Charlotte Smith- Collected Poetical Works

by Charlotte Smith

  He had not yet determined how he should introduce himself to the dear dejected group, when he arrived at the coffee-house, where he discharged his coach, and called for a private room. He then, since no better expedient occurred to him, desired a pen, ink, and paper, and in an hand which he attempted to disguise (and he trembled so as to aid the deception) he wrote these few words to Selina – ‘Your brother Orlando is living, and in England – have the presence of mind not to betray this secret, which will I think give you great pleasure, to your mother too suddenly; and when he knows he can come without too much surprising your mother, he will be at your door.’ – He had hardly finished and directed this note, in which he tried to alter his hand only that the sight of it might not so suddenly strike his sister as to render his precaution useless, he recollected, that as Perseus the negro was now his mother’s servant, he had better go himself to the door of the house; discover himself to that faithful fellow; and contrive, by his means, to speak to Selina first.

  This scheme appeared to him so much better than the first, that he determined to put it into immediate execution. However, he put the note he had written into his pocket, that if Perseus happened not to be at home, he might still proceed as he had at first intended.

  With a beating heart he approached the door, and hesitated with apprehension before he could determine to knock at it. At length he gave a loud single rap, and Perseus appeared. – ‘Do you know me, Perseus?’ said Orlando, in a low voice. ‘Know you,’ answered the negro, who spoke pretty good English, and without much of the negro accent – ‘No! how should I know you?’ ‘Have you forgot,’ said Orlando, ‘the morning we passed together in the wood, on the banks of Hudson’s River?’ While he thus spoke, Perseus held the candle, which he had set down in the passage, to his face, and with a sudden exclamation letting it fall, he ran as fast as he could back into the kitchen, declaring to the two maids, as trembling he threw himself into a chair, that he had seen a ghost.

  The elder of these women, a stout peasant from the weald of Sussex, who had no notion of ghosts, huffed the affrighted negro for his folly, and said, ‘I wonder what you mean, Perseus – why sure you are not in your right wits? A ghost quotha! I hope you have not left the door open, with your ghosts?’

  ‘I cannot tell,’ cried Perseus – ‘but you better see – I see master Orlando’s ghost, and I’ll go no more.’

  Orlando, foreseeing that from the poor fellow’s terror, all the risk would be incurred which he had wished to avoid, now walked into the house, in the hope of preventing his mother and sisters from being alarmed by the folly of the servants; and when Hannah ascended to secure the door, which she had been strictly enjoined never to leave of an evening without a chain, she met Orlando on the top of the stairs. Struck with equal terror, though from a different cause, she now screamed and returned to the kitchen, where, as well as her fright would let her, she declaimed against the folly of Perseus, who being afraid of a ghost, had let in a man.

  Orlando, provoked by the ridiculous fears of both, now went into the kitchen; and not without difficulty convinced the negro that he was alive; and the maid, that he had no intention to rob the house; but all the clamour that these mistakes had excited, could not be unheard in the room where Mrs Somerive was sitting with her daughters; and the bell had rung violently several times, before the assurance of Orlando’s identity had restored to Perseus courage enough to obey the summons.

  Orlando entreated of him to go up, to account for the noise below as well as he could, and to beckon, or by some other means contrive to get his sister Selina out of the room. Perseus, trembling with his former apprehensions and his present joy, undertook to do this, and hastened up stairs. At the door of the dining-room Selina stood, and asked him if any thing was the matter below; and Mrs Somerive eagerly repeated the question, saying – ‘Perseus, is any thing wrong below? who was at the door?’ – He advanced to the table near which his mistress was sitting, and saying to Selina in an half whisper as he passed her – ‘’Tis your brother, miss, you go see him,’ he answered to the questions Mrs Somerive asked him – ‘No, Ma’am – no bad matter – only that I thinked, that I . . . that Hannah . . . she say – ‘ His confusion was the more evident, the more he attempted to conceal it; nor did his dark skin conceal the emotion of his spirits; while Selina, who believed it was her elder brother, and who felt only terror at his name, approached the table paler than death; and Mrs Somerive, convinced that something was the matter below, though she could not conjecture what, arose from her seat, and taking a candle said, ‘What can have happened? Selina, my child – if you know it, for God’s sake tell me! – Alas!’ added she, recollecting all that had happened to her within so short a space – ‘after all I have suffered, what can I have to fear?’

