Charlotte Smith- Collected Poetical Works

by Charlotte Smith

  ‘Oh, dear! very far from not wishing to remember it, I am always pleased with such agreeable badinage from my friends, and some how or other contrive to be even with them. Prithee, dear boy, whither are you going? — perhaps we are travelling the same road?’

  ‘I hope not,’ said Delamere, turning from him, and advancing towards the bar.

  Elkerton, unabashed, followed him.

  ‘If we are,’ continued he, ‘I think you shall take me into your post-chaise. I am going to pass a month with a friend in Hampshire; and Jackman, who loves driving, tho’ he knows nothing of the matter, persuaded me to use an open carriage; but it is so cold, that I believe I shall let him enjoy it alone the rest of the way. Suppose we go together, if your destination is the Winchester road?’

  Delamere was so provoked at this forwardness, that he found he should be unable to give a moderate answer. — He therefore turned away without giving any.

  ‘Pray, Sir,’ said the bar maid to Elkerton, ‘who is that young gentleman?’

  ‘Lord Montreville’s son,’ replied he; ‘and one of the strangest fellows in the world. — Sometimes we are as intimate as brothers; and now you see he’ll hardly speak to me.’

  ‘Perhaps, Mr. Elkerton,’ said the woman, smiling, ‘the young gentleman may have very good reasons for not taking another companion in his post-chaise.’

  Elkerton pressed her to explain herself.

  ‘Why you must know,’ said she, ‘that there’s a young lady with him; one of the prettiest young women I ever see. Last night, after they comed here, his walet was pretty near tipsey; so he come and sot down here, and told me how his master had hired him to go along with ’em to Scotland; but that before they got near half way, somehow or other ’twas settled for ’em to come back again. But don’t say as I told you, Mr. Elkerton, for that would be as much as my place is worth.’

  This intelligence awakened all the curiosity of Elkerton, together with some hopes of being able to revenge himself on Delamere for his contempt and rudeness.

  ‘Egad!’ cried he, ‘I’ll have a peep at this beauty, however.’

  So saying, he strutted across the yard, and placed himself under a little piazza which made a covered communication between the rooms of the inn which were built round the yard, and along which they were obliged to pass to get into the chaise.

  The room door opened — Delamere and Emmeline appeared at it.

  ‘Draw up, postillions, as close as you can,’ cried the waiter.

  Delamere, holding Emmeline’s hand, advanced; but on seeing Elkerton, she stepped back into the room.

  ‘Come, come,’ said Delamere— ‘never concern yourself about that impertinent fellow.’

  Elkerton, tho’ he did not distinctly hear this speech, had caught a view of the person to whom it was addressed; and tho’ her face was concealed, her height and air convinced him it was Miss Mowbray.

  ‘How do you, Madam?’ exclaimed he, bowing and advancing— ‘Miss Mowbray, I hope I have the happiness of seeing you well.’

  ‘We are in haste, Sir,’ said Delamere, leading Emmeline towards the chaise.

  ‘Nay, my good friend,’ returned Elkerton, ‘allow me I beg to pay my respects to this lady, with whom I have the honour of being acquainted — Miss Mowbray, permit me — —’

  He would have taken the hand which was disengaged; but Emmeline shrunk from him, and stepped quickly into the chaise.

  Elkerton still advanced, and leaning almost into it, he said— ‘Your long journey, I hope, has not too much fatigued you.’

  ‘By heaven!’ exclaimed Delamere, ‘this is too much! Sir, you are the most troublesome, insolent fool, I ever met with!’

  So saying, he seized Elkerton by the collar, and twisting him suddenly round, threw him with great violence against one of the pillars of the piazza.

  He then got into the chaise; and taking out of his pocket two or three cards, on which his address was written, he tossed them out of the window; saying, with a voice that struck terror into the overthrown knight on the ground— ‘You know where to hear of me if you have any thing to say.’

