“Go in, Rachel! — go in, child,” said the old woman, in so loud and severe a tone, that both Rachel and Mr. Hervey started; the basket was overturned, and the roses all scattered upon the grass. Clarence, though he attempted some apology, was by no means concerned for the accident, as it detained Rachel some instants longer to collect her flowers, and gave him an opportunity of admiring her finely shaped hands and arms, and the ease and natural grace of her motions.
“Go in, Rachel,” repeated the old woman, in a still more severe tone; “leave the roses there — I can pick them up as well as you, child — go in.”
The girl looked at the old woman with astonishment, her eyes filled with tears, and throwing down the roses that she held in her hand, she said, “I am going, grandmother.” The door closed after her before Clarence recollected himself sufficiently to tell the old lady how he had lost his way, &c. Her severity vanished, as soon as her grand-daughter was safe in the house, and with much readiness she showed him the road for which he inquired.
As soon, however, as it was in his power, he returned thither; for he had taken such good note of the place, that he easily found his way to the spot, which appeared to him a terrestrial paradise. As he descended into the valley, he heard the humming of bees, but he saw no smoke rising from the cottage chimney — no dog barked — no living creature was to be seen — the house door was shut — the window-shutters closed — all was still. The place looked as if it had been deserted by all its inhabitants: the roses had not been watered, many of them had shed their leaves; and a basket half full of dead flowers was left in the middle of the garden. Clarence alighted, and tried the latch of the door, but it was fastened; he listened, but heard no sound; he walked round to the back of the house: a small lattice window was half open, and, as he went toward it, he thought he heard a low moaning voice; he gently pulled aside the curtain, and peeped in at the window. The room was darkened, his eyes had been dazzled by the sun, so that he could not, at first, see any object distinctly; but he heard the moaning repeated at intervals, and a soft voice at last said —
“Oh, speak to me! — speak to me once again — only once — only once again, speak to me!”
The voice came from a corner of the room, to which he had not yet turned his eyes: and as he drew aside more of the curtain, to let in more light, a figure started up from the side of a bed, at which she had been kneeling, and he saw the beautiful young girl, with her hair all dishevelled, and the strongest expression of grief in her countenance. He asked if he could do her any service. She beckoned to him to come in, and then, pointing to the bed, on which the old woman was stretched, said —
“She cannot speak to me — she cannot move one side — she has been so these three days — but she is not dead — she is not dead!”
The poor creature had been struck with the palsy. As Clarence went close to the bed, she opened her eyes, and fixing them upon him, she stretched out her withered hand, caught fast hold of her grand-daughter, and then raising herself, with a violent effort, she pronounced the word “Begone!” Her face grew black, her features convulsed, and she sunk down again in her bed, without power of utterance. Clarence left the house instantly, mounted his horse, and galloped to the next town for medical assistance. The poor woman was so far recovered by a skilful apothecary, that she could, in a few days, articulate so as to be understood. She knew that her end was approaching fast, and seemed piously resigned to her fate. Mr. Hervey went constantly to see her; but, though grateful to him for his humanity, and for the assistance he had procured for her, yet she appeared agitated when he was in the room, and frequently looked at him and at her grand-daughter with uncommon anxiety. At last, she whispered something to the girl, who immediately left the room; and she then beckoned to him to come closer to the arm-chair, in which she was seated.
“May be, sir,” said she, “you thought me out of my right mind the day when I was lying on that bed, and said to you in such a peremptory tone, ‘Begone!’ — It was all I could say then; and, in truth, I cannot speak quite plain yet; nor ever shall again. But God’s will be done. I had only one thing to say to you, sir, about that poor girl of mine—”
Clarence listened to her with eagerness. She paused, and then laying her cold hand upon his, she looked up earnestly in his face, and continued, “You are a fine young gentleman, and you look like a good gentleman; but so did the man who broke the heart of her poor mother. Her mother was carried off from a boarding-school, when she was scarcely sixteen, by a wretch, who, after privately marrying her, would not own his marriage, stayed with her but two years, then went abroad, left his wife and his infant, and has never been heard of since. My daughter died of a broken heart. Rachel was then between three and four years old; a beautiful child. God forgive her father! — God’s will be done!” — She paused to subdue her emotion, and then, with some difficulty, proceeded.