  She now approached the door, while neither Selina nor the servant had courage to stop her. – But in the passage she was met by Hannah, whom Orlando, mistrusting the skill of his first messenger, had sent up, while he waited himself at the foot of the stairs. Mrs Somerive, more convinced from the appearance of the maid, that some alarming circumstance had happened, was struck with the idea of fire, and calling to her two daughters to follow her, said: ‘The lower part of the house is on fire – let us, if it is so, make our escape. – Selina! Emma! my children! let me at least save something.’

  ‘Dear ma’am,’ exclaimed Hannah, ‘how you do fright yourself! – Lord! there’s no fire below, I assure you; I’m sure if there was, we should not stand staring here; but don’t be frightened, pray, ma’am! nothing at all is the matter, but very good news – Come, ma’am; pray go back into the room and sit down, and make yourself easy; you can’t imagine, I’m sure, as that I would go for to deceive you.’

  Mrs Somerive, hardly knowing what to believe, returned into the room; and Hannah following her, said – ‘Now, ma’am, as you be so calm I’ll tell you, it is the young captain, ma’am, your son – he is not dead, thank God!’

  ‘Not dead!’ cried Mrs Somerive, ‘my Orlando alive! Oh! it is impossible; don’t be so inhuman as to awaken such hopes, only to aggravate my misery. He is dead, and I shall never see him more!’ ‘No, no,’ said Perseus, ‘young captain’s alive!’ ‘He is indeed, ma’am,’ cried Hannah. ‘Where?’ said Selina, ‘where is my brother?’ ‘He is below, miss,’ said she, in a low voice. – Selina rushed out of the room, and Orlando caught her in his arms. Emma, divided between her fears for her mother, who rested almost insensible on the arm of the servant, and the anxious desire to see her brother, trembled and wept a moment; and then seeing him actually enter, Selina resting on his arm, she uttered a faint shriek, and flew back towards her mother, at whose feet Orlando kneeling, besought her to recollect and compose herself. She threw her arms round him, but convulsive sobs were the only signs she gave of recollection; while the servant was bathing her temples, and her two daughters entreating her, for their sakes, to assume a composure, which their own extreme agitation proved they did not themselves possess.

  The scene was too painful, though produced by excess of happiness, to last long. The certainty that her son, her beloved Orlando, was living, was joy to which the mind of Mrs Somerive, long weighed down by affliction, could not sustain without feeling what almost approached to a momentary deprivation of reason; but the manly tenderness of Orlando, who argued with her, and the lively sensibility of her two girls, who hung around her, and entreated her not to destroy herself, now that they were so blest as to have their brother restored to them, at length called her to a greater serenity of mind; yet as she looked at Orlando, she started, she trembled, and seemed to doubt whether she was awake; and when she spoke to him of his father, she relapsed into such inarticulate expressions of agonizing sorrow, that her children, looking in consternation at each other, dreaded the consequence, so much had she in those moments the appearance of a person about to lose her reason.

  There was another topic which had not during the first hour of their incoherent conference been touched; and Orla
ndo, who dreaded it, endeavoured to avoid it. This was the loss of his sister Isabella; for that she had perished at sea; in their ill-starred voyage to America, he now more than ever believed. He tried therefore to call off the attention of his mother from what she had lost; and to convince her, that not merely her son restored to her, but restored to her as affectionate, and as much attached to his family, as when in an evil hour he quitted it.

  Mrs Somerive, feeling herself unequal to some kind of conversation that evening, confined herself, when she was able to do more than gaze at her son, to questions that related wholly to himself. She observed how very much he was altered – that his hair, of which in his infancy and youth she had been so vain, was grown much darker, and had been cut close to his head. Orlando, to escape from subjects which he thought would be from their catastrophes more painful to her, gave her, or rather attempted to give her, a short history of his adventures, from his leaving New York till his return to England; but when he came to speak of the wounds he had received, and of his being carried up the country by the Iroquois, she became so extremely faint, that Selina advised her, and she consented to desist from any farther enquiries, till she was better able to bear the relation of Orlando’s sufferings. At the request of her children she consented to go early to rest, where Emma was to remain with her till she became more calm; and when Selina had seen her to bed, and left her in much quieter spirits, she returned to Orlando, who was in an agony of impatience to enquire about Monimia, which in his mother’s presence he had not dared to alleviate or to betray.

