Complete Poetical Works of Charlotte Smith

by Charlotte Smith

  ‘However that was, my aunt certainly continued to have great influence over Mrs Rayland, though I often thought it was more through habit than love; and I am persuaded that, if she had not always guarded against the inclination which Mrs Rayland at times betrayed to take your mother and sisters into favour, they would by degrees have acquired that ascendancy over her, from their own merit, which Mrs Lennard had now only from habit – But my aunt was too cunning to give them an opportunity; and that, I believe, was partly the reason why she was so afraid of my being taken into Mrs Rayland’s kindness, since nothing was more natural than for me to speak in their favour. She need not, however, have dreaded this; for, however willing or anxious I might be, my awe of Mrs Rayland was too great for me to aspire to the character of her confident; and she looked upon me as a mere child. – Probably our ages differed too much to allow any great sympathy between us – and I could give her no other pleasure than by attending to the stories she used to love to repeat, of the days of her youth. – But Mrs Lennard, though by no means desirous of being herself the auditor, and never easy but when she could remain unmolested with her dear Mr Roker, was still jealous lest her lady should feel any degree of kindness for me; and, I believe, by imputing to me faults which Mrs Rayland took her word for, contrived gradually to get her consent to my going apprentice, under the idea of my being enabled to get my own bread honestly in business; while she obviated the inconvenience of my departure by introducing a new servant to be about her lady, who was entirely devoted to her own interest – and kept away the old cook as much as she could, whom Mrs Rayland never would part with, but whom my aunt feared and disliked, because she was an honest blunt creature, who never feared speaking her mind, and was particularly a friend of yours, as you may I am sure recollect. Latterly she became more than usually disagreeable to my aunt and Roker, because she used to rejoice in the thought that her dear young captain would one day or other be master of the Hall, and when Lennard angrily asked her, how she dared talk of any one’s being master of the Hall while her lady lived? she replied, that she dared talk so, because Madam herself had told her so.’

  ‘And where, my Monimia, is this good old friend of mine now?’ said Orlando – ‘Her evidence may be of great importance to us.’ – ‘Alas!’ replied she, ‘I know not: I only heard from your sister, that Dr Hollybourn, who acted as executor to the only will that was produced, immediately discharged all the servants, giving to each of them a present above the two years wages, which Mrs Rayland had in that will given to each of the inferior ones; and, with many good words, got as many as he could of them into other services, at a distance from the country – But I recollect that the cook had relations in the neighbourhood of the Hall, of whom, I dare say, intelligence about her may be procured.

  ‘Ah, dear Orlando! If the account I have already given you of my unhappy life after your departure has affected you, what will you feel when I relate what passed afterwards, to which all my preceding sufferings were nothing! – It is true that, as I lay listening of a night to the howling of the wind in the great melancholy room at the end of the north gallery, where I was locked up every night, I have frequently started at visions my fancy raised; and as the dark green damask hanging swelled with the air behind them, I have been so much terrified as to be unable to move, or to summon to my recollection all the arguments you were wont to use against superstitious fear – Then too I have been glad even to hear the rats as they raced round the skirting boards, because it convinced me there were some living creatures near me, and helped me to account for the strange noises I sometimes heard. As winter came on, my misery in this great room became worse and worse; and such was my terror, that I could hardly ever sleep – I once contrived to get candles, and set up a light in my room; but this only served to shew me the great grim picture over the chimney, of one of the Rayland family in armour, with a sword in his hand: and I was indeed, besides this, effectually cured of wishing for a light on the second night I tried it – for a party of my friendly rats, perceiving the candle, which was to them a delicate treat, took it very composedly out of the socket, and began to eat the end of it which was not alight. – This compelled me to leave my bed to put it out, and then to flight; while the terror I suffered was only increased by this attempt to mitigate it. – Good God! How weak I was to add imaginary horrors to the real calamities of my situation; rather than try to acquire strength of mind to bear the evils from which I could not escape!

  ‘It was at this time that Sir John Belgrave, who, on finding his insulting proposals treated with the contempt they deserved, had left the country for some time, returned thither; and as Jacob, his confident, could no longer find means to put his letters in my way, or to harass and alarm me by coming to the door of the turret, he changed his plan, and pretended that his views were highly honourable. In a letter to my aunt he entreated her interest with me, and that she would prevail upon me to see him: and then it was, Orlando, that my sufferings were almost beyond the power of endurance.’

