Charlotte Smith- Collected Poetical Works

by Charlotte Smith

  As he knew Mrs. Denzil would be cautious of sending to inform him of her arrival when she knew that Lord Aberdore was still at Rock-March, he had no means of knowing what passed at Aberlynth but by going thither himself; but that he could not do only at an early hour of the morning, when it was improbable that the Denzils should be arrived. The second morning in which he made this visit he was as little content with it as before. Another evening passed and he had no letter. Every conjecture that could torment and afflict him now assailed him again, and the greatest fault of his temper, and that which he had taken the most pains to conquer — excessive impatience — would have become visible by some act of imprudence, if he had not been unexpectedly relieved.

  The weather was uncommonly beautiful and serene. To escape from his own tormenting thoughts, he accompanied Lord Aurevalle and his brother out on horseback, though Mr. Paunceford was of the party.

  They were on that side of the park next the village of Aberlynth, and D’Alonville was lost in painful reflections, when a boy of thirteen or fourteen years old, who could only speak the language of the country, came running towards them, and holding out a letter, said something in terms which only the groom, who was with them, understood to be an enquiry for the person to whom the letter was directed. The boy pointed (as he delivered it, that the direction might be read,) to the village from whence he brought it. D’Alonville turned pale, and neither able to repress or explain his impatience, he waited in breathless expectation, while the groom first, and then Mr. Paunceford read the direction: “To the Chevalier D’Alonville at Lord Aberdore’s.” — This, however, Paunceford read aloud.— “It is my letter,” cried D’Alonville impatiently. “Yes,” replied Paunceford, “it seems to be your letter, Sir — A lady’s hand too — I did not know, Monseer, that you had any acquaintance in Wales: but it seems,” added he with a significant look, “that you are universally fortunate.”— “D’Alonville attended not to him — at that moment the opinion of the whole world was indifferent to him. He cared not what conjectures might be formed; but tearing open his letter eagerly he read these few lines written by the hand of Mrs. Denzil.

  “We are arrived. Let us see you as soon as you can come to us without awakening impertinent curiosity, which many reasons make me particularly desirous of avoiding, since I find our right honourable ci-devant cousins are still at Rock-March. — Angelina is fatigued with her journey; but I, to whom travelling is pleasure, and of course health, should be sorry that I am arrived at the end of my travels, and that I must be confined, at least for some time

  To a poor cottage on the mountains brow,

  Now bleak with winds, and covered now with snow;”

  PRIOR.

  but that I think less of others than of myself, and from the extreme scarcity, (as far at least as I have been able to observe,) of even transient happiness, I shall be content, if for some time you and my Angelina find it in being near each other.

  Adieu, my dear D’Alonville.”

  The perusal of this letter redoubled the impatience, if it could be encreased, with which D’Alonville was tormented, and made him more careless than before of the remarks that might be made upon his conduct. He spoke for a few moments in a low voice to Lord Aurevalle, for to Mr. Paunceford he by no means thought himself accountable, and then galloped towards Rock-March house to leave his house — which having done, he ran round by the plantation that skirted the park, in order that he might escape observations, and arrived breathless with haste and impatience at the cottage on the mountain beyond Aberlynth.

  Angelina, whose spirits were fatigued, rather with anxiety about her mother than by the journey, received him with tears, but they were tears of pleasure. Mrs. Denzil and the other part of the family were busied about the little arrangements necessary to be made in their new abode, and D’Alonville and Angelina, to escape from bustle, in which she would not allow either of them to assist, walked through the garden adjoining to the house, which was almost an area cut in the rock, and ascended into the wood above it that cloathed the acclivity, and which they could attain only by a sort of rugged steps formed of roots. From amid the trees, yet very partially in leaf, a beautiful and extensive prospect appeared. But D’Alonville saw only his Angelina, and might have said with Petrarch —

  Bien di quella ineffabile doezza

  Che dei bel viso, traffen gli occhi miei

  Nel di che volentier chiusi gli avrei

  Per non mirar giammai, minor bellazza.

  Nor was it till some hours afterwards that Mrs. Denzil could prevail upon him to return to Rock-March, by shewing him that his stay made her really uneasy, and would hazard discovering to Lord Aberdore the secret of their abode in his neighbourhood, which she was very desirous of avoiding.— “Not, my dear Chevalier,” said she, “that I have the least reverence for this titled man, or the least apprehension of any ill effects from his displeasure; but he might believe I came hither to solicit his notice, or court his protection. The consequence of the man to himself is though to make him suppose that I think his patronage worth any sacrifice; and his meanness is such, that he would be full of expedients to escape from the importunities of poor relations as soon as possible, and before it was known here that any alliance had ever been acknowledged between his family and that of my children. this would subject me to messages, letters, or even visits, which I could very ill support; and it would besides render abortive your plan, equally prudent and generous, of finding in his family a resource against the inconveniencies to which your exile, and the wish you have to assist your friends, may expose you. Had I been aware that Lord Aberdore would have resided here any time, I should certainly have put off my journey; but as it is, my dear friend, we must make the best of it. The inhabitants of this obscure place will never be enquired after by those of Rock-March, unless some indiscretion forces us upon their observation; and those indiscretions for a short time we must endeavour to avoid.”