  When his sister returned to him, they both sat down by the fire; and the soft-tempered Selina yielded to those emotions, which during her mother’s alarming situation she had struggled to suppress. Orlando, his eyes overflowing, tenderly kissed her hand, and said – ‘Are those tears, my own Selina, given to past sorrows? or are they excited by your knowledge of tidings yet to come, that will wound the heart of your brother worse than any of the accumulated miseries which he has told you he has collected since his landing in England? – Monimia! what is her fate, Selina? Where is she? am I completely miserable?’ – He could not go on, nor could his sister immediately answer him – ‘You do not speak, Selina,’ cried he eagerly . . . . ‘I can hear nothing worse than my fears suggest, nor can any torment equal this horrid suspense.’

  ‘Indeed,’ answered Selina in a tremulous voice – ‘indeed I know no reason to believe that you ought to be in despair about her, but – ‘ ‘But!’ exclaimed he – ‘but what? – You believe – you don’t know? Have you not seen her then, Selina? Is it possible you can have been so cruel to her, and to me, as to have abandoned her, because she was abandoned by all the rest of the world, because you thought me dead . . . ? Oh, Selina! should you not therefore have cherished, with redoubled tenderness, her who was so very dear to me?’

  ‘Have patience with me, my dear brother,’ replied Selina – ‘pray, have patience with me; and do not, do not condemn me unheard, nor suppose that I would willingly neglect or forsake her whom you loved, and whom I loved too . . . .But . . .’

  ‘You have however forsaken her! you do not know where she is now?’

  ‘No indeed, I do not,’ answered Selina – ‘nor have I heard of her for many, many months.’

  ‘Well,’ cried Orlando, with a deep sigh, ‘I have patience, you see, Selina – I do not beat my breast, nor dash myself against the wall. I am wretched, my sister; but I will believe you could do nothing in performance of your solemn promise, nothing to avert such extreme wretchedness, and I will not reproach you.’

  ‘You will have no cause,’ replied the weeping Selina; ‘indeed, Orlando, you will have none, when you have heard all I have to say – Oh! if you did but know all we have suffered!’

  ‘Poor Monimia!’ sighed Orlando, ‘she too has suffered, and in this general wreck I have lost her – You do not even know then,’ continued he, ‘you do not even know if she yet lives? I would rather hear of her death, than of her being exposed to all the dangers I dread for her, perhaps to disgrace, to shame, to infamy . . . . ‘ This idea was too horrible; he started from his chair, wildly traversed the room; and it was some time before Selina could persuade him to listen quietly to the relation he yet continued to demand of her.

  CHAPTER V

  ‘WHEN you left us, my brother,’ said Selina, ‘we hardly thought it possible that any sorrow could exceed what your departure and the apparent estrangement of Philip inflicted on us all; yet in a very few days we learned that, heavy as these evils were, they were only the beginning of that long train of calamity which was about to overtake us. Isabella disappeared within two days, and left a letter to say that she was gone with Captain Warwick to America.’

  ‘And pray tell me,’ said Orlando, interrupting her, ‘was my poor father extremely hurt at her elopement?’

  ‘Not so much at her elopement, as at her having deceived him; for I do not believe, Orlando, that my father ever thought of Isabella’s marrying General Tracy without pain and doubts of her future happiness. But it grieved him severely to reflect that Isabella was capable of deception, which, notwithstanding the rashness of her going away with a man she hardly knew, must have been meditated for some days.’

  ‘Did my father believe me to have been a party in this deception?’

  ‘Of that he sometimes doubted: yet after dwelling on those doubts a moment, he would say, ‘No – Orlando could never be acquainted with the plan of these two young people; – Orlando would not have concealed their intentions from me – Orlando never in his life deceived me – He is all integrity and candour –’

  ‘And in this persuasion my father died?’

