The Vicar of Wrexhill. Frances Milton Trollope
breakfast-table; and she was not a guest, but an inmate.
Rosalind Torrington was a young Irish girl from the province of Ulster, who had passed the first seventeen years of her life in great retirement, in a village not far distant from the coast, with no other society than the immediate neighbourhood afforded. Since that time her destiny had undergone a great change. She was an only child, and lost both father and mother in one of those pestilential fevers which so frequently ravage the populous districts of Ireland. Her father was one of that frightfully-wronged and much-enduring race of Protestant clergy, who, during the last few years, have suffered a degree of oppression and persecution unequalled for its barefaced injustice by any thing that the most atrocious page of history can record.
Her mother, of high English descent, had been banished from all intercourse with her patrician family, because she refused to use her influence with her exemplary husband to induce him to abandon his profitless and often perilous preferment in Ireland, where he felt he had the power as well the will to do good, in order to place himself in dependence upon his wife's brother, a bachelor viscount who had invited the impoverished family to his house, and promised some time or other to do something for him in his profession—if he could. This invitation was politely but most positively refused, and for the last three years no intercourse of any kind had taken place between them. At the end of that time, Mr. Torrington and his exemplary wife, while sedulously administering to the sick souls of their poor parishioners, caught the fever that raged among them, and perished. Mrs. Torrington survived her husband three days; and during that time her thoughts were painfully occupied by the future prospects of her highly-connected but slenderly-portioned girl.
All she could do for her, she did. She wrote to her haughty brother in such a manner as she thought, from her deathbed, must produce some effect: but lest it should not, she addressed another letter to Mrs. Mowbray, the favourite friend of her youth, entreating her protection for her orphan child.
This letter enclosed a will fully executed, by which she left to her daughter whatever property she might die possessed of, (amounting at the utmost, as she supposed, to about five thousand pounds,) and constituting Mrs. Mowbray sole guardian of her person and property.
During the interval which had elapsed since Mrs. Torrington's estrangement from her noble brother, his lordship had contrived to quarrel also with his nephew and heir, and in the height of his resentment against him made a will, leaving the whole of his unentailed property, amounting to above eighty thousand pounds, to his sister. By a singular coincidence, Lord Trenet died two days before Mrs. Torrington; so that her will was made exactly one day after she had unconsciously become the possessor of this noble fortune. Had this most unexpected event been made known to her, however, it would probably have made no other alteration in her will than the addition of the name of some male friend, who might have taken care of the property during the minority of her child: and even this would only have been done for the purpose of saving her friend trouble; for such was her opinion of Mrs. Mowbray, that no circumstances attending her daughter's fortune could have induced her to place the precious deposit of her person in other hands.
The poor girl herself, while these momentous events were passing, was stationed at the house of an acquaintance at a few miles' distance, whither she had been sent at the first appearance of infection; and thus in the short space of ten days, from the cherished, happy darling of parents far from rich, she became an heiress and an orphan.
Rosalind Torrington was a warm-hearted, affectionate girl, who had fondly loved her parents, and she mourned for them with all her soul. But the scene around her was so rapidly and so totally changed, and so much that was delightful mixed with the novelty, that it is not wonderful if at her age her grief wore away, and left her, sooner than she could have believed the change possible, the gay and happy inmate of Mowbray Park.
About four months had elapsed since her arrival, and she was already greatly beloved by the whole family. In age she was about half-way between the two sisters; and as she did not greatly resemble either of them in temper or acquirements, she was at this time equally the friend of both.
In most branches of female erudition Miss Torrington was decidedly inferior to the Miss Mowbrays: but nature had given her a voice and a taste for music which led her to excel in it; and so much spirit and vivacity supplied on other points the want of regular study, that by the help of her very pretty person, her good birth, and her large fortune, nobody but Charles Mowbray ever discovered deficiency or inferiority of any kind in Rosalind Torrington: but he had declared vehemently, the moment she arrived, that she was not one quarter so pretty as his sister Fanny, nor one thousandth part so angelic in all ways as his sister Helen.
Such was the party who, all smiles and felicitations, first crowded clamorously round the hero of the fête which now occupied the thoughts of all, and then seated themselves at the breakfast-table, more intent upon talking of its coming glories than on doing justice to the good things before them.
"Oh, you lucky twenty-one!" exclaimed Miss Torrington, addressing young Mowbray. "Did any one ever see such sunshine! … And just think what it would have been if all the tents of the people had been drenched with rain! The inward groans for best bonnets would have checked the gratulations in their throats, and we should have had sighs perchance for cheers."
"I do not believe any single soul would have cared for rain, or thought for one moment of the weather, let it have been what it would, Rosalind," observed Helen. "Charles," she continued, "is so adored and doted upon by all the people round, both rich and poor, that I am persuaded, while they were drinking his health, there would not have been a thought bestowed on the weather."
"Oh! … To be sure, dear Helen. … I quite forgot that. Of course, a glance at the Mowbray would be worth all the Mackintosh cloaks in the world, for keeping a dry skin in a storm;—but then, you know, the hero himself might have caught cold when he went out to shine upon them—and the avoiding this is surely a blessing for which we all ought to be thankful: not but what I would have held an umbrella over him with the greatest pleasure, of course … but, altogether, I think it is quite as well as it is."
"You won't quiz my Helen out of her love for me, Miss Rosalind Torrington," replied Charles, laughing; "so do not hope it."
"Miss Rosalind Torrington!" … repeated the young lady indignantly. Then rising and approaching Mrs. Mowbray, she said very solemnly, "Is that my style and title, madam? Is there any other Miss Torrington in all the world? … Is there any necessity, because he is one-and-twenty, that he should call me Miss Rosalind? … And is it not your duty, oh! my guardianess! to support me in all my rights and privileges? And won't you please to scold him if he calls me Miss Rosalind again?"
"Beyond all question you are Miss Torrington, my dear," replied Mrs. Mowbray; "and were not Charles unfortunately of age, and therefore legally beyond all control, I would certainly command him never to say Rosalind again."
"That is not exactly what I said. Most Respected!" replied the young lady. "He may call me Rosalind if he will; but if I am Miss any thing, I am Miss Torrington."
"You certainly are a lucky fellow, Charles," said his Father, "and Rosalind is quite right in praising the sunshine. Helen with her coaxing ways may say what she will, but our fête would have been spoilt without it."
"Indeed I think so, sir. … Pray do not believe me ungrateful. Besides, I like to see everything accord—and your bright beaming faces would have been completely out of keeping with a dark frowning sky."
"Yon are quite right. … But come, make haste with your breakfast … let us leave the ladies to give an inquiring glance to the decorations of the ball-room, and let you and I walk down to the walnut-trees, and see how they are getting on with the tents and the tables, and all the rest of it."
"I shall be ready in a minute, sir; but I have been scampering round the whole park already this morning, and I am as hungry as a hound. Give me one more egg, Helen, and then. … "
"It is really a comfort to see what a fine appetite he has!—is it not, Helen?" said Rosalind, surrounding his plate with rolls of all sorts and sizes.
"I will call you 'Wild Irish Girl'