“This great property was divided between me and my brother, the father of Montalbert, your husband, but not equally; for he had of course the greatest share. The nobel castle and the estates, belonging to it in the north, are the pincipal part of what remains to him in England; for having early formed connections upon the continent, he never loved or lived long in England: his life was not long, for he died soon after the birth of your husband; so soon, indeed, that he had neglected to make for him the provision he ought to have made, and, by a prior will, Harry Montalbert was left almost entirely dependent on his mother.
“In consequence of the long absences, and afterwards of the early death of my brother, I came to be considered by my father as an only child. Dissatisfied with a world, which he had, from personal infirmities, no longer the power of enjoying, he retired to Holmwood when I was about fifteen, and, from that time, you may imagine my life was very recluse, for then the country around it was less inhabited, and the roads less passable than they are now.
“Harsh as my father was, I loved him very tenderly, and therefore did not murmur at the confinement thus imposed upon me at a time of life when other young women enter the world and enjoy its pleasures: nor did the fatigues of constant attendance in a sick chamber, and continuing to read sometimes for half the night, for a moment deter me from doing my duty, or for a moment induce me to repine.
“I have since thought, Rosalie, that this period, with all its little hardships and inconveniences, was the happiest of my life. — My friend Mrs. Lessington, though then married, and some years older than me, was still often my companion, and shared a task which without her I could not have executed so well. Whenever I was released from the chamber of my suffering parent, I saw around me scenes of nature, which seemed to put on new beauties as if to reward me for my perseverance in painful duties; and if I tasted not the pleasures which are accounted happiness by very young women, I was at least content. Thus, without much variation, passed more than three years of my life.
“My father had a relation in Ireland, whose ancestors having suffered in the same cause as that in which the Montalberts had lost their property, had not been so fortunate in re-establishing their affairs; but their descendant was, with a numerous family, obliged to live on a very small estate, and in great obscurity in the north of Ireland.
“One of the sons, however, having been sent young to the East Indies, had done so well, that he wrote to have two of his three brothers follow him, informing his father, that though he could not make remittances for the purpose of fitting them out, he was sure when they arrived there of getting them into situations nearly as advantageous as his own.
“In consequence of this, their father sent his third and fourth sons to England, to solicit among their friends and their relations the means of equipping them in such a way as might enable them to avail themselves of these advantageous prospects. The eldest of the two soon found sufficient assistance in London, and departed; but the younger having been seized with a violent fit of illness in London, was under the necessity of seeing the last ship of the season sail without him, and at the invitation of my father, who had taken most of the expence of his equipment upon himself, he came down to Holmwood to recover his health, while he waited for an opportunity of following his brother, which was not likely to offer for some months.
“Ormsby was about one and twenty when he was thus received into the house of my father, who soon learned to consider him as a son; becoming so attached to him, that he was not easy in his absence.
“Even at this distance of time, I reflect with wonder on the carelessness with which my father suffered two very young people to be continually together, without appearing to think of the probability there was that they might form an attachment to each other. It is true that I have myself discovered inattention of the same sort in regard to you and Montalbert; but besides the prepossession of your predilection in favour of Vyvian, with which my mind was distracted, the character of Montalbert was so different from that of Ormsby, that it never occurred to me that there was equal hazard in your being continually in his company.” ——
Mrs. Vyvian now seemed to be much fatigued, and to be so little able to continue a narrative so affecting to her spirits, that Rosalie entreated her to forbear concluding it till she was less likely to suffer by dwelling on scenes which it gave her so much pain to recall; but the probability that their long and private conferences might be less frequent when they were continually liable to be broken in upon by Mrs. Bosworth and her sister, and the necessity there was that Rosalie should know the circumstances of her birth, and what were Mrs. Vyvian’s wishes as to her future conduct, determined her, to exert herself to the utmost of her power, to conclude all she had to relate — the singular circumstances of her former life.
CHAPTER 14
IN the evening Mrs. Vyvian found herself able to proceed, and thus continued her narrative: ——
“My friend Mrs. Lessington, who had now a family of children, was no longer at liberty to give me so much of her time as she had hitherto done; but, at this period, the living of Mayfield, which was in my father’s gift, becoming vacant, I was fortunate enough to procure it for her husband, and had the comfort of seeing her settled within four miles of Holmwood.
“Greatly, indeed, had I need of the prudence and steadiness of a friend......Imagine, my Rosalie, how I was at this time situated. Ormsby, though he lived so much with me, was yet so sensible of the distance fortune had placed between us, that for many months after he became an inmate in our house he never breathed the most distant expression of his affection; yet, young as I was, I could not mistake the meaning of his looks, and those silent attentions he incessantly paid me. He seemed — ah! he was — too artless to disguise entirely his sentiments; but the ineffectual struggle he made to do so was a spectacle infinitely more dangerous for me than the warmest professions could have been: he had even the generosity to avoid me for some time, and, as if by tacit consent, we met only in my father’s room, where he now almost always supplied my place, and sat whole days, and often whole nights, with a tenderness and patience that, in my opinion, overpaid the debt of gratitude which he owed him. But sometimes, when my father’s old servant was able to give that attendance for which he was often disqualified by illness, Ormsby was unexpectedly released; and it was at one of these periods that the explanation was brought on, which afterwards cost me so dear.
