Charlotte Smith- Collected Poetical Works

by Charlotte Smith

  “And is that all, Rosalie?”

  “That is all, upon my honour, (replied she), in regard to Mr. Vyvian.”

  Young Lessington, who did not know Montalbert even by name, appeared satisfied, and they went down together; when, from the beginning of the dinner, conversation, and the quantity of wine that Hughson soon swallowed, Rosalie flattered herself that long before the close of the evening he would do or say something that would thoroughly disgust her elder brother, and, by convincing him that she was right in refusing him, procure for her a defense against the irksome importunity of his future addresses.

  In this she was not mistaken; before young Lessington had been two hours in company with Hughson, he was compelled to own that Rosalie could not be blamed for having kept at a distance a man whose manners were so unpleasing. The other brother, however, who had seen very different company, and whose ideas had taken quite another turn, thought of him as he did of himself, that he was “a clever, sprightly, little fellow.”

  Dinner was hardly over, and the bottle going as briskly about as it could do before the ladies retired, when Abraham came stumbling into the room, and muttered something which nobody understood, and, before there was time for inquiry, Mr. Charles Vyvian and Mr. Montalbert entered, to the displeasure of some of the company, and to the astonishment of Rosalie, who, on meeting her brother’s eyes, looked so confused, that all the suspicion Mrs. Lessington had hinted to him in the morning seemed to be confirmed. The reception they received was cold and formal, particularly from Mrs. Lessington, who gravely expressed her surprise, after what Mr. Vyvian had told her, at his making so long a stay in the country.

  “Oh! (answered he), I was so unwell yesterday, that my good old doctor would not hear of my setting out to-day; and, as my mother thinks we are still upon the ramble, and will not be uneasy, I have persuaded my worthy old Abbé to say nothing about it: however, we intend to be good boys, and to go off to-morrow; and, upon my honour, (continued he, rising and taking her hands), my dear Mrs. Lessington, I only cam to know if you could not give me some little commission to my mother, to put her in good humour with her truant boy........Come — come — I know you will oblige me with a letter — or — you, Madam, perhaps, (turning to one of the other sisters) — if not, I am sure Miss Rosalie will.”

  The repulsive gravity with which Mrs. Lessington answered him, was but ill seconded by the increasing confusion of her daughter, who hesitated, blushed, and stammered out a few incoherent words; symptoms which did not escape her brother, who narrowly watched her, and who failed not to impute it all to a very different motive than the real one.

  Montalbert, in the mean time, was on thorns; surrounded as she was, there was no possibility of speaking to her, and he could not bear to leave her without having fixed on some means by which they might hear from each other. He recollected that none of her family understood Italian: he looked round to see if it was likely any one in the room did, and being soon convinced he had nothing to apprehend, unless it was from the Oxford man, and even with him he thought the chances were much in his favour, he told Rosalie, addressing her with great gravity, that since he had the pleasure of seeing her, he had recollected the words of the Italian song she had mentioned, and that, if she would favour him with a pen and ink in the next room, he would write them out.

  At this moment the mistress of the house, receiving an hint from her husband to depart, said, as she rose from the table, “We will send you one down, Sir.”— “O no! (replied he), rather let me write it, dear Madam, in your apartment; and, Vyvian, as we must immediately return home, we will now wish Mr. Lessington and his friends good night.” This short ceremony passed with great formality on all sides, and Vyvian and Montalbert following the woman of the family into another room, the latter sat himself down with great solemnity to write out his song, which having done in the plainest Italian he could imagine, but written as if it was in measure, he gave it to Rosalie; and Vyvian, who had been talking earnestly to her the whole time, reluctantly took his leave also, and they both departed.

  They were hardly out of the room before Mrs. Lessington, whose anger and suspicion were roused anew, demanded to see the paper Montalbert had given her. Rosalie, not without fear and trembling, delivered it to her. She looked at it a moment, and believing from the manner in which it was written it was really a song, gave it back to her again, not without evident marks of displeasure, and many hints of her resolution to inform Mrs. Vyvian where her son was, and of the impropriety of his conduct, if he did not leave the country the next day. Of all this, as Rosalie was not obliged to think it addressed to her, she took no notice.

