Charlotte Smith- Collected Poetical Works

by Charlotte Smith

  His wandering messenger was the next morning punctual to his appointment; Orlando sent him away with his letter; and notwithstanding his age and his having but one leg, he returned again in about two hours – but, to the infinite mortification of Orlando, with a verbal message, which, though it had passed through the memory of Mrs Patty, was very clearly delivered, and was to this effect – ‘That Madam had got the gentleman’s letter; and being prevented from writing at this present time, begged him of all love to leave the country for fear of accidents, and he might depend upon hearing of her shortly.’ Not satisfied with this, Orlando now paid his bill at the inn, and went down to the barn, where he sent his vagabond ambassador to seek for the maid to whom he owed the little progress he had made. With some difficulty he found her, and prevailed upon her to revisit the place of rendezvous, where she informed Orlando that Miss Sukey had been watching about old mistress more than ordinary, and that the poor woman was frightened out of her wits lest Orlando’s having written to her should be known; wherefore, as Miss Sukey seemed to suspect something, old Madam did entreat the squire not to stay thereabouts; because she should in that case be more strictly confined, and never should be able to write to him, which she now promised to do, if he would only leave the country. As this was all the intelligence the disappointed Orlando could now procure, he was compelled to obey this unwelcome injunction, lest he should lose all future advantage; and engaging by renewed presents the fidelity and future assistance of his two emissaries, he remounted his horse, and took the road to Winchester. He now fell again into melancholy reflections: every hour added to his dispair about Monimia, and without her, life was not in his opinion worth having. From these thoughts a natural transition led him to consider the wonderful tenacity with which those beings clung to life, whose existence seemed to him only a series of the most terrible sufferings: – beings, who exposed to all the miseries of pain, poverty, sickness, and famine; to pain unrelieved, and the feebleness of age unassisted, yet still were anxious to live; and could never, as he at this moment found himself disposed to do –

  ‘Reason thus with life:

  If I do lose thee, I do lose a thing

  Which none but fools would keep.’

  Yet he had seen many die in the field, who neither seemed to fear or feel the stroke of that destiny which miserable age still recoiled and crept away from. The poor maimed wanderer, whose daily wants he had for a little while suspended, was an instance that the fear of death makes the most wretched life supportable. In pursuing this train of thought he arrived at Winchester, where he intended to remain till the next day.

  CHAPTER IX

  EARLY on the following morning, Orlando left Winchester; but it was between three and four o’clock before he arrived at that part of the New Forest which is near Christchurch, and the frost, now set in with great severity, had made the roads very difficult for an horse, especially the way which he was directed to pursue, through the forest to the residence of Mrs Fleming. – It was a deep, hollow road, only wide enough for waggons, and was in some places shaded by hazle and other brush-wood; in others, by old beech and oaks, whose roots wreathed about the bank, intermingled with ivy, holly, and evergreen fern, almost the only plants that appeared in a state of vegetation, unless the pale and sallow mistletoe, which here and there partially tinted with faint green the old trees above them.

  Orlando, as slowly he picked his way over the rugged road, whose poached surface, now hardened by the frost, hardly allowed a footing to his horse, recollected the hunting parties in the snow, which had amused him in America; but the scene on each side of him was very different. The scanty appearance of foliage was quite unlike an American forest, where, in only a few hours after the severest weather, which had buried the whole country in snow, burst into bloom, and presented, beneath the tulip tree and the magnolia, a more brilliant variety of flowers than art can collect in the most cultivated European garden. Orlando, however, loved England, and had early imbibed that fortunate prejudice, that it is in England only an Englishman can be happy; yet he now thought, that were he once sure Monimia was lost to him (and his fears of finding it so became every hour more alarming), he should be more wretched in his own country than in any other, since every object would remind him of their cruel separation. In this disposition, trying to accustom himself to reflect on a circumstance which now distracted him, he made a sort of determination, that if all his endeavours to find Monimia were baffled, as they had hitherto been, he would remain only to see the termination of the suit relative to the Rayland estate, in hopes of leaving his mother, brother, and sisters, in a more fortunate situation; and reserving for himself only as much as would support him in the itinerant life he should embrace, to wander alone over Europe and America. While he pursued these contemplations, the way became almost impassable; for a small current of water filtering through the rocky bank, had spread itself over the road, and formed a sheet of ice, on which his horse was every moment in danger of falling, though the precaution had been taken to turn the shoes. – He had before dismounted, and now contrived to get his horse up the least steep part of the hollow, and then, still leading it by the bridle, he followed the foot-path which led along its edge.

