Charlotte Smith- Collected Poetical Works

by Charlotte Smith

  The extreme eagerness with which the Baron de St. Alpin had wished to revisit his estate, gave way to the pleasures he found in travelling in such society; and as Lady Westhaven had never been farther South than Lyons, and Emmeline had never seen the Southern Provinces at all, it was determined on their arrival at that city to proceed to the shore of the Mediterranean before they went into Switzerland.

  It was the finest season of the year and the loveliest weather imaginable. The party consulted therefore only pleasure on their way. Sometimes they went no more than a single stage in a day, and employed the rest in viewing any place in it’s neighbourhood worth their curiosity. They often left their carriages to walk, to saunter, to dine on the grass on provisions they had brought with them; and whenever a beautiful view or uncommon scene presented themselves, they stopped to admire them; and Bellozane drew sketches, which were put into Emmeline’s port feuille.

  As they were travelling between Marseilles and Toulon they entered a road bounded on each side by mountainous rocks, which sometimes receding, left between them small but richly cultivated vallies; and in other parts so nearly met each other, as to leave little more room than sufficed for the carriage to pass; while the turnings of the road were so angular and abrupt, that it seemed every moment to be carrying them into the bosom of the rock. Thro’ this defile, as it was quite shady, they agreed to walk.

  In some places huge masses impended over them, of varied form and colour, without any vegetation but scattered mosses; in others, aromatic plants and low shrubs; the lavender, the thyme, the rosemary, the mountain sage, fringed the steep craggs, while a neighbouring aclivity was shaded with the taller growth of holly, phillyrea, and ever-green oak; and the next covered with the glowing purple of the Mediterranean heath. The summits of almost all, crowned with groves of fir, larch, and pine.

  Emmeline in silent admiration beheld this beautiful and singular scene; and with the pleasure it gave her, a soft and melancholy sensation was mingled. She wanted to be alone in this delightful place, or with some one who could share, who could understand the satisfaction she felt. She knew nobody but Godolphin who had taste and enthusiasm enough to enjoy it.

  Insensibly she left Lady Westhaven and the Chevalier behind her; and passing his Lordship and the Baron, who were deeply engaged in a discourse about the military operations of the past war, she walked on with some quickness. Intent on the romantic wildness of the cliffs with which she was surrounded, and her mind associating with these objects the idea of him on whom it now perpetually dwelt, she had brought Godolphin before her, and was imagining what he would have said had he been with her; with what warmth he would enjoy, with what taste and spirit point out, the beauty of scenes so enchanting!

  She had now left her companions at some distance; yet as she heard their voices swell in the breeze along the defile, she felt no apprehension. In the narrowest part of it, where she saw only steep craggs and the sky, which their bending tops hardly admitted, she was stopped by a transparent stream, which bursting suddenly with some violence out of the rock, is received into a small reservoir of stone and then carried away in stone channels to a village at some distance.

  While Emmeline stood contemplating this beautiful spring, she beheld, in an excavation in the rock close to it, two persons sitting on a bench, which had been rudely cut for the passenger to rest. One of them appeared to be a man about fifty; he wore a short, light coloured coat, a waistcoat that had once been of embroidered velvet; from his head, which was covered first with a red thrum nightcap, and then with a small hat, bound with tarnished lace, depended an immense queüe; his face, tho’ thin and of a mahogena darkness, seemed to express penetration and good humour; and Emmeline, who had at first been a little startled, was no longer under alarm; when he, on perceiving her near the entrance of the cavern, flew nimbly out of it, bowed to the ground, and pulling off most politely his thrum nightcap, enquired— ‘Si Mademoiselle voudrez bien se reposer?’

  Emmeline thanked him, and advanced towards the bench; from which a girl about seventeen, very brown but very pretty, had on her approach arisen, and put up into a kind of wallet the remains of the provisions they had been eating, which were only fruit and black bread. As soon as the old Frenchman perceived that Emmeline intended to sit down, he sprung before her, brushed down the seat with his cap, and then making several profound bows, assured ‘Mademoiselle qu’elle pourroit s’asseoir sans incommodité.’

