Charlotte Smith- Collected Poetical Works

by Charlotte Smith

  Orlando, affected by seeing a man whom he had last seen as a guest of his father, gave, in a mild and low voice, into a little history of his adventures; the parole he had given, which precluded him from serving during the present war; and his wish therefore to transfer his commission to some one who might not be under the same disadvantages.

  General Tracy heard him with repulsive indifference, and then said – ‘Well, Sir, the commission is yours, and you are perfectly at liberty to keep or to dispose of it. – I am very far from meaning to trouble you with my advice; but as your expectations of Mrs Rayland’s fortune are all disappointed, I should have supposed a profession might have been found useful to you. However, Sir, you are the best judge. The commission is yours – I am sorry I am too much indisposed to have the pleasure of your company longer, and I wish you a good day.’ He then rang, and his valet appearing, he bade him open the door.

  Orlando, thus dismissed, retired in anger, which he had no means of venting; and went back to the coffee-house, where his friend waited for him, to whom he forbore, however, to speak of Tracy’s behaviour; because he could not but feel that if he believed him, as he probably did, concerned in the elopement of Isabella with Warwick, he had some grounds for his resentment – a resentment which, when Orlando reflected on his humiliation, and his being now tormented by bodily infirmities, he was too generous not to forgive. His friend, a lieutenant in the 51st, now went with him to the office of an agent, to treat about his commission; and, as they went, related to him, that it was believed at the War-office, Warwick had perished at sea, as there never was an instance of a man’s being missing for so many months; and that, had he been taken prisoner by an American or French privateer, and carried to some of their places of rendezvous, he would before now have written home, or he would have been exchanged. This appeared to be but too probable; but still Orlando, in recollecting how he had been situated himself, entertained a faint hope that they might yet hear of his friend and his sister, though the dangers and difficulties to which the latter might have been exposed made him tremble. Having put his business in the proper train, he returned home, meditating, as he went, on all the strange and disagreeable occurrences that had happened since he used to traverse these streets with Warwick, who had lodgings in Bond-street. – All the scenes he had passed through arose in lively succession in his mind, and that for the first time since his landing in England; for the shocks he received on his arrival at Rayland Hall, and by hearing of the death of his father, had for a while absorbed all other recollections. – He now considered, that when his commission was disposed of, his whole fortune would be only between three and four hundred pounds; yet, with the sanguine spirit of a young man, which his former severe disappointments had not checked, he believed that, with a sum so moderate, he could, by dint of perseverance and industry, find some reputable employment, by which he might not only be enabled to assist his mother, but to keep a wife, as he was resolved, the moment he could find Monimia, to marry her; and in this only he thought he might be forgiven for not consulting his mother – to his duty and affection towards whom he never meant that any other attachment should be injurious.

  He had not yet had time to talk to Selina, of the law-suit which he heard Philip had instituted for the recovery of the Rayland estate; but he had in the evening an opportunity of talking about it to Selina, and heard that it now languished, partly for want of money, and partly through Philip’s neglect, who had of late again disappeared, and therefore nothing was likely to be made of the suit.

  Orlando enquired against whom, and on what grounds it was begun? – and learned, though Selina did not very clearly understand the terms, that it was against the reverend body who claimed the estate, one of whom (Doctor Hollybourn) had administered as executor; because the will nominated to that office the dean of the diocese for the time being, to which the doctor had succeeded a few days only before Mrs Rayland’s death; and that there was not only a suit at common law, but in chancery.

  As there was great reason to believe that there was another will entirely in his favour, which had been either secreted or destroyed, Orlando determined to attempt discovering this, and got a recommendation from his friend the lieutenant (for he was too much disgusted by the reception he met with from Mr Woodford to trouble him again) to a young attorney, before whom he laid the affair, and who gave him great encouragement to pursue it.