“My only comfort is, I have bred Rachel up in innocence; I never sent her to a boarding-school. No, no; from the moment of her birth till now, I have kept her under my own eye. In this cottage she has lived with me, away from all the world. You are the first man she ever spoke to; the first man who ever was within these doors. She is innocence itself! — Oh, sir, as you hope for mercy when you are as I am now, spare the innocence of that poor child! — Never, never come here after her, when I am dead and gone! Consider, she is but a child, sir. God never made a better creature. Oh, promise me you will not be the ruin of my sweet innocent girl, and I shall die in peace!”
Clarence Hervey was touched. He instantly made the promise required of him; and, as nothing less would satisfy the poor dying woman, confirmed it by a solemn oath.
“Now I am easy,” said she, “quite easy; and may God bless you for it! In the village here, there is a Mrs. Smith, a good farmer’s wife, who knows us well; she will see to have me decently buried, and then has promised to sell all the little I have for my girl, and to take care of her. And you’ll never come near her more?”
“I did not promise that,” said Hervey.
The old woman again looked much disturbed.
“Ah, good young gentleman!” said she, “take my advice; it will be best for you both. If you see her again, you will love her, sir — you can’t help it; and if she sees you — poor thing, how innocently she smiled when she gave you the rose! — oh, sir, never come near her when I am gone! It is too late for me now to get her out of your way. This night, I’m sure, will be my last in this world — oh, promise me you will never come here again!”
“After the oath I have taken,” replied Clarence, “that promise would be unnecessary. Trust to my honour.”
“Honour! Oh, that was the word the gentleman said that betrayed her poor mother, and left her afterwards to die.’ — Oh, sir, sir — —”
The violent emotion that she felt was too much for her — she fell back exhausted — never spoke more — and an hour afterwards she expired in the arms of her grand-daughter. The poor girl could not believe that she had breathed her last. She made a sign to the surgeon, and to Clarence Hervey, who stood beside her, to be silent; and listened, fancying that the corpse would breathe again. Then she kissed her cold lips, and the shrivelled cheeks, and the eyelids that were closed for ever. She warmed the dead fingers with her breath — she raised the heavy arm, and when it fell she perceived there was no hope: she threw herself upon her knees:—”She is dead!” she exclaimed; “and she has died without giving me her blessing! She can never bless me again.”
They took her into the air, and Clarence Hervey sprinkled water upon her face. It was a fine night, and the fresh air soon brought her to her senses. He then said that he would leave her to the care of the surgeon, and ride to the village in search of that Mrs. Smith who had promised to be her friend.
“And so you are going away from me, too?” said she; and she burst into tears. At the sight of these tears Clarence turned away, and hurried from her. He sent the woman from the village, but returned no more that night.
Her simplicity, sensibility, and, perhaps more than he was aware, her beauty, had pleased and touched him extremely. The idea of attaching a perfectly pure, disinterested, unpractised heart, was delightful to his imagination: the cultivation of her understanding, he thought, would be an easy and a pleasing task: all difficulties vanished before his sanguine hopes.
“Sensibility,” said he to himself, “is the parent of great talents and great virtues; and evidently she possesses natural feeling in an uncommon degree: it shall be developed with skill, patience, and delicacy; and I will deserve before I claim my reward.”
The next day he returned to the cottage, accompanied by an elderly lady, a Mrs. Ormond; the same lady who afterward, to Marriott’s prejudiced eyes, had appeared more like a dragon than any thing else, but who, to this simple, unsuspicious girl, seemed like what she really was, a truly good-natured, benevolent woman. She consented, most readily, to put herself under the protection of Mrs. Ormond, “provided Mrs. Smith would give her leave.” There was no difficulty in persuading Mrs. Smith that it was for her advantage. Mrs. Smith, who was a plain farmer’s wife, told all that she knew of Rachel’s history; but all that she knew was little. She had heard only hints at odd times from the old woman: these agreed perfectly with what Mr. Hervey had already heard.