  The tufts of trees and thick underwood now became more frequent; and though it was a fine, clear evening, the winter sun, almost sunk beneath the horizon, lent only pale and cold rays among the intervening wood. – Orlando supposing, that if he were benighted, he should no longer distinguish the path, quickened his pace; and the path he followed, diverging a little from the horse road, brought him to a place where the inequalities of the ground, half shaded with brush-wood, shewed, that beneath it were concealed more considerable fragments of ruins, than what appeared above among the trees, from whence the masses of stone were so mantled with ivy, they could hardly be distinguished. The path which Orlando continued to pursue, wound among them, and led under broken arches and buttresses, which had resisted the attacks of time and of violence, towards an old gateway, whose form was yet entire.

  Every thing was perfectly still around; even the robin, solitary songster of the frozen woods, had ceased his faint vespers to the setting sun, and hardly a breath of air agitated the leafless branches. This dead silence was interrupted by no sound, but the slow progress of his horse, as the hollow ground beneath his feet sounded as if he trod on vaults. There was in the scene, and in this dull pause of nature, a solemnity not unpleasing to Orlando, in his present disposition of mind. – Certain that the path he was pursuing must lead to some village or farm-house, and little apprehensive of the inconvenience that could in this country befall a man accustomed to traverse the deserts of America, he stopped a moment or two, indulging a mournful reverie, before he began to remove, in order to make a passage for his horse,a kind of bar, or rather broken gate, which, with thorns, and a faggot or two piled under it, passed from one side to the other of the broken arch, and made here with an hedge, that was carried among the ruins, a division of the forest, or perhaps one of its boundaries.

  As he mediated here, he heard, not far from him, human voices, which seemed to be those of children; and, leaning over the bar, to see if he could discern the persons who spoke, he observed a female figure seated on a mass of fallen stone, and apparently waiting for two girls, one about nine, the other seven years old, who were prattling together, as they peeped about in search of something among the fern-stacks and low tufts of broom that were near. The woman, whose face was turned towards them, seemed lost in thought – Her straw bonnet was tied down close to her face, and she was wrapped in a long black cloak; a little basket stood by her, and her appearance, as well as that of the children, was such as seemed to denote, that though they were not of the peasantry of the country, they were as little to be ranked among its most affluent inhabitants.

  Orlando, apprehending that the approach of a stranger, in such a place, and at such a time, might alarm so defenceless a party, proceeded with as little noise as possible to unfasten
the bar; but, on his approach, the young woman arose, and in apparent hurry said, ‘Come, my loves! you forget how late it is, and that your mama will expect us.’

  The voice riveted Orlando to the spot for a moment; he then involuntarily stepped forward, and saw – Monimia!

  He repeated her name wildly, as if he doubted whether he possessed his senses; and as he clasped her to his bosom, and found it was indeed his own Monimia, she was unable, from excess of pleasure and surprise, to answer the incoherent questions he asked her. Half frantic with joy as he was, he soon perceived that the suddenness of this meeting had almost overwhelmed her. Silent, breathless, and trembling, she leaned on his arm, without having the power to tell him, what he at length understood from the two little girls, who had been at first frightened, and then amazed at the scene – That Monimia, or, as they called her, Miss Morysine, was now, and had been for some time, under the protection of that very Mrs Fleming, the widow of his gallant friend, whom he was now going to visit. Neither of them knew how they arrived at her humble retirement, a cottage among the woods, fitted up and enlarged with two additional rooms by a sea officer, the distant relation of Fleming, who was now in America, and who had lent this pleasant, solitary house as a shelter to his widow and her children. – Nor was it for some time possible for Orlando properly to explain to Mrs Fleming, who he was, or how different those motives were, which induced him now to see her, from any hope of finding, in the pious office of visiting the family of his deceased friend, the sole happiness of his life.

