though she little dared to hope it, bright days were still in store for her--a happy and honourable wifehood, and the pride and blessing of children to rise up to do her honour.

It was the coming of the Hon. George Napier, an old Army friend of her brother, that heralded the new dawn for her darkened life. There were few handsomer men in England than this tall, stalwart son of the sixth Lord Napier, who is described as "faultless in figure and features."

When he met Lady Sarah, under the roof of his old friend, her brother, he was still mourning the wife whom he had recently buried in New York; but the sight of such suffering and beauty allied touched a heart which he had thought dead to pa.s.sion. That she was as poor as he was, and many years older mattered nothing to him. He soon realised that his only hope of happiness lay in winning her. In vain the lady protested that she was not fit to be his wife.

"He knows," she wrote to Lady Susan, "I _do_ love him; and being certain of that, he laughs at every objection that is started, for he says that, loving me to the degrees he does, he is quite sure never to repent marrying me."

Lady Sarah's family put every possible obstacle in the way of the proposed union, but the masterful soldier had his way; and one August day in 1781 Captain Napier led his tarnished but loved and loving bride to the altar. For many years poverty was their lot; but they laughed at their empty purse and found their reward in mutual devotion and the sight of their children growing in strength and beauty by their side. Of their five sons, three won laurels on many battlefields and died generals; one of the trio was the famous conqueror of Scinde, another was the historian of the Peninsular War.

When, after twenty-three years of ideally happy life together, Colonel Napier (as he had become) died, his widow was disconsolate.

"How I wish I could go with him," she wrote; "the gentlest, bravest man who ever brought sunshine and solace into a woman's darkened heart."

But Lady Sarah was destined to walk life's path alone for nearly twenty years longer, finding her only comfort in watching the careers of her gallant boys.

To add to her misfortunes her last days were spent in darkness. The eyes that had melted with love and sparkled with mischief, could no longer even look on the sons she loved.

A pathetic story is told of these last clouded days of Lady Sarah's life. In the year 1814, when, although an old woman she had still twelve years to live, she was present at a sermon preached by the Dean of Canterbury in aid of an Infirmary for the cure of diseases of the eye.

As the preacher drew a pathetic picture of King George, a liberal patron of the Infirmary, spending his days in darkness among the splendours of his palace, tears were seen to stream down Lady Sarah's cheeks, until, overcome by emotion, she asked her attendant to lead her out of the church.

Who shall say what sad and tender memories were evoked by this picture of her lover of fifty years earlier, in his darkness and isolation, shut out like herself by a dark barrier from the joy and light of life. Among the mental pictures that thronged her brain was, probably, that of a dainty maiden, rake in hand, glancing archly from under her bonnet at a gallant young Prince, whose eyes spoke love to hers as he rode lingeringly by; and that other picture of the same maid, with downcast eyes, declaring that she "thought nothing" of her Royal lover's vows, though they carried a crown with them.

CHAPTER XVII

THE COUNTESS WHO MARRIED HER GROOM

Life has seldom dawned for any daughter of a n.o.ble house more fair or full of promise than for the infant Lady Susanna Cochrane, second daughter of John, fourth Earl of Dundonald. All that rank and wealth and beauty could give were hers by birth. Her mother was an Earl's daughter, and had for grandfather the Duke of Atholl. Her paternal grandmother was Lady Susanna Hamilton, daughter of the Duke of Hamilton; and on both sides she came from a line of fair women, many of whom, like her mother, had ranked among the most beautiful in all Scotland.

Such was the splendid heritage of Lady Susanna when she opened her eyes on the world two centuries ago; and, during the earlier years of her life, it seemed that Fortune, who had already dowered her so richly, could not smile too sweetly on her. She grew to girlhood and young womanhood more beautiful even than her mother or her two sisters, Anne and Catherine, of whom the former became a d.u.c.h.ess at sixteen; while Catherine was not long out of the schoolroom before her hand was won by the Earl of Galloway.

As for Susanna, the loveliest of the "three Graces"--"Scotland's fairest daughter," to quote a chronicler of the time--she counted her high-placed lovers by the score almost before she had graduated into long frocks; and Charles, sixth Earl of Strathmore, was accounted the luckiest man north of the Tweed when he won her for his bride.