“The old gentlewoman,” said Mrs. Smith, “as I believe I should call her by rights, has lived in the forest there, where you found her, these many a year — she earned her subsistence by tending bees and making rose-water — she was a good soul, but very particular, especially about her grand-daughter, which, considering all things, one cannot blame her for. She often told me she would never put Rachel to a boarding-school, which I approved, seeing she had no fortune; and it is the ruin of girls, to my mind, to be bred above their means — as it was of her mother, sir. Then she would never teach Rachel to write, for fear she should take to scrawling nonsense of love-letters, as her mother did before her. Now, sir, this I approved too, for I don’t much mind about book-learning myself; and I even thought it would have been as well if the girl had not learnt to read; but that she did learn, and was always fond of, and I’m sure it was more plague than use too to her grandmother, for she was as particular about the books that the girl was to read as about all the rest. She went farther than all that, sir, for she never would let the girl speak to a man — not a man ever entered the doors of the house.”
“So she told me.”
“And she told you true enough. But there, I thought, she was quite wrong; for seeing the girl must, some time or other, speak to men, where was the use of her not learning to do it properly? — Lord, ma’am,” continued Mrs. Smith, addressing herself to Mrs. Ormond, “Lord, ma’am, though it is a sin to be remembering so much of the particularities of the dead, I must say there never was an old lady who had more scrupulosities than the deceased. I verily thought, one day, she would have gone into fits about a picture of a man, that Rachel lit upon by accident, as if a picture had any sense to hurt a body! Now if it had been one of your naked pictures, there might have been some delicacy in her dislike to it; but it was no such thing, but a very proper picture.
“A picture, ma’am, of a young sea-officer, in his full uniform — quite proper, ma’am. It was his mother that left it with me, and I had it always in my own room, and the girl saw it, and was mightily taken with it, being the first thing of the kind she had ever lit upon, and the old lady comes in, and took on, till I verily thought she was crazed. Lord! I really could not but laugh; but I checked myself, when the poor old soul’s eyes filled with tears, which made me know she was thinking of her daughter that was dead. When I thought on the cause of her particularity about Rachel, I could not laugh any more at her strangeness.
“I promised the good lady that day, in case of her death, to take care of her grand-daughter; and I thought in my own mind that, in time to come, if one of my boys should take a fancy to her, I should make no objections, because she was always a good, modest-behaved girl; and, I’m sure, would make a good wife, though too delicate for hard country work; but, as it pleases God to send you, madam, and the good gentleman, to take the charge of her off my hands, I am content it should be so, and I will sell every thing here for her honestly, and bring it to you, madam, for poor Rachel.”
There was nothing that Rachel was anxious to carry away with her but a little bullfinch, of which she was very fond. One, and but one, circumstance about Rachel stopped the current of Clarence Hervey’s imagination, and this, consequently, was excessively disagreeable to him — her name: the name of Rachel he could hot endure, and he thought it so unsuited to her, that he could scarcely believe it belonged to her. He consequently resolved to change it as soon as possible. The first time that he beheld her, he was struck with the idea that she resembled the description of Virginia in M. de St. Pierre’s celebrated romance; and by this name he always called her, from the hour that she quitted her cottage.
Mrs. Ormond, the lady whom he had engaged to take care of his Virginia, was a widow, the mother of a gentleman who had been his tutor at college. Her son died, and left her in such narrow circumstances, that she was obliged to apply to her friends for pecuniary assistance.
Mr. Hervey had been liberal in his contributions; from his childhood he had known her worth, and her attachment to him was blended with the most profound respect. She was not a woman of superior abilities, or of much information; but her excellent temper and gentle disposition won affection, though she had not any talents to excite admiration. Mr. Hervey had perfect confidence in her integrity; he believed that she would exactly comply with his directions, and he thought that her want of literature and ingenuity could easily be supplied by his own care and instructions. He took a house for her and his fair pupil at Windsor, and he exacted a solemn promise that she would neither receive nor pay any visits. Virginia was thus secluded from all intercourse with the world: she saw no one but Mrs. Ormond, Clarence Hervey, and Mr. Moreton, an elderly clergyman, whom Mr. Hervey engaged to attend every Sunday to read prayers for them at home. Virginia never expressed the slightest curiosity to see any other persons, or any thing beyond the walls of the garden that belonged to the house in which she lived; her present retirement was not greater than that to which she had long been accustomed, and consequently she did not feel her seclusion from the world as any restraint: with the circumstances that were altered in her situation she seemed neither to be dazzled nor charmed; the objects of convenience or luxury that were new to her she looked upon with indifference; but with any thing that reminded her of her former way of life, and of her grandmother’s cottage, she was delighted.