  The chaise now drove quickly away; while Delamere tried to reassure Emmeline, who was so much terrified by the suddenness of this scuffle, that she had hardly breath to reproach him for his impetuosity. He answered, that he had kept his temper too long with the meddling ideot, and that to have overlooked such impertinence without resentment was not in his nature. He tried to laugh off her apprehensions; and flattered by the anxiety she felt for his safety, all his gaiety and good humour seemed to return.

  But Emmeline, extremely hurt to find that Elkerton was informed of the journey she had taken, and vexed that Delamere had engaged in a quarrel, the event of which, if not personally dangerous to him, could not fail of being prejudicial to her, continued very low and uneasy the rest of their journey, reflecting on nothing with pleasure but on her approaching interview with Mrs. Stafford.

  But this hoped-for happiness was soon converted into the most poignant uneasiness. On their arrival at Woodfield, Emmeline had the pain of hearing that Mrs. Stafford, who had two days before been delivered of a daughter, had continued dangerously ill ever since. The physicians who attended her had that day given them hopes that her illness might end favourably; but she was still in a situation so precarious that her attendants were in great alarm.

  As she had anxiously expected Emmeline, and expressed much astonishment at not having heard from her the week before, which was that on which she had purposed to be with her, and as she still continued earnestly to enquire for news of Miss Mowbray, Mr. Stafford insisted on informing her she was arrived; and this intelligence seemed to give her pleasure. She desired Emmeline might come to her bed-side: but she was so weak, that she could only in a faint voice express her pleasure at the sight of her; and pressing her hand, begged she would not leave her.

  It was impossible Emmeline could speak to her on the subject of Delamere, as the least emotion might have been of the most fatal consequence; and tho’ she earnestly wished he might not have been invited to stay, she was obliged to let it take it’s course. She left her friend’s room no more that evening; and gave her whole thoughts and attention to keeping her quiet and administering her medicines, which Mrs. Stafford seemed pleased to receive from her hands.

  Mr. Stafford was one of those unfortunate characters, who having neither perseverance and regularity to fit them for business, or taste and genius for more refined pursuits, seek, in every casual occurrence or childish amusement, relief against the tedium of life. Tho’ married very early, and tho’ father of a numerous family, he had thrown away the time and money, which should have provided for them, in collecting baubles, which he had repeatedly possessed and discarded, ‘till having exhausted every source that that species of idle folly offered, he had been driven, by the same inability to pursue proper objects, into vices yet more fatal to the repose of his wife, and schemes yet more destructive to the fortune of his family. Married to a woman who was the delight of her friends and the admiration of her acquaintance, surrounded by a lovely and encreasing family, and possessed of every reasonable means of happiness, he dissipated that property, which ought to have secured it’s continuance, in vague and absurd projects which he neither loved or understood; and his temper growing more irritable in proportion as his difficulties encreased, he sometimes treated his wife with great harshness; and did not seem to think it necessary, even by apparent kindness and attention, to excuse or soften to her his general ill conduct, or his ‘battening on the moor’ of low and degrading debauchery.

  Mrs. Stafford, who had been married to him at fifteen, had long been unconscious of his weakness: and when time and her own excellent understanding pressed the fatal conviction too forcibly upon her, she still, but fruitlessly, attempted to hide from others what she saw too evidently herself.

  Fear for the future fate of her children, and regret to find that she had no influence over her husband, together with the knowledge
of connections to which she had till a few months before been a stranger, had given to Mrs. Stafford, whose temper was naturally extremely chearful, that air of despondence, and melancholy cast of mind, which Emmeline had remarked with so much concern on their first acquaintance.

  To such a man as Mr. Stafford, the arrival of Delamere afforded novelty, and consequently some degree of satisfaction. He took it into his head to be extremely civil to him, and pressed him to continue some time at his house; but Delamere well knew that Emmeline would be made unhappy by his remaining more than one night; as Mr. Stafford entered however so warmly into his interest, he begged of him to recollect whether there was not any house to be let within a few miles of Woodfield.