It was an ideal union, this of the beautiful Lady Susanna with the stalwart and handsome young Earl--"the fairest la.s.s and bonniest lad" in all Scotland; and none who saw their radiant happiness on their wedding-day could have dreamt how soon tragedy was to close so bright a chapter of romance.

For a few short years the young Earl and his Countess were ideally happy.

"I never thought," Lady Strathmore wrote to a friend, "that life could be so sweet. The days are all too short to crowd my happiness into."

Then, when the sky was fairest, the blow fell.

One May day in the year 1728, the young Earl went to Forfar to attend the funeral of a friend, and among his fellow-mourners were two men of his acquaintance, James Carnegie, of Finhaven, and a Mr Lyon, of Brigton, the latter a distant relative of the Earl.

After the funeral the three men sat drinking together, as was the custom of the time, and then adjourned to a tavern in Forfar, where they continued their potations until all three were, beyond all doubt, in an advanced state of intoxication, and ripe for any mischief.

From the tavern they went, uproariously drunk, to call on a sister of Carnegie, where Mr Lyon not only became quarrelsome, but with drunken jocularity, had the audacity to pinch his hostess's arms. It was with the utmost difficulty that Lord Strathmore induced his two companions to leave the house, in which one of them had so far forgotten what was due from him as a gentleman; and it was scarcely to be wondered at that an unseemly brawl began almost as soon as they were in the street.

Mr Lyon began to conduct himself more outrageously than before, now that the modified restraint of a lady's presence was removed. With boisterous horseplay, he pushed Carnegie into a deep gutter which ran by the roadside, and from which Carnegie emerged covered with mud and raging with fury. Such an insult could only be wiped out with blood; and, drawing his sword, Carnegie rushed at his tormentor. The Earl, in order to avert a tragedy, imprudently threw himself between the two antagonists, with the intention of diverting the blow. Carnegie's sword entered his body, pa.s.sing clean through it; and he fell to the ground a dying man. Two hours later the young Earl gasped his life out in the tavern, where he had drunk "not wisely, but too well."

Thus a drunken brawl, following on a funeral, made a widow of the beautiful Countess of Strathmore just when life was at its brightest and best, and when the days seemed all too short to hold her happiness.

As for James Carnegie of Finhaven, he was brought to trial on a charge of murder, and every nerve was strained to bring him to the gallows.

That this was not his fate, in spite of the terrible provocation he had received, and the obviously accidental nature of the tragedy, he owed entirely to the skill and eloquence of his counsel, Robert Dundas of Arniston, who played so cleverly on the feelings and self-importance of the jury that they returned a verdict of acquittal.

The widowed Countess mourned her lord deeply and sincerely. More beautiful than ever (she was barely twenty when this tragedy came to cloud her life), and richly dowered, many a wooer sought to console her with a new prospect of wedded happiness. She had naught to say to any of them. She preferred to live alone with her memories, and to find solace in good works. And thus for seventeen years she lived, a model of all that is beautiful in womanhood, captivating all hearts by her sweetness and graciousness, and by a beauty which sorrow only served to refine and make more lovely still.

Thus we find her in 1745, a gracious and lovely woman, still young, dispensing her charities and hospitalities, and esteemed everywhere as a model of all the proprieties. But she was still a woman. Romance and pa.s.sion were by no means dead in her; and to this "eternal feminine" we must look for an explanation of the strange event which now follows in her story.

Among the Countess's many servants was one George Forbes, a young and strikingly handsome groom, who had been taken on as stable-boy by her late husband. Forbes was a simple, manly fellow, a peasant's son, and with no ambition beyond the state of life to which he had been born. He was proud of the fact that he had served his mistress well, and that she liked him. That Lady Strathmore valued her groom was proved by the fact that she chose him as her escort whenever she went riding, and that she promoted him to the charge of her stables--a proof of confidence which no doubt he had earned. But that his high-placed mistress should regard him otherwise than as a servant was an absurd idea which never entered his head.