  ‘Yes; and never spoke of you, Orlando, but as the hope and reliance of us all.’

  Orlando sighed deeply, reflecting that he had not deserved in this single instance the confidence of his father; yet he rejoiced that, believing him ignorant of his sister’s flight, this opinion of his integrity had not been impaired where it could have done no good to have known the truth, and would only have inflicted another wound on his father’s heart. Selina proceeded.

  ‘We received your letter from Portsmouth, and some days afterwards another from Isabella – I believe it was near a fortnight afterwards – She was about to embark for America with her husband, who had hired a small vessel for that purpose, having missed his passage. – This, in some degree, quieted the apprehensions of my father about my sister; though, as General Tracy almost immediately disinherited his nephew, we had the mortification of knowing that Isabella had married in what is called a very indiscreet way. – However, as nothing could be objected to Captain Warwick, but his conduct towards his uncle, and his consequent want of fortune; and as the young people seemed to be passionately attached to each other, my father seemed gradually to lose his anger, and to recover his spirits; when a new instance of Philip’s cruel disregard for us all threw him into an illness of so dangerous a nature, or rather so hastened the progress of that which uneasiness about him had first brought on, that he was soon given up by the physicians. It was then that, believing himself dying, and feeling more concern for the state in which he was about to leave us than for his own dissolution, he sent to Mrs Rayland to come to him – a step which, he said, was very hazardous, but which he could not satisfy himself without taking. She came; we were none of us present at the conversation – but my father told us, as soon as she was gone, that his mind was now quite easy, and that he should die content, at least as far as related to pecuniary affairs; for Mrs Rayland had assured him, that in her last will she had given you the Rayland estate, and entailed it all upon your posterity, on condition of your taking the name and bearing the arms of Rayland only: that she had set apart a sum for the purchase of a baronet’s title; and that was the only money, except legacies to her servants to the amount of eight thousand pounds in the whole, which she had appropriated – having given you all the rest of her real and personal estate; and my father said that the latter had accumulated much
more than he was aware of.

  ‘I am sure, said he, when he had told us this – I am sure that Orlando will use, as he ought to do, the power that is thus put into his hands to secure the provision for you, my love (speaking to my mother), and for our dear girls – Nay, that, if our poor unhappy Philip should, as my fears prognosticate, utterly dissipate his paternal fortune, that he too will find a resource in the fraternal affection of his younger brother. In this persuasion my father became much easier, and, we hoped, grew much better: but a discovery that he very unluckily made by opening a letter intended for my brother, which, from the names being alike, he thought was his own – a discovery that Philip was actually in treaty with Stockton for the sale of his future interest in the estate at West Wolverton, quite undid all the good effects of Mrs Rayland’s generosity, and in less than a fortnight we lost our dear father – who, alas! Orlando, died of a broken heart!

  ‘I will not distress you with a description of the terrible scene – I mean that of his last hours; for, though, he died calmly, recommending us to your protection and to that of Heaven, the distraction of my mother is not to be described; and I never think of it but my heart sinks within me. – When the first shock was a little over, my mother reflected on the necessity of her living for us, unprotected and helpless as we were, and she became more tranquil; though I am sorry to say that the presence of my brother Philip, who came down as soon as he heard of my father’s death, did not serve to assist her in the recovery of her spirits. – On the contrary, his evident wish that we might soon remove the house, and his bringing down a mistress, whom he seemed impatient to put into it, were far from being cordials to a mind so oppressed with her recent loss. – The only hope that sustained her was your return and succeeding to the Rayland estate: but even this comfortable hope was diminished and embittered by a thousand fears: – days, and weeks, and months, were passed, and we had not heard of your arrival at New-York; but learned that the fleet of transports, with which you sailed, was dispersed by a storm, and some of the vessels lost. This I heard, for ill news is always communicated early; but I kept it from my mother till Mrs Rayland’s impatience, who sent continually for news of you, and at length expressed her fears for you, in consequence of the accounts she saw in the newspapers, discovered it; and added to all the sufferings of my poor mother, doubts of your safety, which were more dreadful than any. –