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The First Countess Of Wessex
by
‘Oh–not for more than a fortnight.’
‘A fortnight! How many times have ye seen him altogether?’
‘I’m sure, mamma, I’ve not seen him altogether a dozen times.’
‘A dozen! And eighteen and a half years old barely!’
‘Twice we met by accident,’ pleaded Betty. ‘Once at Abbot’s-Cernel, and another time at the Red Lion, Melchester.’
‘O thou deceitful girl!’ cried Mrs. Dornell. ‘An accident took you to the Red Lion whilst I was staying at the White Hart! I remember–you came in at twelve o’clock at night and said you’d been to see the cathedral by the light o’ the moon!’
‘My ever-honoured mamma, so I had! I only went to the Red Lion with him afterwards.’
‘Oh Betty, Betty! That my child should have deceived me even in my widowed days!’
‘But, my dearest mamma, you made me marry him!’ says Betty with spirit, ‘and of course I’ve to obey him more than you now!’
Mrs. Dornell sighed. ‘All I have to say is, that you’d better get your husband to join you as soon as possible,’ she remarked. ‘To go on playing the maiden like this–I’m ashamed to see you!’
She wrote instantly to Stephen Reynard: ‘I wash my hands of the whole matter as between you two; though I should advise you to openly join each other as soon as you can–if you wish to avoid scandal.’
He came, though not till the promised title had been granted, and he could call Betty archly ‘My Lady.’
People said in after years that she and her husband were very happy. However that may be, they had a numerous family; and she became in due course first Countess of Wessex, as he had foretold.
The little white frock in which she had been married to him at the tender age of twelve was carefully preserved among the relics at King’s-Hintock Court, where it may still be seen by the curious–a yellowing, pathetic testimony to the small count taken of the happiness of an innocent child in the social strategy of those days, which might have led, but providentially did not lead, to great unhappiness.
When the Earl died Betty wrote him an epitaph, in which she described him as the best of husbands, fathers, and friends, and called herself his disconsolate widow.
Such is woman; or rather (not to give offence by so sweeping an assertion), such was Betty Dornell.
* * * * *
It was at a meeting of one of the Wessex Field and Antiquarian Clubs that the foregoing story, partly told, partly read from a manuscript, was made to do duty for the regulation papers on deformed butterflies, fossil ox- horns, prehistoric dung-mixens, and such like, that usually occupied the more serious attention of the members.
This Club was of an inclusive and intersocial character; to a degree, indeed, remarkable for the part of England in which it had its being–dear, delightful Wessex, whose statuesque dynasties are even now only just beginning to feel the shaking of the new and strange spirit without, like that which entered the lonely valley of Ezekiel’s vision and made the dry bones move: where the honest squires, tradesmen, parsons, clerks, and people still praise the Lord with one voice for His best of all possible worlds.
The present meeting, which was to extend over two days, had opened its proceedings at the museum of the town whose buildings and environs were to be visited by the members. Lunch had ended, and the afternoon excursion had been about to be undertaken, when the rain came down in an obstinate spatter, which revealed no sign of cessation. As the members waited they grew chilly, although it was only autumn, and a fire was lighted, which threw a cheerful shine upon the varnished skulls, urns, penates, tesserae, costumes, coats of mail, weapons, and missals, animated the fossilized ichthyosaurus and iguanodon; while the dead eyes of the stuffed birds–those never-absent familiars in such collections, though murdered to extinction out of doors–flashed as they had flashed to the rising sun above the neighbouring moors on the fatal morning when the trigger was pulled which ended their little flight. It was then that the historian produced his manuscript, which he had prepared, he said, with a view to publication. His delivery of the story having concluded as aforesaid, the speaker expressed his hope that the constraint of the weather, and the paucity of more scientific papers, would excuse any inappropriateness in his subject.