  The next day the wedding of her second sister and Mr. Blagham was celebrated. The party were more noisy and disagreeable than is even usual on such occasions. Hughson was the most drunk, and consequently the most impertinent; and never was an hour so welcome to Rosalie as that which took them all away, by the favour of a full moon, and left her alone with her mother.

  Till now the tumult, with which she had been surrounded, had not allowed her a moment, except those allotted to repose, to indulge reflections on what had passed. The sullen calm that succeeded was calculated to restore her dissipated and bewildered thoughts. Her mother, busied in arranging her house, left her to herself; her father had accompanied the bride and bridegroom to their house, and was afterwards to go on a tour with them into the eastern part of the county. It was at once a matter of pleasure and surprise to Rosalie, that he had never once proposed to her being of the party, and she remarked that he now appeared much less anxious than her mother to promote with her the suit of Mr. Hughson; it seemed as if he would have been as well contented that his daughter Maria should ensure this important conquest.

  Mr. Lessington was one of those men who have just as much understanding as enable them to fill, with tolerable decency, their part on the theatre of the world. He loved the conveniences of life, and indulged rather too much in the pleasures of the table. His less fortunate acquaintances (a race of people to whom he was not particularly attached) knew that Mr. Lessington was not a man to whom the distressed could apply with any hope of receiving any thing but good advice. Those who were more fortunate had for the most part a very good opinion of Mr. Lessington. If he was exact and somewhat strict in enacting his dues, he was also very regular in the duties of his office; and if he did not feel much for the distresses of the poor, he never offended, as some country curates have done, the ears of the rich, by complaints which those who overlook the labourers in the vineyard are always so unwilling to hear. He had brought up a large family respectably, and every body concluded he had some private fortune, besides the two or three thousand pounds he was known to have received with his wife. He kept a post-chaise; not, indeed, a very superb and fashionable equipage, but very well for that country: his cart horses drew it, but they were sleek and well trimmed, and Abraham, trussed up in a tight blue jacket, and his broad cheeks set off by a jockey cap, made a very respectable appearance as conductor of a vehicle which gave no inconsiderable degree of consequence to its owners in a country thinly inhabited by gentlemen. Mr. Lessington was the most punctual man imaginable at all meetings of the clergy, where he did equal honour to the sublunary good things that were to be eaten, and the spiritual good things that were to be listened on. He had an high idea of his consequence in the church, and was a violent opposer of all innovations; against which he had drawn his pen with more internal satisfaction to himself than with visible profit to his bookseller. His works, though he read them with extreme complacency, by having, though want of orthodox taste in the modern world, the misfortune to be, according to a term most painful to the ears of an author, shelfed.

  This, however, affected Mr. Lessington less than it would have done many authors: for he wrote less for literary fame, or literary profit, than to recommend himself to certain persons who so greatly dreaded any of those impertinent people that dare to think some odd old customs might be altered a little for the better; t
hat nothing would, he knew, be so effectual a recommendation to the favour of these dignitaries as zeal, in stopping even with rushes the gaps threatened by such innovators, even before they were visible to any but the jealous eyes that saw, or fancied they saw, the whole fence levelled. The prosperity of his family might be considered as being in some degree the effect of his thus keeping always on the right side, for he was reckoned a rising man, and one who would at no very remote period be promoted to higher dignities. Mr. Blagham had not been entirely without considerations of this sort, when he married a wife with no other portion than her wedding clothes; but Mr. Lessington had promised her something handsome at his death, and there was no doubt in the mind of the lawyer of his ability to fulfill his promise.

  Mrs. Lessington and Rosalie had now been at home alone for three days. The former had settled her house, and was quietly enjoying the order she had restored after all the bustle they had lately been in; while Rosalie, with mingled emotions of fear, anxiety, and doubt, waited for intelligence from Montalbert.

  It was in the evening of the third day, that as she was walking in a sort of court, that was before the house next a road, an horseman stopped, and inquired if this was not the parsonage? On Rosalie’s answering in the affirmative, he produced a letter, which he said he had been sent with from Lewes.