  The young woman, dressed like the paisannes of the country, was modestly retiring; but Emmeline desired her to remain; and entering into conversation with her, found she was the daughter of the assiduous old Frenchman, and that he was going with her to Toulon in hopes of procuring her a service.

  The Baron and Lord Westhaven now approached, and laughingly reproached Emmeline for having deserted them. She told them she was enchanted with the seat she had found, and should wait there for the Chevalier and Lady Westhaven.

  ‘I am only grieved,’ said she, ‘that I have disturbed from their humble supper these good people.’

  The two gentlemen then spoke to the old Frenchman; whose countenance had something of keen intelligence and humble civility which prejudiced both in his favour.

  ‘Je vois bien,” said he, addressing himself to Lord Westhaven,— ‘je vois bien que j’ai l’honneur de parler a un Milor Anglais.’

  ‘Eh! comment?’ answered his Lordship— ‘comment? tu connois donc bien les Anglais?’

  ‘Oh oui! — j’ai passé a leur service une partie de ma jeunesse. — Ils sont les meilleur maitres—’

  ‘Parle tu Anglais, mon ami?’

  ‘Yes Milor, I speak little English. Mais,’ continued he, relapsing into the volubility of his own language— ‘Mais il y’a à peu pres dix neuf ans, depuis que mon maitre — mon pauvre maitre mouroit dans mes bras; helas! — s’i avoit vecu — car il etoit tout jeun — j’aurois passé ma vie entiere avec lui — j’aurois retournez avec lui en Angleterre — Ah c’est un païs charmant que cette Angleterre.’

  ‘You have been there then?’

  He answered that he had been three times; and should have been happy had it pleased heaven to have ended his days there.

  ‘The praise you bestow on our country, my friend,’ said Lord Westhaven, ‘is worth at least this piece de six francs, and the beauty de cette jolie enfant, added he, turning towards the little paisanne, ‘is interesting enough to induce me to enquire whether such a gift may not serve to purchase quelques petites amplettes a la ville.’ He presented the young woman with another crown.

  The old Frenchman seemed ready to thank his Lordship with his tears.

  Without solicitation or ceremony, seeing that the gentlemen were disposed to listen to him, he began to relate his ‘short and simple’ story.

  Lady Westhaven and the Chevalier now arrived: but she sat down by Emmeline, and desired the old man to continue whatever he was saying.

  ‘He has been praising our country,’ said Lord Westhaven, ‘and in return I am willing to hear the history of himself, which he seems very desirous of relating.’

  ‘I was in the army,’ said he, ‘as we all are; till being taken with a pleurisy at Calais, and rendered long incapable of duty, I got my discharge, and hired myself as a travelling valet to a Milor Anglais. With him (he was the best master in the world) I lived six years. I went with him to England when he came to his estate, and five years afterwards came back with him to France. He met with a misfortune in losing une dame tres amiable, and never was quite well afterwards. To drive away trouble, pour se dissiper, he went among a set of his own countrymen, and I believe le chagrin, and living too freely, gave him a terrible fever. Une fievre ardente lui saisit a Milan, ses compagnons apparemment n’aimoit gueres les malades; for nobody came near him except a young surgeon who arrived there by accident, and hearing that an Englishman of fashion lay ill, charitably visited him. But it was too late: he had already been eleven days under the hands of an Italian physician, and when the English gentl
eman saw him he said he had only a few hours to live.

  ‘He sat by him, however. But my poor master was senseless; ‘till about an hour before he died he recovered his recollection.

  ‘He ordered me to bring him two little boxes, which he always carried with him, and charged me to go to England with his body, and deliver those boxes to a person he named. He bade me give one of his watches, which was a very rich one, to his brother, and told me to keep the other in memory of my master.

  ‘Then he spoke to the stranger— “Sir,” said he, “since you have the humanity to interest yourself for a person unknown to you, have the goodness to see that my servant is suffered to execute what I have directed, and put your seal on my effects. The money I have about me, my cloaths, and my common watch, I have given him. He knows what farther I would have done; I told him on the second day of my illness. Baptist — you remember — —”

  ‘He tried to say something more; but in a few moments he died in my arms.