  But the occupation in which this engaged him, or in which he was engaged by the sale of his commission, that was now within a few days of being completed, could not for a moment detach his mind from those fears which continually haunted him for Monimia. – He waited with anxiety for the answer he expected from Winchester, which he had hoped to have, as he had very earnestly pressed for it, by the return of the post; but that, and another, and another post arrived without any letter; and he wrote again, waited again three days, and was again disappointed of an answer. – He now determined to go down himself, and find out the woman from whom Selina had received the information of Monimia’s removal; but, the day on which he had hired an horse, and was on the point of setting out for that place, he was visited by a man of between fifty and sixty, who sent in his name, in great form, as Mr Roker.

  If a painter had occasion to put upon his canvas a figure that should give an horrible idea of the worst, meanest, and most obnoxious passions – and to represent the most detestable character in Pandæmonium, where, on the brow, villany sits enjoying the misery it occasions – where every rascal vice, concealed by cowardice and cunning, are mingled with arrogance, malice, and cruelty – where a nose, the rival of Bardolph’s, depends over a mouth ‘grinning horribly a ghastly smile,’ – and scornful eyes, askance, seemed to be watching, with inverted looks, the birth of chicanery in the brain – this fiend-like wretch would have been a fine study. His shambling figure appeared to have been repaired with straw and rags, since it had suffered depredations on a well-earned gibbet – A figure more adapted to the purpose of scaring crows, was never exhibited in former days as Guy Vaux, the Pope, or the Pretender.

  Orlando was somewhat surprised to behold this strange being, who, strutting up close to him, put his nose almost in his face, and then, in a sonorous voice, said –

  ‘Your name, Sir, is Somerive?’

  ‘I suppose you know it is,’ replied Orlando, ‘since you come to seek me by it.’

  ‘You wrote, Sir, to my nephew’s wife, Mrs Rachel Roker –’

  ‘Well, Sir, and I expected Mrs Rachel Roker would have answered my letter.’

  ‘No, Sir – We make it a rule never to put our hands to any thing – We desire to know, Sir, your reasons for writing – I call, Sir, in behalf of Mrs Rachel Roker – You ask after a young woman, Sir, whom she kept out of charity – Now, Sir, though we never do give answers to matters so irrelevant, my client, that is my niece, Mrs Rachel Roker, does hereby inform you, that she the said Rachel –’

  Orlando, anxious as he was, and trembling in the expectation of hearing something of Monimia, could not check his indignation and impatience – ‘Your niece! your client! – What is all this to me?’ said he.

  ‘Sir,” cried the fiend, ‘have patience if you please – I go on in this matter according to the due course, and such as I always observe in all my business, whether it relates to Sir John Winnerton Weezle, Baronet, my very worthy client, or any other. Now, Sir – Nay, Sir – (seeing Orlando about to speak) – nay, Sir, hear me! And when I have done, Sir, you shall speak in turn –’

  ‘You will be pleased then,’ said Orlando, ‘to be brief, as patience is not my forte.’

  He felt much disposed to prove this assertion by turning the fellow down stairs; but, recollecting the he might thus lose all trace of Monimia, which her aunt might otherwise afford him, he checked himself: and the man proceeded in an harangue of some length, tending to give an high opinion of his abilities, and of his skill in conducting causes; laying much stress on the confidence with which he was treated by Sir John Winner
ton Weezle, Baronet, and his brother, Thomas Weezle, Esquire, who seemed to have taken, from their rank, great hold on his imagination; and he at length concluded with saying, that the girl Orlando enquired after had behaved most ungratefully to his niece Mrs Rachel Roker, and had contemptuously refused to marry advantageously to a Baronet; a man of great rank, Sir Johm Berkely Belgrave, Baronet: – an acquaintance of his client and very good friend, Sir John Winnerton Weezle, Baronet, and Thomas Weezle, Esquire, his brother: – wherefore Mrs Rachel Roker had discarded her; and the person to whom she was bound apprentice was now a prisoner for debt in some of the London prisons, and this girl had left her for another service, nobody knowing whither she was gone.

