Lady Bell, Volume 1 by Sarah Tytler

Within three months from the date of the drawing-room, Lady Lucie / Penruddock was dead and buried. Her dowager's allowance had lapsed to / the Squire Penruddock of the day. The sale of the furniture in her / lodging had done little more than pay the expenses of its late owner's / funeral. Lady Bell Etheredge, the one orphan child of an earl who had so / squandered his estate in his lifetime, that it seemed rather proper and / convenient that his title had died with him, was left destitute. Her / sole inheritance consisted of her suit of mourning, with her other / suits, and a little sum of pocket-money, sufficient to carry her down to / Warwickshire to the keeping of her mother's unmarried brother and / sister, Squire Godwin and Mrs. Die Godwin, of St. Bevis's.

The journey was made by posting under the escort of a maid and a man, / appointed to see Lady Bell safe, by some friend of Lady Lucie's, who / took so much interest in the girl, for her grand-aunt's sake. It was / travelling away from the civilised world to Lady Bell, and it was / travelling which lasted for several days, and was half-killing in the / mingled grief and fatigue that attended on it.

Lady Bell reached St. Bevis's early on a dark, wet October evening. For / so young a girl, she was sunk in depression and desolation; since she / had bidden farewell to all she had known and loved. She had never seen / her mother's kindred, for there had been a quarrel between them and her / father soon after his marriage, while the particulars which Lady Lucie / had let fall from time to time, that seemed to make little impression / then, but were painfully present to Lady Bell's mind now, were not / reassuring.

Lady Bell had tried for the last half-hour to catch a glimpse of the / country round St. Bevis's through the steaming chaise windows. The fact / was, that all the country was new to her, except what, in her ignorance, / she had called country when she had gone out of town for a day's / pleasure to Chelsea, or Richmond, or Greenwich. But the most ardent / admirer of the country, pure and simple, will admit that the close of a / dismal day in the fall of the year, when the fields are bare, and the / woods half stripped, is hardly a propitious season for a novice making / her first acquaintance with the country, even though she be not turning / her back on the delights of youth, though the country inns at which she / has lain have not been comfortless, though the roads are not quagmires, / and though her nerves are not shaken with fears of highwaymen.

"Lud, how horrid lonesome it do be here," exclaimed the maid who sat / inside with Lady Bell, while the man sat outside with the driver. "We / shall see a man hanging in chains at the next cross roads, I come bound. / It would give me the dumps in no time to be kept down here. However do / country bumpkins and their sweethearts make shift to exist in such a / hole? In course, it is quite different with the gentlefolks, who can / have their country houses full of company. " The woman corrected herself, / remembering, in time, Lady Bell's circumstances.

Lady Bell could not find fault, for she caught herself echoing the / reflection in her own style as she pressed her white face against the / glass, "What can life be like here without a court, or assemblies, or / drums, or even shops-and we have not passed a waggon or pack-horses / since we left the great road."

At last the driver proceeded to draw up his horses, mud and mire to the / fetlocks. There before Lady Bell rose a portion of a pillared facade, / belonging to a great house that had never been completely built, and of / which the fragments were only dimly illuminated by the light from / within, confined to a few windows, and by a lamp swinging over the / entrance-door. The whole building had a cheerless and spectral air to / Lady Bell. There was no want of life in it, however, such as it was. A / troop of men, most of them in stable-boy's jackets or country frocks, / one or two in tarnished livery, rushed out at the sound of wheels to / hail the chaise, and shout for news before the travellers had time to / alight. "Any word of the Foxlow races, driver, before you started? " / "Were Nimble Dick's dying speech and confession come out?"

"Shut your pipes, you rude rascals; it is the young lady, the squire's / niece," protested a more civilised voice than those of the others; while / a bloated, pursy man in slovenly black, who might be either butler or / chaplain to Squire Godwin, stepped forward, opened the door, and helped / the cramped, shivering girl out, amidst a slight cessation of the rough / clamour. "Your servant, Lady Bell Etheredge; follow me."

He conducted her into a dreary unfurnished hall on a vast scale, paused / a moment, laid a flabby finger on his forehead, scratched his head under / his wig, spoke to himself, but yet as it sounded in confidence to Lady / Bell. "Curse me if I know where I had better take her first. Mrs. Die is / not to be seen at this hour, or it will be the worse for the person who / sees her. Mrs. Kitty won't leave Mrs. Die's room to do the honours; I / think I had better take his niece to the squire himself, though we do / interrupt his game."

They proceeded up a spacious staircase with the walls in a grimy edition / of the original whitewash,-oak balustrades, but the space between filled / with hempen rope, and the wide steps as innocent of the application of / water as ever were the steps of stairs in any Hotel de Polignac of / Paris, or Strozzi House of Florence. They traversed gusty unmatted / corridors until they reached a room which bore some traces of / habitableness and use.