“My father had been extremely ill for many days. It was spring, a season that always brought on the most painful paroxysms of the gout: his old servant, harldy less a victim to this disease than himself, had been laid up, and Ormsby had been my father’s attendant for ten days, almost without taking off his clothes, and certainly without having had any interval of rest.
“Barford, my father’s servant, having a little recovered, came down to his relief, for no other person was suffered into the room but Ormsby, myself, and this man.
“As at this time Ormsby was so much fatigued, that he could hardly support himself, he hastened to procure what refreshment a change of clothes afforded, and then to relieve a violent head-ache, the effect of want of sleep, he wandered into the garden for the air..........
You remember, Rosalie, the temple at the end of the avenue of stone pines — thither I have often went with my work, or with a book, when I was alone; behind it is, you recollect, a copse, which at the season of the year now present, for it was the middle of May, echoed with the music of innumerable birds. Every object breathed of peace and beauty; and as my heart had long since learned to associate the idea of Ormsby with every scene that gave me pleasure, I was meditating on future possibilities of happiness, when the object of my dangerous contemplations suddenly appeared coming towards the place where I sat.
“To the lively interest he always inspired was now added, that which arose from the fatigue he had evidently undergone. He was pale and his eyes were heavy for want of rest. I saw him with a slow and languid step ascend the little turf
hill on which the temple is situated: I could not have escaped from it without his seeing me, if I had wished to have done so; but, in truth, I had no desire to fly from him; and though I trembled as he approached me, it was with a sort of delightful apprehension, for I fancied he would now speak to me, if not in direct terms — yet in such as would leave me no longer in doubt as to his real sentiments: yet while I wished this, I dreaded it; and when he entered the place where I sat, I know not which of us appeared the most confused. He had long studiously avoided me, and certainly did not now expect to meet me; but as he knew I had seen him, and perhaps had not resolution enough to deny himself the unexpected opportunity of speaking to me, he came into that wing of the temple, and, after the common salutation of the morning, sat down near me.
“I inquired after my father, though it was not an hour since I had been in the room; but it gave me occasion to say, though in a faltering voice, how much I was obliged to Ormsby for his constant attendance. I had not concluded the sentence, when he said, ‘Obligations, Miss Montalbert! — surely all obligations are mine; but were it otherwise, were not your father my best friend — that he is your father would be enough to induce me to make any sacrifices: there is happiness in being able to serve him as my benefactor; but there is something more than happiness in thinking that, in attending on the respectable parent of Miss Montalbert, I save her from one hour’s fatigue, or mitigate to her on hour of anxiety.’
“I will not relate the sequel of our conversation before it ended: Ormsby, while he accused himself at once of presumption and ingratitude, professed for me the most violent, though hopeless, passion. He saw too evidently, that if it depended on me it would not be hopeless: already my heart had said to me much more than Ormsby, even in making this declaration, dared to intimate. It had whispered that my father’s partiality for him might very probably conquer the objections that his total want of fortune might raise. I had fancied that it was impossible my father could leave us so much together, unless he meant to give a tacit consent to an affection which was so likely to arise between two young persons. I had imagined, that, finding us both necessary to his comfort, he intended to unite us: my fortune must be such as, I supposed, made any consideration as to that of my lover entirely needless. — Alas! how little is the inexperienced mind of youth capable of judging of those motives that influence men in advanced life. Though my father was retired from the world, he had not lost in retirement the passions that influence men of that world: on the contrary, living where he was the lord of many miles, where none, either in his house or around it, ever disputed his will, he had, like a despot, entirely forgotten that others had any will at all. Of a marriage of love he had no idea; for did it ever occur to him, as a thing possible, that a dependent relation, who was indebted to his bounty for a subsistence, could dare to lift his eyes to a daughter of the house of Montalbert, for whom, though he had never yet hinted at them, my father had very different views.
“But love, too apt to listen to the voice of hope, suffered us not to see the misery we were laying up for ourselves; and even amidst the reproaches Ormsby often made himself, for what he termed treachery and ingratitude, the flattering illusions into which we were betrayed by youthful inexperience, not only quieted these alarms of conscience, but made us listen with something bordering on resentment to the remonstrances of my friend, Mrs. Lessington, who took every occasion of representing the danger of my indulging my predilection for Ormsby. I endeavoured to persuade her, as I had persuaded myself, that I should one day become his wife, with the permission of my father. Mrs. Lessington, who undoubtedly knew the world and my father’s temper much better than I did, nothing unafraid that was likely to convince me of this dangerous error: she even threatened to inform my father of the truth, unless I endeavoured to conquer this fatal prepossession; and she assured me if she did, the consequence would be the immediate disgrace and dismission of Ormsby. This menace, which I knew she would never execute, had an effect exactly opposite to that which she intended. The idea of Ormsby, driven from the house, suffering poverty and mortification, and abandoned by the world only for his attachment to me, endeared him to me infinitely more than he would have been, had I seen him surrounded with affluence and prosperity. Nothing is so dangerous as pity; and my friend, in attempting to save me, hastened my ruin by exciting it.