  This account almost drove Orlando to distraction. From the man’s coming himself on a message with which he had so little to do; and from several other observations he made while he was talking, it seemed as if he had some particular reason for wishing to put an end to all farther enquiry on the part of Orlando – who now, stifling his detestation, asked it he could not see Mrs Roker, formerly Mrs Lennard? The attorney said, No! that she was not only a great distance from London, but kept her bed, and saw nobody. In the course of these enquiries, which he now insisted upon some answer to, he found that this Roker and his nephew were employed by the reverend body of clergy to defend their right to the Rayland estate against Philip Somerive; and it was easy to see, that the arrival of Orlando in England was the thing in the world these worthy gentlemen the least expected and the least wished. –

  When this hateful being was gone, Orlando, after a moment’s reflection, resolved upon visiting all those receptacles of misery in London, where poverty is punished by loss of liberty, and where, in a land eminent for its humanity, many thousands either perish, or are rendered by confinement and desperation unfit to return to society – where vice and misfortune are confounded, and patient wretchedness languishes unpitied, unrelieved, unknown – while villany shews that, if there is money to support it, it will triumph in despite of punishment.

  Selina knew the name of the person – Mrs Newill, to whom Monimia had been consigned; and Orlando, making a memorandum of it in his pocket-book, with such other circumstances as might lead to a discovery, set out on his melancholy search.

  He had now been near a fortnight in London, and had in a great measure recovered his looks – so that he was no longer a stranger to the few acquaintances he had: and his mother beheld with satisfaction the same Orlando, on whose fine figure and ingenuous countenance she had formerly so fondly prided herself.

  His first visit was to the Fleet-prison – He enquired of every one likely to inform him, if the person whom he named to them was there? But mistrust seemed universal in that scene of legal wretchedness; and, with an heart bleeding at the thoughts of there being such complicated miseries, and that man had the power to inflict them on his fellow-creatures, he almost wished himself again among the cypress swamps and pathless woods of uncultivated America, that he might fly from the legal crimes to which such scenes were owing; when, indulging this mournful train of thought, he quitted the prison, and walked slowly up Holborn Hill.

  There was a crowd just before he reached St Andrew’s church, and several coaches stood at the door of an haberdasher’s shop. In his making his way by them, a female figure, very smartly and somewhat tawdrily drest, took his arm and cried – ‘Ah, Sir! Your name is Mr Orland Somerive!’ ‘It is, indeed,’ replied Orlando; ‘but I do not know, Madam, how I deserve the honour of your being acquainted with it.’

  ‘What! have you forgot me then?’ said the lady: ‘Lord! How soon old acquaintances are forgot!’

  Orlando then thought he knew the voice, and had some recollection of the face; but he still hesitated, unable to remember where he had heard or seen either. – ‘Have you far to go?’ said she, still detaining him – ‘I have a carriage here, and can put you down – Lord! Why, have you really forgot Betsy Richards?’

  Orlando now immediately recollected his former acquaintance, and what he had heard of her being entertained as a mistress by Philip occurred to him: as he had been very solicitous ever since his return to see his brother, he now eagerly enquired where he was. ‘Ah, Lord!’ cried the girl, shaking her head, ‘I have but very so so news to tell you about him, that’s the truth – But dear! one can’t talk of them sort of things in the street – why, I sha’n’t bite you, Sir – you may as well get into the coach with me.’ Orlando, though unwilling to be seen with such a companion, yet on finding she could give him some information of his brother, determined to accept the offer; and the lady, who called herself Mistress Filmer, then ordered her carriage to advance: and Orlando seated himself by her, in an hired chariot with a black boy in a turban and feathers behind.

  Though he was persuaded nobody knew him, he was very much ashamed of the equipage; but, applying himself immediately to learn of his fair companion what he so much wished to know, he listened to her very attentively – and, after some circumlocution in a style peculiar to herself, he learned with inexpressible concern that his brother Philip was a prisoner, for a debt of an hundred and twenty pounds, in the place he had just been visiting; and that Mrs Filmer, though now under the protection of another person, yet retained so much recollection of her first seducer, and so much gratitude for the sums he had lavished on her, that she had that morning been to visit him, and only stopped in Holborn to make some purchases before she went to her lodgings in Charlotte-Street.