  Mr. Stafford instantly named a hunting seat of Sir Philip Carnaby’s, which he said would exactly suit him. It’s possessor, whom some disarrangement in his affairs had obliged to go abroad for a few years, had ordered it to be let ready furnished, from year to year.

  Delamere went the next morning to the attorney who let it; and making an agreement for it, ordered in all the requisites for his immediate residence; and, till it was ready, accepted Mr. Stafford’s invitation to remain at Woodfield.

  Emmeline, who confined herself wholly to her friend’s apartment, knew nothing of this arrangement ‘till it was concluded: and when she heard it, remonstrance and objection were vain.

  The illness of Mrs. Stafford, tho’ it did not gain ground, was still very alarming, and called forth, to a painful excess, that lively sympathy which Emmeline felt for those she loved. She continued to attend her with the tenderest assiduity; and after five days painful suspence, had the happiness to find her out of danger, and well enough to hear the relation Emmeline had to make of the involuntary elopement.

  Mrs. Stafford advised her immediately to write to Lord Montreville; which her extreme anxiety only had occasioned her so long to delay.

  CHAPTER VIII

  Lord Montreville and Sir Richard Crofts, after exhausting every mode of enquiry at the end of their journey, without having discovered any traces of the fugitives, returned to London. The uncertainty of what was become of his son, and concern for the fate of Emmeline, made his Lordship more unhappy than he had yet been: and the reception he met with on his return home did not contribute to relieve him; he found that no intelligence had been received of Delamere; and Lady Montreville beset him with complaints and reproaches. The violence of her passions had, for some months, subjected her to fits; and the evasion of her son, and her total ignorance of what was become of him, had kept her in perpetual agony during Lord Montreville’s absence. His return after so successless a journey encreased her sufferings, and she was of a temper not to suffer alone, but to inflict on others some part of the pain she felt herself.

  Lord Montreville attempted in vain to appease and console her. Nothing but some satisfactory account of Delamere had the least chance of succeeding; and his Lordship, who now supposed that Delamere and Emmeline were concealed in the neighbourhood of London, determined to persevere in every means of discovering them.

  For this purpose he had again recourse to the Crofts’; and Sir Richard and both his sons readily undertook to assist him in his search, and particularly the elder undertook it with the warmest zeal.

  This young man inherited all the cunning of his father, together with a coolness of temper which supplied the place of solid understanding and quick parts; since it always gave him time to see where his interest lay, and steadiness to pursue it. By incessant assiduity he had acquired the confidence of Lady Montreville, to whom his attention and attendance were become almost necessary.

  Her Ladyship never dreamed that a man of his rank could lift his eyes to either of her daughters, and therefore encouraged his constant attendance on them both; while Crofts was too sensible of the value of such an alliance not to take advantage of the opportunities that were incessantly afforded him.

  Lady Montreville had repeatedly declared, that if Delamere married Emmeline all that part of the fortune which she had a right to give away should be the property of her eldest daughter. This was upwards of six thousand pounds a year; and whether this ever happened or not, Crofts knew that what was settled on younger children, which must at all events be divided between the two young ladies, would make either of them a fortune worth all attempts, independent of the connection he would form by it with Lord Montreville, who now began to make a very considerable figure in the political world.

  With these views, Crofts had for near two years incessantly applied himself to conciliate the good opinion of the whole family, with so much art that nobody suspected his designs. The slight and contemptuous treatment he had always received from Delamere, he had affected to pass by with the calm magnanimity of a veteran statesman; and emulating the decided conduct and steady indifference of age, rather than yielding to the warmth of temper natural to five and twenty, he was considered as a very rising and promising young man by the grave politicians with whom he associated, and by those of his own age a supercilious and solemn coxcomb.