“I cannot, Rosalie, trace the progress of this fatal passion. My confessor, who alone might have checked its progress, was surely careless of his charge, or was possibly become indifferent to the welfare of a family he was soon on the point of quitting. He went to Rome exactly at the time when he might perhaps have saved me, and it was some time before he was replaced by Mr. Hayward.
“During that interval, as Mrs. Lessington was gone into the west on a visit to her husband’s relations, Ormsby was more than ever alone with me. Every hour, indeed, in which the attendance of the one or the other was not necessary in my father’s room, we passed together. From an habit of indulging myself in the illusive hope that I might one day be his wife, I insensibly learned to consider myself already so in the sight of Heaven.......Ormsby was young and passionate: he was not an artful seducer; but I had no mother, I had no friend, and those who candidly reflect on my situation will surely compassionate, though they may not perhaps acquit me.
“How soon, alas! was this deviation from rectitude and honour severly and bitterly punished. Though my father had been wilfull blind or strangely negligent, the servants, and from them the neighbours, saw enough to make them suspect more. We had little or no communication with the gentlemen’s families around us, divided from them as we were by the difference of religion, habit, and connections; but in ours, as in every other neighbourhood, there were officious and impertinent people, whose greatest pleasure was to inquire into the affairs of others, and disturb as much as was in their power the peace of families. The country town adjoining to Holmwood produced at that time, as indeed it has done since, but too many of this description. — I, who hardly knew that such persons existed, was, however, marked out for the victim of their malignity; and, as if the terrors that now incessantly beset me were insufficient, for I found myself likely to become a mother, one of these officious fiends completed, or rather accelerated, the evil destiny that hung over me.
“While I waited with agonising impatience the return of Mrs. Lessington, whose counsel was so necessary in my present alarming situation, Ormsby, more wretched than I was, attempted to sooth and console me, and I was insensible of any other comfort than what I derived from weeping in his arms. Little dreaming of the storm that was ready to burst upon us, I sought him as usual one morning in the plantation, where we were accustomed, as it was yet early autumn, to meet in a morning before either the family were likely to interrupt us, and before my father demanded either his attendance or mine — I found him not; supposing it earlier than I had believed, I traversed for some time the walks of the woods without uneasiness — but at length his absence surprised then alarmed me. I returned slowly toward the house, more and more amazed that Ormsby did not appear — I met the under gardner, and, without any precise design, I asked him some trifling question — the man, instead of answering, looked at me with a countenance expressive of terror and surprise; then, without answering, hurried away; while I, dreading I knew not what, quickened my steps toward the house, and was met in the lawn that immediately surrounded it by my own maid, a young woman who had been lately sent to me from France by a friend, and who was already much attached to me. Her countenance startled me infinitely more than that of the man I had just passed — I hastily inquired what was the matter? — Helene attempted to utter a few words in French, but her voice failed her, and, seizing my hands, she looked at me with such an expression of terror and anguish, that the only idea it conveyed was the death of my father: before my incoherent and breathless inquiries, or her attempts to answer them succeeded, my father’s old butler came out, and, though he seemed equally terrified, he had just command enough of himse
lf to tell me that I must immediately attend his master; without having any distinct notion of the cause for which I was thus unexpectedly summoned, I obeyed in such confusion of mind that I know not how I reached the room.
“My father was not as usual at so early an hour in his bed, but sitting in a chair — I saw that something had greatly disturbed him, and my guilty conscience whispered me that our fatal secret was discovered....Trembling, so that I could not move across the room without the assistance of Helene, I at length approached the place. My father’s eyes were sternly fixed on my face; his lips quivered, and his voice falterd, while he reacheh his hands toward me, and gave me a letter he held in it.
‘Read that — (said he sternly) — read it — and hear me for the first and the last time I shall ever speak again of so hateful a subject. If I thought you capable of any part of the folly, the infamy, which this letter attaches to your conduct, I would not hold even this parley with you — but I will not think it; though I severly arraign myself for my inattention, yet I know that a daughter of mine would not dare to encourage any man without my approbation; still less, is it possible that Rosalie Montalbert should think of a boy, who, though distantly my relation, and therefore a gentleman, is a beggar....He is gone — you will see him no more.’
Charlotte Smith- Collected Poetical Works Page 221