  ‘With the assistance of the young English surgeon, I arranged every thing as my master directed. I went with his corps to England, and received a large present from his brother, whom, however, I did not see, because he was not in London. Then I returned to France.’

  ‘Since you loved England so much,’ enquired the Baron, ‘puisque vous aimiez tant cet païs pourquoi ne pas y’ rester?’

  ‘Ah, Monsieur! j’etois riche; et je brulez de partager mes richesse avec une jolie fille dont j’etois eperdument amoureux.’

  ‘Eh bien?’

  ‘I married her, Monsieur; and for above two years we were the happiest people on earth. But we were very thoughtless. Je ne scais comment cela se faisoit, mes espece Anglais, qui je croyais inepuisable se dissiperent peu a peu, et enfin il falloit songer a quelque provision pour ma femme et mes deux petites filles.’

  ‘I returned therefore into the Limosin, of which province I was a native; but some of my family were dead, and the rest had neither power or inclination to assist their poor relations. The seigneur of the village had bought a post at Paris, and was about to quit his chateau. He heard I was honest; and therefore, tho’ he had very little to lose, he put me into it. I worked in the garden, and raised enough, with the little wages we had, to keep us. My wife learned to work, and my two little girls were healthy and happy.

  ‘Oui Messieurs, nous etions pauvre a la verité! mais nous etions tres contents! ‘till about eight months ago; and then an epidemical distemper broke out in the village, and carried off my wife and my eldest daughter.

  ‘Oh, Therese! et toi ma petite Suzette, je te pleurs; encore amerement je te pleurs.’

  The poor Frenchman turned away and wept bitterly.

  ‘Je scais bien,’ continued he— ‘je scais bien qu’il faut s’accoutumer a les souffrances! We might still have lived on, Madelon and me, at our ruinous chateau; but the possessor of it dying, his son sent us notice that he should pull it down (indeed it must soon have fallen) and ordered us to quit it.

  ‘Ainsi me voila, Messieurs, a cinquante ans, sans pain. Mais pour cela je ne m’embarrasse pas; si je pourrois bien placer ma pauvre Madelon tout ira bien!’

  There was in this relation a touching simplicity which drew tears from Lady Westhaven and Emmeline. The whole party became interested for the father and the daughter, who had wept silently while he was relating their story.

  ‘Can nothing be done for these poor creatures?’ said Lady Westhaven.

  ‘Certainly we will assist them,’ answered her Lord.— ‘But let us enquire how we can best do it. Tu t’appelles?’ continued he, speaking to the Frenchman.

  ‘Baptiste La Fere — mais mon nomme de guerre, et de condition fut toujours Le Limosin.’

  ‘Dites moi donc, Monsieur Le Limosin,’ said his Lordship, ‘what hopes have you of placing your daughter at Toulon?’

  ‘Alas! Milor, but little. I know nobody there but an old relation of my poor wife’s, who is Touriere at a convent; and if I cannot get a service for Madelon, I must give the good abbess a little money to take her till I can do something better for her.’

  ‘And where do you expect to get money?’

  ‘Tenez, mon Seigneur,’ answered he, pulling a watch out of his pocket, ‘ayez la bonté d’examiner cet montre. It is an English watch. Gold; and in a gold case. I have been offered a great deal of money for it; but in all my poverty, in all my distresses, I have contrived to keep it because it was the last gift of my dear master. But now, my poor Madelon must be thought of, and if it must be so, I will sell it and pay for her staying in the convent.’

  ‘You shall not do that, my friend,’ replied Lord Westhaven, still holding the watch in his hand.

  It had a cypher, H. C. M. and a crest engraved on it.

  ‘H. C. M,’ said his Lordship, ‘and the Mowbray crest! Pray what was your master’s name?’

  ‘Milor Moubray,’ answered Le Limosin.

  ‘Comment? Milor Mowbray?’

  ‘Oui Milor — regardez s’il vous plait. Voila son chiffre, Henri-Charles Moubray — et voila le cimier du famille.’