  He had studied the characters of the two Miss Delameres, and found that of the eldest the fittest for his purpose; tho’ the person of the youngest, and the pride which encased the heart of the other, would have made a less able politician decide for Augusta. But he saw that the very pride which seemed an impediment to his hopes, might, under proper management, contribute to their success. He saw that she really loved nobody but herself; that her personal vanity was greater than the pride of her rank; and that her heart was certainly on that side assailable. He therefore, by distant hints and sighs, affected concealment; and artful speeches gave her to understand that all his prudence had not been able to defend him from the indiscretion of a hopeless passion.

  While he was contented to call it hopeless, Miss Delamere, tho’ long partial to Fitz-Edward, could not refuse herself the indulgence of hearing it; and at length grew so accustomed to allow him to talk to her of his unbounded and despairing love, that she found it very disagreeable to be without him.

  He saw, that unless a title and great estate crossed his path, his success, tho’ it might be slow, was almost certain. But he was obliged to proceed with caution; notwithstanding he would have been very glad to have secured his prize before the return of Delamere to his family threw an obstacle in his way which was the most formidable he had to contend with.

  He affected, however, the utmost anxiety to discover him; and recited to Lord Montreville an exhortation he intended to pronounce to him, if he should be fortunate enough to do so.

  Nothing could be a greater proof of his Lordship’s opinion of Crofts than his entrusting him with a commission, which, if successful, could hardly fail of irritating the fiery and ungovernable temper of Delamere, and driving him into excesses which it would require all the philosophic steadiness of Crofts to support without resentment.

  While Sir Richard and his two sons therefore set about the difficult task of finding Delamere, Lord Montreville went himself to Fitz-Edward; but heard that for many days he had not been at his apartments, that he had taken no servants with him, and that they knew not whither he was gone, or when he would return.

  Lord Montreville, who had depended more on the information of Fitz-Edward than any other he hoped to obtain, left a note at his lodgings desiring to see him as soon as he came to town, and went back in encreased uneasiness to his own house. But among the numberless letters which lay on his library table, the directions of which he hastily read in a faint hope of news of Delamere, he saw one directed by the hand of Emmeline. He tore it eagerly open — it contained an account of all that had happened, written with such clearness and simplicity as immediately impressed it’s truth; and it is difficult to say whether Lord Montreville’s pleasure at finding his son still unmarried, or his admiration at the greatness of his niece’s mind, were the predominant emotion.

  When the former sentiment a little subsided, and he had time to reflect on all the heroism of her conduct, he was almost a
shamed of the long opposition he had given to his son’s passion; and would, if he had not known his wife’s prejudices invincible, have acknowledged, that neither the possession of birth or fortune could make any amends to him, who saw and knew how to value the beauty of such a mind as that of Emmeline. The inveterate aversion and insurmountable pride of Lady Montreville, he had no hope of conquering; and she had too much in her power, to suffer his Lordship to think of Delamere’s losing such a large portion of his inheritance by disobeying her. For these reasons he checked the inclination he felt rising in his own heart to reward and receive his niece, and thought only of taking advantage of her integrity to separate his son from her for ever.

  He went with the letter in his hand to Lady Montreville’s apartment, where he found Mr. Crofts and the two young ladies.

  He read it to them; and when he had finished it, expressed in the warmest terms his approbation of Miss Mowbray’s conduct. Lady Montreville testified nothing but satisfaction at what she called ‘the foolish boy’s escape from ruin,’ without having the generosity to applaud her, whose integrity was so much the object of admiration.

  Possessing neither candour nor generosity herself, she was incapable of loving those qualities in another; and in answer to Lord Montreville’s praises of Emmeline, which she heard with reluctance, she was not ashamed to say, that perhaps were the whole truth known, his Lordship would find but little reason to set up his relation’s character higher than that of his own children — to which her eldest daughter added— ‘Why, to be sure, Madam, there is, as my father says, something very extraordinary in Miss Mowbray’s refusing such a match — that is, if she has no other attachment.’

  Augusta Delamere heard all that her father said in commendation of her beloved Emmeline, with eyes suffused with tears, which drew on her the anger of her mother and the malignant sneers of her sister.