  The predominant idea in the head of Rosalie being Montalbert, she trembled like a leaf when the man gave her the letter, and, without considering whether it was likely her lover should send it thus openly, or how it should come from Lewes, she hastened breathless into the house to obtain a light to read it by, for it was now nearly dark. In her way to the kitchen she was met by her mother, who seeing her extreme agitation, and a letter in her hand, for she had not had presence of mind to conceal it, immediately fancied it came from Charles Vyvian, who was always haunting her imagination. In this persuasion she took if from her daughter, and carrying it immediately to a candle, found — not a billet-deux to Rosalie, but intelligence of a very different nature — it was a letter from Mr. Blagham, informing her, after a short preface, that Mr. Lessington died that morning in an apoplectic fit.

  Though nothing was more likely than such an event, from the form and manner of life of her husband, it had never once occurred to her as possible. The shock, therefore, was great, and the widow’s grief not a little increased by the reflection, that their income arising from church preferment was at an end.

  Rosalie felt as she ought on the loss of a parent; but as it was more to the purpose to endeavour to assuage her mother’s sorrow than to indulge her own, she gave her whole attention to that purpose. Mrs. Lessington was too reasonable to be a very inconsolable widow, and in a few hours was in a condition to consider what ought to be done, which Rosalie set about executing, by writing to Mr. Blagham, and giving such orders as her mother thought necessary.

  CHAPTER 7

  IT is not necessary to relate all that passed in the Lessington family, till the period when all its members were assembled to hear his will read. It was then found that he had given his widow, for her life, a third of all he possessed, which amounted in the whole to about eight thousand pounds, and divided the rest among his children, to each of whom he allotted a certain portion to be paid at a certain time, except Rosalie, whose name was not even mentioned in the will.

  All expressed their surprise at this except Mrs. Lessington, who said nothing in answer to their exclamations of wonder. Rosalie, indifferent as to fortune, of which she knew not the want or the value, was no otherwise grieved at this strange omission, than as it proved her father’s total want of affection for her — a conviction that cost her many tears; nor were those tears dried by the remark she made on the behaviour of her sisters and her younger brother, who all seemed pleased, though they affected concern. The behaviour of her elder brother, however, would have given her comfort, could she have conquered the painful idea, that her father had thrown her off as a stranger to his blood. As soon as the funeral was over, her brother William took occasion to talk to her alone. “Be not so dejected, my dear Rosalie, (said he); unpromising as your prospects appear, you have at least the consolation of knowing that you have always a friend in me, who will never forsake you.”

  “You are too good, dearest William, (replied the weeping mourner); but do not imagine that it is the want of my share of my father’s little property that grieves me — no; if he had but named me with kindness, I should not have been so unhappy; but when I think that he must certainly have died in anger with me, that either from my seeming to refuse Mr. Hughson, or some other cause, he was irritated against me.”

  “If you reflect a moment, my sweet sister, on the date of the will, you will see that this could not be. The will is dated above three years since, when the very existence of such a man as Hughson was unknown to him, when you were only between fourteen and fifteen years of age, when you had been more with Mrs. Vyvian than at home, and when it was every way impossible that you could have given him the least offence; I rather think that this strange circumstance arose from the opinion he entertained, that Mrs. Vyvian would provide for you.”

  “How could my father think that, (said Rosalie), when he must have known that Mrs. Vyvian, notwithstanding the large fortune she brought, has not even the power to hire or discharge a servant, and is hardly allowed enough yearly to appear as her rank requires, least, as her cross tyrant of an husband says, she should squander his fortune on begging friars and mummers of her own religion? She had, indeed, a settlement of her own, but I heard him reproach her with having disposed of it in some such way; but, however that may be, my father must know that it was not in her power to do any thing for me. Of late too, he must have thought that it was not her wish, for she has appeared almost entirely to have forgotten me.”

  “There is, however, no other way of accounting for the circumstance, and the more I reflect on it the more I am persuaded that this is the truth.”