  D’Alonville concealed as well as he could the reluctance with which he yielded to these reasons for tearing himself from Angelina; but he insisted upon it that his evenings were his own; that nobody had a right to enquired how he then disposed of his time; and that he would quite Rock-March immediately after supper, and return to it in the morning before he was enquired for, as he could easily do. Mrs. Denzil doubted this extremely; but he made it, as he thought so clearly appear and was so bent on obtaining this permission, that it was at length partly granted; on condition, however, of his taking his after-supper-walk only on fine evenings, and when he was not likely to be missed.

  As with slow and unwilling steps he returned to the great house, he recollected that for his abrupt departure and long absence some reason should be given; — he felt degraded by having thus subjected himself to enquiries and remarks; and all his fortitude was necessary to enable him to determine still to submit to this restraint. But when he remembered how much the task he had undertaken would enable him to soften to his Angelina the harshness of her destiny — how well she deserved all he could do for her, and how delicious it was to sacrifice his pride and his ease to an object so beloved, he stepped more lightly along and as he entered the house looked back with an air of triumph towards the cottage he had left, and half exclaimed— “She is there! fifteen minutes will at any time bring me to her — and of what do I complain?”

  As he entered the lower hall, which it was necessary to cross as he went up to his own room, he met Miss Milsington — — “So, Chevalier,” cried she, “the young men have been enquiring for you; we imagined indeed that you were lost.”

  “You do me too much honour, Madam, to think about me. I am sorry if I have not been punctual in attending Lord Aurevalle and his brothers; but I do not often give them cause for complaint, and I had some business a mile or two from hence.”

  “Business!” replied she, “indeed! — I did not know you had any acquaintance in this country — Your friend, Mr. Pauncefort,” added she significantly, “has been finding many good nat
ured reasons for your absence. — But we are going to dinner. — It is past six o’clock — I see you are not dressed.”

  The lady then passed on, and D’Alonville, hastening to his own room, prepared as expeditiously as he could for his appearance at dinner, to which the last bell in a few moments summoned him.

  But here, contrary to his expectation, nothing was said by any body of his unusual absence. Lord Aberdore, who seldom noticed either of the tutors, more than by a great bow or a short sentence of common civility, was now engaged by two strangers from another part of the country, who arrived that day. Lady Aberdore was talking in her usual way to her brother, Mr. Brymore, and Miss Milsington; but this whole party seemed less gay than usual, for it had to-day been settled, after some opposition on the part of the lady, that the family were yet to remain another week at Rock-March: — to this she had yielded only on condition of not being asked to return thither for at least twelve months, and that she should go to Bath, a place of which she was extremely fond, for three weeks, instead of going to London with her Lord, who was at the end of this week under the necessity of returning thither: — she had stipulated too with Brymore and Escott to remain; to both of whom she appealed whether she was not the very best wife in the world.— “Who on earth, but me,” exclaimed she, “would stay for above three weeks in an old Welsh castle, with nothing better to talk to than one’s brother, and such an animal as you, Brymore? — Well! I do think I am exemplary.

  Far other were the thoughts of Angelina, who had quitted London with delight, and now thought herself as near happiness as she ever expected to be in the world. Her mother’s health seemed almost re-established: — she hoped in the very retired and economical manner in which they proposed to live, that her mind would be no longer harassed by the pecuniary distresses which had for so many years agitated her spirits and injured her constitution; and for herself, she had nothing else to wish — for she was near her husband — and when a few days should leave him at liberty to dispose of some portion of his time by the departure of the family from Rock-March, she hoped to have the inexpressible delight of wandering with him among the rocky wilds and deep woods of a country entirely new to her. Already from a spot higher on the mountain than she had been with D’Alonville, she found a spot from whence one end of the house at Rock-March was visible; the broad sash windows glittered in the setting sun; and Angelina loved to believe that they were the windows of D’Alonville’s apartment, which he described to her as being on the second floor, at a corner of the house where the offices adjoined to it. Here Angelina proposed to pass some time of every day, when her mother should be able to dispense with her presence; and here she planned a little bower, by interweaving the branches of the hazel and birch that crowded over a scar in the rocky bosom of the hill. This she figured to herself that D’Alonville would do for her, as well as construct a little rustic bench of the mossy branches of some older trees. — Already in the tall woods beneath the mountain, the rooks were busied in the feeding and attending their almost fledged young; the ground was covered with the early flowers of spring; and the paths Angelina trod were literally “primrose paths.” In their little garden below, her little brother, a child of eight years old, was already making his arrangements with the infantine delight natural to that age, on coming to a new abode; and her youngest sister was producing her collection of flower seeds, which she proposed to divide with him on condition of his digging the border for her. Every simple object around her spoke to Angelina of hope and pleasure.

  CHAPTER XXI.

  Our Parson misdoubts it — it is treason, he says.

  SHAKESPEARE.