  ‘What!’ exclaimed Orlando, ‘was the infamous woman base enough then to betray you to this villain?’

  ‘Have patience, I entreat you, Orlando! – She betrayed me then, so far as to insist upon my seeing Sir John, and hearing what he had to say.’

  ‘Eternal curses blast them both!’ exclaimed Orlando: – ‘but I terrify you, my angel!’

  ‘You do, indeed,’ answered Monimia; ‘and I shall never, Orlando, conclude my mournful narrative, if you will not be more calm.’

  ‘I will,’ replied he; ‘at least I will try at it – Pray go on.’

  ‘I resisted this proposal of seeing Sir John Belgrave for many days; till my aunt, enraged at what she called my stupid idiotism, declared to me that, if I persisted to behave so senselessly, she would relate to Mrs Rayland all my clandestine meetings with you, and then turn me out of the house to take my own courses. – I would willingly have left the house, and, rather than have undergone one day longer the misery I hourly experienced, I would have begged my way to you in America (Orlando sighed and shuddered); but when my cruel aunt threatened to take such means as I knew would ruin you, and blast all those hopes on which alone I lived, of seeing you return to happiness and independence, I own I could not bear to hazard it, and at length consented to see this detested suitor – not without some hope that my peremptory refusal repeated (for I had already given it him in writing) might put an end to all his hateful pretensions. A day therefore was fixed: but Sir John, either repenting that he had gone so far, or from some caprice, wrote to my aunt to say he was that day sent for express to London, to attend a dying relation, from whom he expected a great acquisition of fortune. This might be true – I cared not whether it was or no, but blessed the fortunate relief from persecution. In the interim your father, who was taken ill some time before, died. – Oh! how much did I see Selina suffer during his illness – how much did I suffer myself! and all was aggravated to an indescribable degree of wretchedness, by our believing that you, Orlando, were lost in your passage to America! – If I thought my former condition insupportable, what was the increase of my sorrows now, when torn from the last consolation I had left, that of weeping sometimes with Selina! – My aunt, almost as soon as Sir John Belgrave had left the country, informed me that she had found a person at Winchester willing to take me for a small premium, and that I was to go the following Thursday. – I never knew how all this was settled; but very, very certain it is, that it was arranged between her, her lover Mr Roker, and Sir John Belgrave. She was impatient to have me gone; and sent the old cook, to take care of me, as far as Havant, where Mrs Newill, to whom I was consigned, met me, and conducted me to a little miserable apartment, which, with a small bow-windowed shop, she inhabited at Winchester, and where she was to teach me a business which I soon found she did not know herself.

  ‘Mrs Newill was said to have been well brought up; but, if she were, her having long associated with people in very inferior life had considerably obliterated th
e traces of a good education: and the inconvenient circumstances to which she had been exposed, in consequence of having had a brutal and extravagant husband, seemed at once to have soured her temper, and relaxed her morals. – She had some remains of beauty, and was fonder of talking of its former power than I thought redounded much to her honour. – Her husband had possessed a place in the dock-yard at Portsmouth, from whence he had been dismissed for some heavy offences, and lived now upon the wide world; while his wife was, by the assistance of her friends, trying to get into business to support herself; their only son, a young man of twenty, was in the navy. – The greatest personal hardship I endured on this my change of abode, was sleeping in the same bed with Mrs Newill, which I did for the first week: – but, fortunately for me, though it was probably much otherwise to her, her husband, believing she had money, for he had heard of her having taken an apprentice, came suddenly to her house, or rather lodging, and I was dismissed to a little closet in a garret with a truckle bed: but it was paradise compared with my share of Mrs Newill’s; for now I could weep at liberty, and pray for you!

  ‘The arrival of such a man as Mr Newill did not much contribute to the prosperity of his wife’s business – Those who, from their former knowledge of her, were willing to promote her welfare, grew cold when they found their bounty served only to support her husband in drunkenness, and her distress became very great, of which I was a sharer; but I endeavoured to do all I could to continue her business, which was now almost entirely neglected.

  ‘This went on for six weeks, when a regiment came thither to assist in guarding the prisoners at the castle; and Sir John Belgrave suddenly made his appearance, protesting to me, that he knew nothing of my being there, and only came down on a visit to some of his friends in the newly arrived corps.