  When at length, amid this disjointed and broken conversation, Mrs Fleming was brought, not only to recollect the young man, who, on her husband’s embarkation for America, had taken so much pains to be useful to him, in the trying moment of separation from his family, but to acknowledge him who had actually received his last breath, and now brought her his dying blessing; her own afflictions, to a lively sense of which Orlando’s account of Fleming’s death had awakened her, prevented her, for some time, from attending to the unexpected happiness of her young friends. Unable to hear, with composure, the account which Orlando held himself bound to give, yet solicitously asking questions, the answers to which made her heart bleed afresh, Mrs Fleming at length requested leave to retire, and taking her children with her, Monimia was left at liberty to give to the impatient Orlando, the account he so eagerly desired to hear, of what had happened to her since the date of the only letter he had ever received from her, which was written not more than six weeks after his departure. – She doubted of her own strength to give, and of his patience to hear this recital: but he appeared so very solicitous, that she determined to attempt it; and while his eyes were ardently fixed on her face, and watched every turn of her expressive features, which, though she was pale and thin, Orlando thought more lovely than ever, she thus in a soft and low voice began:

  ‘As well as I can recollect, Orlando, I related to you, in my long letter, the troublesome and impertinent intrusion of Sir John Belgrave; and Selina has told you since, that, as he carried his persecutions so far as to come into the house, and endeavour to force his way into my room, I was under the necessity of telling my aunt how he found admittance, and of betraying a secret I had so many reasons to wish might never have been discovered. – Alas! Orlando, how much did I not suffer from the bitterness of her reproaches! sufferings which were sharpened by my being compelled to acknowledge, that I had in some measure deserved them, by having carried on a correspondence contrary to what I knew was my duty. – Indeed the punishment I now underwent, from day to day, seemed sometimes much heavier than the crime deserved; especially when my aunt, to whom my moving was inconvenient (though certainly in that great house, there was room enough for me, without interfering with her), began to make the discovery, I had thus been compelled to make, an everlasting theme of reproach to me; to say, that such a cunning, intriguing creature was not fit to be in any house, and to threaten me continually to ruin you, Orlando, with Mrs Rayland, by blowing us up, as she was pleased to term it. All this I bore, however hard it was to bear, with silence, and, I hope, with patience, flattering myself, my dear friend! that the anger we had perhaps mutually deserved would thus be exhausted on me, and that I alone should be the victim, if a victim were required; yet, when my cruel aunt, unmoved by my resignation and submission, seemed so desirous of getting rid of me, that I believe she would have been glad to have sold me to Sir John Belgrave; and when she insisted upon my consenting to marry him, though I do not believe he ever intended it, and only made that a pretence for getting me into his power; I own there were moments, when, in absolute despair, I thought it would hardly have been criminal to have put an end to a life so very insupportable; nor could I, I think, have lived, if some of those books you taught me to read, and to understand, had not instructed me, that it was impious to murmur, or resist the dispensation of Providence, who knew best what we were able to bear. – Perhaps too, the hope, the dear hope of living in your affection, and of being beloved by you, however hard my lot, lent me a portion of fortitude, for which, surely, nobody ever had more occasion: for in proportion, Orlando, as Mrs Lennard became attached to that odious Roker, the little affection she had ever shewn me declined, and was changed into dislike and hatred. – She was sometimes so much off her guard, as to suffer her excessive and ridiculous attachment to him to diminish her attention to her mistress, and, on these occasions, I used to supply her place; – yet then, if Mrs Rayland seemed pleased with my attendance, she would quarrel with me for attending, and say, that she supposed the next thing such an artful slut would think of, would be to supplant her with her lady; and then again she would threaten to blow you up. – Indeed, I believe, that no situation could be less enviable, than that of my poor aunt was at this time; for though certainly, at her age, one would have thought she might have been exempt from suffering much pain from love, she did really appear so tormented by her excessive passion for Roker, and her fears of losing him, that she was an object of pity. If I was below with her lady, while she was with him, then she was afraid of my getting into favour with Mrs Rayland; and if I was above, and he was in the house, she was in terror lest so intriguing a creature should carry off her lover. When I so firmly resisted all the insidious offers of Sir John Belgrave, she doubted whether this delectable Mr Roker was not the cause of it; and even when he happened to come into the room where I was, though she was present, she turned pale with jealousy, and, I suppose, tormented the man, who, though one of the most horrid-tempered monsters existing, commanded himself so much, that he bore it all with an apparent increase of affection; and pretending, in his turn, to be jealous, said, that he could not bear to divide her affections even with me.

  ‘I saw that they were determined to get rid of me, but could not immediately settle how; for though Roker, from time to time, started some plan for that purpose, the lady, always suspecting that he liked me, was fearful lest he should only divide me from her, to secure me to himself.’

  ‘Execrable villain!’ cried Orlando, starting up – ‘he dared not think of it.’

  ‘Be patient, Orlando, or I shall never have courage to go on. – I know not what was in his imagination, though certainly he took every opportunity of making very improper speeches to me; but detestable as I believe his morals are, his avarice is greater than any other of his odious passions; and this he found he might gratify, when the success of any other was uncertain; and therefore he affected to be as anxious as my aunt was, to remove me from Rayland Hall.