  Orlando could not bear to hear that his unhappy brother was in such a place, without going immediately to him. He staid only, therefore, a moment longer to enquire of Mrs Filmer, if she had, when she was in the country with his brother (for they had not long before, she said, been down at Stockton’s together), heard what was become of Monimia. She would have rallied him on his constansy, but he could not a moment endure to be trifled with; and, finding she knew nothing of importance, he said he recollected some material business in the city, whither he must return. – Then, stopping the chariot, he wished her a good day, and hastened back to the Fleet-prison.

  On enquiry for the person he wanted, he still found some difficulty in being admitted to him: but, on signifying that he was brother to Mr Somerive, which his resemblance to immediately confirmed, a turnkey, to whom he gave a shilling, walked before him to the apartment where Philip was confined.

  On his entrance, the neglected and altered figure of his brother struck him with the deepest concern – He was sitting at piquet with another prisoner, on a dirty table, where some empty porter-pots seemed to signify that they had lately taken their dinner. Philip hardly looked up; and Orlando stood a moment unnoticed, till the man who was with him cried – ‘Why, squire, here’s your honour’s brother.’

  “The devil it is!’ replied Philip – ‘By the Lord, though, but – let me see – It is he! – why, hast had a resurrection, my honest Rowland? – Thou wert killed and scalped, I thought, by the Cherokees.’

  ‘I almost wish I had, Philip,’ answered Orlando, ‘for I think I should have preferred death to what I now see.’

  “Why, to be sure, pleasanter sights may be seen if a man is in luck – For example, it would have been pleasanter for thee to have come home master of Rayland Hall – Eh! Sir Knight?’

  ‘Good God!’ exclaimed Orlando, “will you never, my brother, be reasonable? Will you never believe that, notwithstanding your repeated unkindness to me, I can never consider you otherwise than as my brother, and can have no motive in coming hither but to do you good?’

  “And what good canst do me? Canst let me out of this cage? Hast brought any money from the Yankies? any plunder, my little soldier? Canst lend me the ready to pay this confounded debt?’

  The person who was with Orlando, now supposing they might be upon business, left them together; and Philip finding from the generous earnestness of Orlando, that though he had very little money (in fact no more than the price of his commission, which he was to receive in a few days), he was willing to pay hi
s debt, and to share with him all that he should then have left, began to grow more civil to his brother, and did not refuse to lay before him, though his pride seemed cruelly mortified as he did it, the state of his affairs.

  CHAPTER VII

  THE unfortunate brother of Orlando now related to him, that though his actual debts were very great, the sum he was at present confined for was not much above ninety pounds; and his arrest was at the suit of the very attorney whom he had been persuaded by Stockton to employ – a young and inexperienced man; who having, without knowing what he was about, led his client into very heavy expences, had been, as it seemed, bribed by Roker to abandon him; and now, without returning his papers, had arrested him. Orlando, inexperienced as he still was in the miserable chicane with which our laws are disgraced and counteracted, yet knew that this could not be right, and that some means might be found to procure at least the papers such a man detained – This he promised his brother he would do, and take every necessary measure for his speedy release. He then gave Philip all the money he had in his pocket; and, leaving him with an heavy heart, returned home, not only disappointed in his search after Monimia, but that disappointment embittered by the discovery he had made of his brother’s situation, whom, now that he was in distress and in prison, Orlando forgave for all the calamities he had brought on his family, and for all the ill offices which jealousy had excited him to be guilty of against himself.

  Yet, to his mother he dared not speak of Philip; for, though she at present suffered extreme anguish in believing her son had forsaken her, after having so largely contributed to the dispersion and ruin of his family, she would, he knew, be quite overwhelmed by the intelligence that he was in prison. She had already in bitterness of heart experienced –

  ‘How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is