  Emmeline, who no longer doubted but this was her father’s servant, was so much affected, that Lady Westhaven, apprehending she would faint, called for assistance; and the Chevalier, who during this conversation had attended only to her, snatched up the beechen cup out of which Le Limosin and Madelon had been drinking, and which still stood on the ground, and flying with it to the spring, brought it instantly back filled with water; while Lady Westhaven bathed her temples and held to her her salts. She soon recovered; and then speaking in a faint voice to his Lordship, said— ‘My Lord, this is the servant in whose arms my poor father expired. Do allow me to intercede with your Lordship for him and for his daughter; but let him not know, to-night at least, who I am. I cannot again bear a circumstantial detail about my father.’

  Lord Westhaven now led Le Limosin out of the cave; told him he had determined, as he had known his master’s family, to take him into his own service, and that Lady Westhaven would provide for his daughter. At this intelligence the poor fellow grew almost frantic. He would have thrown himself at the feet of his benefactor had he not been prevented; then flew back to fetch his Madelon, that she might join in prayers and benedictions; and hardly could Lord Westhaven persuade him to be tranquil enough to understand the orders he gave him, which were, to hire some kind of conveyance at the next village to carry his daughter to Toulon; where he gave him a direction to find his English benefactor the next day.

  It was now late; and the party hastened to leave this romantic spot, which had been marked by so singular a meeting. On their arrival at Toulon, they equipped, and sent away before them to St. Alpin, Le Limosin and Madelon, the latter of whom Lady Westhaven took entirely to wait on Emmeline.

  The soft heart and tender spirits of Emmeline had not yet recovered the detail she had heard of her father’s death. A pensive melancholy hung over her; which the Chevalier, nothing doubting his own perfections, hoped was owing to a growing affection for himself. But it had several sources of which he had no suspicion; and it made the remaining three weeks of their tour appear tedious to Emmeline; who languished to be at St. Alpin, where she hoped to find letters from Mrs. Stafford and from Lady Adelina. She thought it an age since she had heard from the latter; and secretly but anxiously indulged an hope of meeting a large pacquet, which might contain some intelligence of Godolphin.

  END OF THE THIRD VOLUME

  VOLUME IV

  CHAPTER I

  The Chateau de St. Alpin was a gloomy and antique building, but in habitable repair. The only constant resident in it for some years had been the Demoiselle de St. Alpin, now about five and forty; whose whole attention had been given to keeping it in order, and collecting, in the garden, variety of plants, in which she took singular pleasure. Detached from the world, and with no other relations than her brother and her nephews, whom she was seldom likely to see, she found in this innocent and amusing pursuit a resource against the tedium of life.
Her manners, tho’ simple, were mild and engaging; and her heart perfectly good and benevolent. With her, therefore, Emmeline was extremely pleased; and the country in which her residence was situated, was so beautiful, that accustomed to form her ideas of magnificent scenery from the first impressions that her mind had received in Wales, Emmeline acknowledged that her eye was here perfectly satisfied.

  With her heart it was far otherwise. On her arrival at St. Alpin, she found letters from Lady Adelina enclosed in others from Mrs. Stafford. Lady Adelina gave such an account of her own health as convinced Emmeline it was not improved since she left England. Of Mr. Godolphin she only said, that he was returned from Ireland, but had staid with her only a few hours, and was then obliged to go on business to London, where his continuance was uncertain.

  Mrs. Stafford gave of herself and her family a more pleasing account. She said she had hopes that the readjustment of Mr. Stafford’s affairs would soon allow of their return to England; and as it might possibly happen on very short notice, and before Emmeline could rejoin them, she had sent, by a family who were travelling to Geneva, and who readily undertook the care of it, a large box which contained some of her cloaths and the caskets which belonged to her, which had been long left at Mrs. Ashwood’s after Emmeline’s precipitate departure from her house with Delamere, and which, on Mrs. Ashwood’s marriage and removal, she had sent with a cold note (addressed to Miss Mowbray) to the person who negociated Mr. Stafford’s business in London.

  Their lengthened journey had so much broken in on the time allotted to their tour, that Lord and Lady Westhaven purposed staying only a month at St. Alpin. The Baron, who had equal pride and pleasure in the company of his nephew, endeavoured by every means in his power to make that time pass agreeably; and felt great satisfaction in shewing to the few neighbours who were within fifteen miles of his chateau, that he had, in an English nobleman of such rank and merit, so near a relation.