One day, however, the Countess summoned the groom to her presence, and, to his amazement and embarra.s.sment, told him that she had long grown to love him, and that she asked nothing better of life than to become his wife. Overcome with surprise and confusion, Forbes protested--"But my lady, think of the difference between us. You are one of the greatest ladies in the land, and I am no better than the earth you tread on."

"You must not say that," the Countess replied. "You are more to me than rank or riches. These I count as nothing, compared with the happiness you have it in your power to bestow."

In the face of such pleading, from one so beautiful and so reverenced, what could the poor groom do but consent, fearful though he was of the consequences of such an ill-a.s.sorted union? And thus strangely and romantically it was that, one April day in 1745, the Countess of Strathmore, the descendant of dukes and kings, gave her hand at the altar to the ex-stable-lad and peasant's son.

What followed this singular union was precisely what was to be expected.

The Countess was disowned by her n.o.ble relatives; her friends with one consent gave her the cold shoulder; and, unable to bear any longer the constant slights and her complete isolation, she was thankful to escape with her low-born husband to the Continent.

Here familiarity with the groom quickly, and naturally, perhaps, bred contempt and disillusion. His coa.r.s.eness offended every susceptibility; he was frankly impossible in such an intimate relation; and after she had given birth to a daughter in Holland, she arranged a separation, for which the groom was, at least, as grateful as herself. The child--the very sight of whom, reminding her as she did of the father, she could not bear--was placed in a convent at Rouen, where she was tenderly cared for by the abbess and nuns. As for the mother, weary and disillusioned, she rambled aimlessly and miserably about the Continent until, after nine years of unhappiness, death came to her at Paris as a merciful friend. Such was the sordid close of a life that had opened as fairly as any that has fallen to the lot of woman.

And what of the child who drew from her mother royal and ducal strains, and from her father the blood of stablemen and peasants? At the Rouen convent she grew up to girlhood, perfectly happy, among the nuns she learned to love. The sad and beautiful lady who had come once or twice to see her, and who, she was told, was her mother, had become a dim memory of early girlhood. Who the great lady was, and who was her father, she did not know. This knowledge the nuns, in their wisdom, kept from her--if, indeed, they knew themselves.

One day, in 1761, her days of childish happiness came to an abrupt and sensational end. A rough seafaring man called at the convent with a letter from her father demanding the return of his daughter. The bearer was sent by the captain of a merchant-vessel, who had instructions to convey the girl from Rouen to Leith; and, after an affecting farewell to the abbess and nuns, who had been so kind to her, Susan Janet Emilia (for that was the girl's name) started with her strange escort on the long journey to a parent whom she had never consciously seen. The father, released by the death of the Countess, had married a second wife of his own station, and had settled as a livery-stable keeper at Leith, where, with his rapidly-growing family, he had now made his home for some years.

At last Emilia was handed over to the custody of her groom-father, who conducted her to his home, which, as may be imagined, was a pitiful and sordid exchange for the peace and happiness of her convent life. From the first day the new life was impossible. Emilia was treated by her stepmother with coa.r.s.eness and brutality; she was daily taunted with her dependent position, and shown in a hundred ways that her presence was unwelcome.

Can one wonder that the proud spirit of the girl rebelled against such ignominy? It was better far to trust to the mercy of the world than to bear the brutal treatment of her low-born stepmother. And thus it came to pa.s.s that, early one morning, before the household was awake, Emilia slipped stealthily away with a few shillings, all her worldly possessions, in her pocket. Walking a few miles along the sh.o.r.e, she took the packet-boat, and crossed to the Fife coast, thus placing a broad arm of the sea between herself and the house of misery and oppression she had left for ever.

For days this descendant of Scotland's proudest n.o.bles tramped aimlessly through the country, sleeping in barns or craving the shelter of the humblest cottage, and, when her money was exhausted, even begging her bread from door to door.

At last human nature reached its limit. Late one night, footsore and fainting from exhaustion and hunger, she presented herself at a remote farmhouse, and begged piteously for a meal and a night's rest. None but the hardest heart could have resisted such a pathetic appeal, and Farmer Lauder and his good wife had hearts as large as their bodies. At last the waif had fallen among good Samaritans. She was received with open arms; and instead of being sent away in the morning, was cordially invited to make her home with them.