  ‘I did not believe this, and found every day more cause to suppose that Mrs Newill’s necessities had driven her to the inhuman expedient of betraying me to him. Though I had often ridiculed the stories in novels where young women are forcibly carried away, I saw great reason to believe some such adventure might happen to me, for I was totally unprotected, and, I believe, absolutely sold.’

  Orlando, starting up, traversed the room; nor could, for some time, the soothing voice of Monimia restore him to sufficient composure to attend to her narrative.

  At length his anxiety to know what he yet trembled to hear obliged him to re-assume his seat, and she thus proceeded:

  ‘Surely, Orlando, you do not suppose that any distress, any misery, could have induced me to listen to Sir John Belgrave, though, instead of the advantages he affected to offer me, he could have laid empires at my feet. – It is true, that I now suffered every species of mortification, and even much personal inconvenience; but my heart felt only the horrid tidings I received from Selina. Mrs Rayland’s death, and the total disappointment of your family’s hopes, were very melancholy; but when Perseus arrived, and your death, Orlando, was confirmed by the testimony of a man who had seen you fall, my wretchedness so much exceeded all that I believed it possible to bear, that I became stupefied and insensible to every thing else, and walked about without hearing or seeing the objects around me. I never slept, but with the aid of laudanum – I could not shed a tear, and my heart seemed to be turned to marble. I had nobody to hear my complaints, and therefore I did not complain; and the only circumstance that roused me from this state of mind, was the renewal of Sir John Belgrave’s visits, who, after an absence of seven or eight days, returned with new proposals, and dared to triumph in the knowledge that his rival, as he insolently called you, was no longer in his way.

  ‘It was now, Orlando, that a new method was pursued. He contrived, what was not indeed very difficult, to gain over Mr Newill to his interest. – I was now treated with great respect – A room was hired for me in the same house, and Mrs Newill offered me credit for any clothes I chose to have. I, who was hardly conscious of my existence, who mechanically performed the business of the day, and cared not whether I ever again saw the light of the sun, refused her offers, and desired nothing but that I might be protected from the affront of Sir John Belgrave’s visits. If I sat at work in the shop, he was there: – if I quitted it, he came into the work-room under pretence of speaking to Mr Newill. I found that Newill was a wretch who would have sacrificed a daughter of his own for a few guineas, with which to purchase his favourite indulgences; and Sir John Belgrave scrupled not to say, that, since I had refused his honourable offers, he held it no dishonour to compel me, by any means, to exchange my present wretched dependence, for affluence and prosperity – that I could not now have the pretence of constancy to you, and that his excessive love for me would in time induce me to return it. – Such were the terms in which he pressed his suit, giving me at the same time to understand that I was in his power.

  ‘But, liberal as I have reason to believe he was to Mr Newill, his debts were too numerous and extensive to be so settled; and, in consequence of one of these, to the amount of five hundred pounds, he was arrested in London, and sent for his wife to attend him in the King’s Bench.

  ‘This the unhappy woman prepared to do in two or three days; and, in that time, made over the little stock for sale to one of her friends, who had advanced money for her. – But what was to become of me? – As she had no longer a business, she could have no occasion for an apprentice, and I could be only a burthen to her; but I soon found that it was her husband’s directions that she should take me with her, and I determined at all events not to go.

  ‘I now again wrote to my cruel aunt, who, though she almost immediately after Mrs Rayland’s death settled within twelve miles of the town whither she had sent me, had never taken any other notice of me than to send me a small supply of clothes and two guineas, together with a verbal message, that the reason she had not answered any of my former, nor should answer any of my future letters, was, that she would not encourage in her perverseness a person so blind to her own interests, and that, till I knew how to behave to Sir John Belgrave, I should find no friend in her. It was in vain I wrote to her, urging every plea that I thought might move her, and soliciting her pity and protection, as the only friend I had in the world. She either hardened her heart against me, or perhaps never got my letters. The business that detained Mrs Newill at Winchester, could not be settled so expeditiously as she expected. In the mean time, what a situation was mine! I had nothing to hope but death, and death only could deliver me from the fear of evils infinitely more insupportable. Orlando, how earnestly did I pray to join you in heaven! how often did I invoke you to hear me! and, casting towards the west my swollen eyes (for I was now able to weep in repeating your name), how often have I addressed the setting sun, which, as it sunk away from our horizon, might illuminate, I thought, that spot in the wilderness of America where all my happiness was buried!’