  FOUR 11days had passed, in which D’Alonville appeared to be occupied as usual. He had forborne, at the earnest entreaties of Mrs. Denzil, to visit Aberlynth, while he might be missed by the family at Rock-March; but as he did not always sup with them, and the young men were now entering more regularly on that course of life they were to follow when Lord Aberdore had left them, he continued to be dismissed by Lord Aurevalle, to whom alone he referred himself, at an early our of the evening, when he hastened to pass the rest of it at “the Cottage of the Cliffs.” He observed, though without giving himself the trouble to enquire into the cause, that Mr. Paunceford was more than usually constrained in his manner; but he imputed it to the discontent with which he beheld the encreasing friendship of Lord Aurevalle for his foreign tutor, and to the natural malignity and supercilious insolence of his character. He sometimes fancied that Paunceford watched him, and was half tempted to contrive to detect him in doing so, that he might chastise him as he deserved; but he resisted this temptation as it arose, on reflecting, that any fracas of this sort could not fail of distressing Mrs. Denzil, and of occasioning the discovery she so much wished to avoid. The manner, however of Paunceford, served to render their meetings more than usually uncomfortable, and to irritate the impatience with which D’Alonville awaited the hour that should set him at liberty to fly to Angelina; impatience which he could not always so well conceal, but that Paunceford, though a man of no great penetration, was every day more strongly confirmed in his opinion that something, which he wished to hide was on his mind. The extreme eagerness with which he read the newspapers, and the solicitude he expressed for letters, together with the agitation he had sometimes unwillingly betrayed on receiving them; his restlessness, and frequent walks of an evening, which Paunceford had discovered, (though he knew not that D’Alonville was absent the whole night,) were altogether observations that put strange thoughts into the round head of the sagacious Paunceford. Every hour that passed, and every look of D’Alonville’s served to strengthen these suspicions; for it is not only to the doubting lover, that,

  “Trifles light as air,

  “Are to the jealous, confirmation strong, as proofs of holy

  “writ.”

  Paunceford, like Scrub, began at length to be perfectly sure “there was a plot,” and nearly for the same reasons as that sagacious politician; and he was determined to have the merit of discovering it, by which two purposes would be answered — He should give Lord Aberdore and the world in general an high opinion of his discernment, and get out of the way for ever a troublesome competitor, for whom he felt that aversion which base and narrow minds always feel towards superior merit.

  Determined however to wait for the most perfect confirmation of his suspicions, he let another day pass before he made his solemn appeal to Lord Aberdore, and gave him information of his discovery; but in the mean time set himself to watch D’Alonville with more assiduity than before.

  Brymore, with no other qualifications than boundless impudence, a fluent way of talking, and a total want of feeling; without any pretensions to principle and humanity, set up for the Lovelace of the present day; and kept as his servant a fellow who had been copying clerk in a lawyer’s office, where he had added some degree of systematical villainy to the bad disposition he received from nature. This man, who was now a valet out of livery, and looked rather more like a gentleman than his master, was often employed in the infamous office of discovering rustic beauty, united with unsuspecting simplicity; and of betraying unfortunate girls into the hands of his employer, who had occasionally been heard to boast, that he had seduced more young women, and left them upon the town, than any man of his time. His agent, whose name was Strugnel, in prowling about the villages, had met Angelina in that she now inhabited, coming out of a little shop. She was alone, and very simply dressed, but her air and figure immediately convinced Strugnel that she was not an inmate of any of the rustic houses he saw about him. He saw that her face answered the grace and beauty of her form; but there was something about her whole appearance that awed him, and made him conscious that it was impossible to address her with the rude familiarity he generally adopted. He followed her, however, at a distance, saw her ascend the hill, and watched her entrance into an house, which, though of much better appearance than the rest, was still a cottage. He then returned to the little shop where he
had first met her, and enquired of the old woman who kept it, whether she knew the young lady who had just been there. The ignorant old woman, half deaf, and understanding English very imperfectly, gave him as well as she could the substance of the stories she had picked up, distorted first by the representations of those from whom she had heard them, and then from her own misconceptions; from which compilation Strugnel understood, that a widow in distressed circumstances was come to Aberlynth to hide herself from her creditors, and that this was her daughter, or passed for such; that some of the people in the house were foreigners, but she did not know who, “only folks as had been there to sell things, heard them talk in an outlandish tongue; and for her part she thought there was not much good in such like folk — but there! — for her part, to be sure it was no concern at all of hers, as long as they paid for what they had at her shop’ and she’d look sharp after that.” The amount of all this, in the opinion of Strugnel was, that the girl belonged to some distrest family, and therefore might be obtained; and he hastened to relate to his employer the discovery he had made of an indigent creature so perfectly lovely.

  Brymore determined to see her himself that very evening. Nothing was so easy as to introduce himself into the cottage she inhabited, under pretence of having lost his way. He was assured by his pander, that there was no male inhabitant of the house but a child of seven or eight years old; and he knew he had assurance enough to carry him through any impertinence he might be guilty of towards helpless women, even though their rank might be higher than he supposed that of these strangers. It was so near the dinner hour when he received this intelligence, that he could not set out immediately.