  ‘Ah, my dear friend, what an autumn was that I passed there! yet my fate, dreary as it appeared to me, was not then at the worst; I had still some sweeteners of my melancholy existence; for I sometimes met Selina, and wept with her; and sometimes, when I was convinced Sir John Belgrave no longer lingered about the park (where for many weeks I could never go without being insulted by him), I used to get out alone; and stealing away to some of those places we used to visit together, I would lean my head against a tree, or hide my face with my ha
nds, and listening, with closed eyes, to the sounds that were then familiar to us, used to fancy I heard your footsteps among the leaves, or your voice whispering in the air that sighed among the trees. Once, at the old seat on the Hurst hill, I saw your name, so lately cut as the very day before you went away; and could I have wept on the letters, I believe the tears I afterwards shed there would have worn them out. – I took a fancy to the place, which nobody else ever thought of frequenting; and often, as autumn came on, and the days grew short, I staid till I was frightened at being out so late, and have run home terrified at every noise. – If a pheasant flew up, or an hare darted across the path, they threw me into such terrors, that I could hardly reach the house. On these occasions, all was well, if my aunt’s Adonis was with her; but if it happened that he was out when I was, she took it into her head that we were together, or that we might meet, and then she was, I really believe, out of her senses. Very unluckily for me, I came in one evening later than usual, breathless with my foolish fears, and found my poor aunt in terrible agitation, because Mr Roker had promised her to be in at tea-time, and he was not yet arrived. – She questioned me sharply where I had been; and I said in the mill wood, which was the truth; for I had that evening met Selina. She asked me, with still more asperity, if I had not met somebody? The consciousness that I had, made me blush, I believe, very deeply, and I faltered as I said No! – In a moment Roker came in, half drunk, and the poor old lady flew at him like a turkey-cock, and asked him, which way he came? As he was less upon his good-behaviour than usual, he came, ‘Came! Why I came by the mill; which way should I come from the place where I have been?’ – This confirmed, she thrust me out of the room, and ordering me to go up stairs to bed that moment, she threw herself into a fit, as Rebecca told me afterwards. I do not know how Mr Roker contrived to appease her – she was reconciled to him the next day; but I was the victim, and was, after that time, forbidden to go out without her leave. This, hard as it was, I could still have borne, because it was just at that time Mrs Rayland seemed to grow particularly kind to me; and to have even a degree of pleasure in talking to me of you. It was now time to expect to hear from you, and I observed her anxiety every day increase. She often sighed when she spoke of you, and once said, that her house seemed to have lost all its cheerfulness since you had left it; – and often she would look at an old enameled picture of Sir Orlando, her grandfather, and, comparing his features with yours, admire the likeness – then again, regret your absence, and sink into low spirits. Indeed her health seemed every day to decline: and I sometimes thought she was discontented with Mrs Lennard, though from long habit she was more entirely governed by her than ever. Pattenson’s having dealt so largely in smuggled goods, and having even made her house a receptacle for them, was discovered by his not being able or willing to bribe a new officer who succeeded some of his old friends, and who, upon that Jonas Wilkins’s turning informer, came one night to the Hall, and made seizure of about two hundred pounds worth of spirits, tea, and lace; a thing that offended Mrs Rayland extremely, as she thought it derogatory to her dignity, and a profanation of her cellars, which, as we know (and Monimia faintly smiled), are immediately adjoining to the family vault of the Raylands. This, and other things, particularly some of his amours, which now came to her knowledge, had occasioned her to dismiss Pattenson, and to think higher of you for the pains Pattenson had taken to prejudice her against you; but the dismission, and soon afterwards the death of Pattenson, and the disgrace of the old coachman, who was a party concerned in this contraband business (and who had besides displeased Mrs Rayland by setting up a whisky, and dressing his daughters in the most expensive fashion), threw the old lady more than ever into the power of my aunt; though, how she escaped being included in the charge, I never could imagine: I know she was acquainted with, and I believe she was concerned in the clandestine trade which had for so many years been carried on at Rayland Hall; but probably Pattenson dared not impeach her, lest, though he might ruin her, he should at the same time provoke her to discover some things in his life which would have effectually cut him off from that portion of favour he still possessed with Mrs Rayland; who, angry as she was with him, stocked the farm he retired to, furnished his house, and continued to him almost every advantage he enjoyed at the Hall, except the opportunity of making it a receptacle for smuggled goods.