  Rosalie, though far from being convinced by the reasoning of her brother, was consoled by his tenderness, and by degrees regained her serenity, which was, however, again disturbed by a letter from Montalbert, in which he renewed all the professions he had made on their parting; told her he had continued to postpone his journey to Italy for some time longer, and had done so only in the hope of seeing her again.

  He did not seem to have heard of her father’s death. She knew that her being left destitute of fortune would make no alteration whatever in his affections; the little she would in any case have possessed could never indeed have been any object to him, even if fortune had ever once been in his thoughts. She wrote to him, therefore, of what had happened; and without affecting to deny the partiality she felt for him, and lamenting the little probability of their meeting properly, submitted it to him, whether it would not be more prudent to forbear a meeting at all till there was less danger of offending her mother. She told him, that of the future destination of the family she knew nothing; but that, from what she could learn, her mother had some thought of taking a small house in or near London, when the period came on which she must quit their present habitation.

  Rosalie now found herself for a while relieved from the irksome importunities of Hughson, who was obliged to be absent. Her mother too seemed to have relaxed a good deal in the earnestness she had formerly shown on this subject, and had not her extreme uncertainty, in regard to Montalbert, been a constant source of anxiety, she would at this period have tasted of more tranquility than had long fallen to her share.

  Sometimes when her brother William, who continued at home, was either instructing her as the kindest tutor, or amusing her as the tenderest friend, her heart reproached her for her insincerity towards such a brother, and she was half tempted to relate to him her engagement with Montalbert; but when she had nearly argued herself into a resolution of doing this, her natural timidity checked her: she recollected how material it was to her lover that their engagements should remain a secret; and she was besides deterred by the fear th
at her brother would, from education and principle, in all probability, strenuously oppose her becoming the wife of a Catholic.

  But naturally ingenuous and candid, it was impossible for her so well to dissimulate, but that Mr. Lessington saw there was something more on her mind than she ever ventured to express. The impression that his mother had given him of some attachment between her and young Vyvian frequently returned to his recollection, though he thought it could be only a childish passion on the part of Vyvian, who would think no more of it after he left England, he dreaded least the spirits and health of Rosalie might suffer, as he had seen so often happen to young women, who had been incautiously led into listening to vows and promises that were meant by the men that made them only as the amusement of an idle hour.

  In his frequent conversations with his sister, therefore, and intermingled with the lessons he sometimes gave her, he found opportunities continually to hint at the weakness and danger of attending to such sort of professions; while, at other times, he took notice to say, how generally unfortunate marriages turned out to be where the parties were of different religions, giving Mr. and Mrs. Vyvian as an example immediately within their own knowledge. On these occasions he fixed his eyes on those of Rosalie, and, sure that he meant more than he expressed, her countenance betrayed her consciousness; for whatever her brother said, when he remotely alluded to Vyvian, was equally applicable to Montalbert, and whatever resolutions she sometimes made, when she was alone, to avow ingenuously the truth, these hints entirely deprived her of the courage she had been thus trying to obtain.

  Montalbert, who by means of a servant at Holmwood House, on whose fidelity he could depend, continued to write to her and to receive her letters, became now impatient to learn where was to be her future residence. As this seemed still uncertain, he implored leave to come down incog. to the neighbourhood of Holmwood; than which, he said, nothing was more easy, as he could be concealed in the house of a farmer, a tenant of Mr. Vyvian’s, who, being a Catholic, was entirely devoted to his service, and of an integrity on which he could rely. Rosalie, however, extremely alarmed at such a proposal, urged so many reasons why it should not be executed, and assured him it would make her so extremely miserable, that he, for that time, consented to relinquish it, which he consented to with less reluctance, when she informed him, that within a few days her mother had talked in more positive terms of their immediate removal to London, or to its nieghbourhood; that her brother was gone to look for a house for them, and she thought it extremely probable, from the impatience her mother expressed, that they should there begin the new year. Rosalie was at a loss to comprehend by what means Montalbert prolonged his stay in England so much beyond the time, when he had told her, his mother expected his return to Naples, where she generally resided; this surprised her still more, when she found by part of a letter from Mrs. Vyvian, which Mrs. Lessington read to her, that Charles Vyvian was already gone. The sentences of the letter which her mother chose to communicate ran thus: —