One day Mr. Hervey asked her, whether she should like better to return to that cottage, or to remain where she was? He trembled for her answer. She innocently replied, “I should like best to go back to the cottage, if you would go with me — but I would rather stay here with you than live there without you.”
Clarence was touched and flattered by this artless answer, and for some time he discovered every day fresh indications, as he thought, of virtue and abilities in his charming pupil. Her indifference to objects of show and ornament appeared to him an indisputable proof of her magnanimity, and of the superiority of her unprejudiced mind. What a difference, thought he, between this child of nature and the frivolous, sophisticated slaves of art!
To try and prove the simplicity of her taste, and the purity of her mind, he once presented to her a pair of diamond earrings and a moss rosebud, and asked her to take whichever she liked best. She eagerly snatched the rose, crying, “Oh! it puts me in mind of the cottage: — how sweet it smells!”
She placed it in her bosom, and then, looking at the diamonds, said, “They are pretty, sparkling things — what are they? of what use are they?” and she looked with more curiosity and admiration at the manner in which the earring shut and opened than at the diamonds. Clarence was charmed with her. When Mrs. Ormond told her that these things were to hang in her ears, she laughed
and said, “How! how can I make them hang?”
“Have you never observed that I wear earrings?” said Mrs. Ormond.
“Ay! but yours are not like these, and — let me look — I never saw how you fastened them — let me look — oh! you have holes in your ears; but I have none in mine.”
Mrs. Ormond told her that holes could easily be made in her ears, by running a steel pin through them. She shrunk back, defending her ear with one hand, and pushing the diamonds from her with the other, exclaiming, “Oh, no, no! — unless,” added she, changing her tone, and turning to Clarence, “unless you wish it: — if you bid me, I will.”
Clarence was scarcely master of himself at this instant; and it was with the utmost difficulty that he could reply to her with that dispassionate calmness which became his situation and hers. And yet there was more of ignorance and timidity, perhaps, than of sound sense or philosophy in Virginia’s indifference to diamonds; she did not consider them as ornaments that would confer distinction upon their possessor, because she was ignorant of the value affixed to them by society. Isolated in the world, she had no excitements to the love of finery, no competition, no means of comparison, or opportunities of display; diamonds were consequently as useless to her as guineas were to Robinson Crusoe on his desert island. It could not justly be said that he was free from avarice, because he set no value on the gold; or that she was free from vanity, because she rejected the diamonds. These reflections could not possibly have escaped a man of Clarence Hervey’s abilities, had he not been engaged in defence of a favourite system of education, or if his pupil had not been quite so handsome. Virginia’s absolute ignorance of the world frequently gave an air of originality to her most trivial observations, which made her appear at once interesting and entertaining. All her ideas of happiness were confined to the life she had led during her childhood; and as she had accidentally lived in a beautiful situation in the New Forest, she appeared to have an instinctive taste for the beauties of nature, and for what we call the picturesque. This taste Mr. Hervey perceived, whenever he showed her prints and drawings, and it was a fresh source of delight and self-complacency to him. All that was amiable or estimable in Virginia had a double charm, from the secret sense of his penetration, in having discovered and appreciated the treasure. The affections of this innocent girl had no object but himself and Mrs. Ormond, and they were strong, perhaps, in proportion as they were concentrated. The artless familiarity of her manner, and her unsuspicious confidence, amounting almost to credulity, had irresistible power over Mr. Hervey’s mind; he felt them as appeals at once to his tenderness and his generosity. He treated her with the utmost delicacy, and his oath was never absent from his mind: but he felt proudly convinced, that if he had not been bound by any such solemn engagement, no temptation could have made him deceive and betray confiding innocence.
Complete Novels of Maria Edgeworth Page 55
