Kitabı oku: «The Heroine», sayfa 11

LETTER XXIII

At dinner, a young farmer joined us; and I soon perceived that he and the peasant's daughter, Mary, were born for each other. They betrayed their mutual tenderness by a thousand little innocent stratagems, that passed, as they thought, unobserved.

After dinner, when Mary was about accompanying me to walk, the youth stole after us, and just as I had got into the garden, he drew her back, and I heard him kiss her. She came to me with her face a little flushed, and her ripe lips ruddier than before.

'Well, Mary,' said I, 'what was he doing to you?'

'Doing, Ma'am? Nothing, I am sure.'

'Nothing, Mary?'

'Why, Ma'am, he only wanted to be a little rude, and kiss me, I believe.'

'And you would not allow him, Mary?'

'Why should I tell a falsehood about it, Ma'am?' said she. 'To be sure I did not hinder him; for he is my sweetheart, and we are to be married next week.'

'And do you love him, Mary?'

'Better than my life, Ma'am. There never was such a good lad; he has not a fault in the wide world, and all the girls are dying of envy that I have got him.'

'Well, Mary,' said I, 'I foresee we shall spend a most delicious evening. We will take a rural repast down to the brook, and tell our loves. The contrast will be beautiful; – mine, the refined, sentimental, pathetic story; your's the pretty, simple, little, artless tale. Come, my friend; let us return, and prepare the rustic banquet. No souchong, or bohea; (blessed names these!) no hot or cold cakes – Oh! no, but creams, berries, and fruits; goat's milk, figs, and honey – Arcadian, pastoral, primeval dainties!'

We then went back to the cottage, but could get nothing better than currants, gooseberries, and a maple bowl of cream. Mary, indeed, cut a large slice of bread and butter for her private amusement; and with these we returned to the streamlet. I then threw myself on my flowery couch, and my companion sat beside me.

We helped ourselves. I took rivulet to my cream, and scooped the brook with my rosy palm. Innocent nymph! ah, why couldst thou not sit down in the lap of content here, and dance, and sing, and say thy prayers, and go to heaven with this nut-brown maid?

I picked up a languishing rose, and sighed as I inhaled its perfume, and gazed on its decay.

'Such, Mary,' said I, 'such will be the fate of you and me. How soft, how serene this evening. It is a landscape for a Claud. But how much more charming is an Italian or a French than an English landscape. O! to saunter over hillocks, covered with lavender, wild thyme, juniper and tamarise, while shrubs fringe the summits of the rocks, or patches of meagre vegetation tint their recesses! Plantations of almonds, cypresses, palms, olives, and dates stretch along; nor are the larch and ilex, the masses of granite, and dark forests of fir wanting; while the majestic Garonne wanders, descending from the Pyrenees, and winding its blue waves towards the Bay of Biscay.

'Is not all this exquisite, Mary?'

'It must, Ma'am, since you say so,' replied she.

'Then,' continued I, 'though your own cottage is tolerable, yet is it, as in Italy, covered with vine leaves, fig-trees, jessamine, and clusters of grapes? Is it tufted with myrtle, or shaded with a grove of lemon, orange, and bergamot?'

'But Ma'am,' said Mary, ''tis shaded by some fine old elms.'

'True,' cried I, with the smile of approaching triumph. 'But do the flowers of the spreading agnus castus mingle with the pomegranate of Shemlek? Does the Asiatic andrachne rear its red trunk? Are the rose-coloured nerit, and verdant alia marina imbost upon the rocks? And do the golden clusters of Eastern spartium gleam amidst the fragrant foliage of the cedrat, the most elegant shrub of the Levant? Do they, Mary?'

'I believe not, Ma'am,' answered she. 'But then our fields are all over daisies, butterflowers, clover-blossoms, and daffodowndillies.'

'Daffodowndillies!' cried I. 'Ah, Mary, Mary, you may be a very good girl, but you do not shine in description. Now I leave it to your own taste, which sounds better, – Asiatic andrachne, or daffodowndillies? If you knew any thing of novels, you would describe for the ear, not for the eye. Oh, my young friend, never, while you live, say daffodowndillies.'

'Never, if I can help it, Ma'am,' said Mary. 'And I hope you are not offended with me, or think the worse of me, on account of my having said it now; for I could safely make oath that I never heard, till this instant, of its being a naughty word.'

'I am satisfied,' said I. 'So now let us tell our loves, and you shall begin.'

'Indeed, Ma'am,' said she, 'I have nothing to tell.'

'Impossible,' cried I. 'Did William never save your life?'

'Never, Ma'am.'

'Well then, he had a quarrel with you?'

'Never, in all his born days, Ma'am.'

'Shocking! Why how long have you known him?'

'About six months, Ma'am. He took a small farm near us; and he liked me from the first, and I liked him, and both families wished for the match; and when he asked me to marry him, I said I would; and so we shall be married next week; and that is the whole history, Ma'am.'

'A melancholy history, indeed!' said I. 'What a pity that an interesting pair, like you, who, without flattery, seem born for one of Marmontel's tales, should be so cruelly sacrificed.'

I then began to consider whether any thing could yet be done in their behalf, or whether the matter was indeed past redemption. I reflected that it would be but an act of common charity, – hardly deserving praise – to snatch them awhile from the dogged and headlong way they were setting about matrimony, and introduce them to a few of the sensibilities. Surely with very little ingenuity, I might get up an incident or two between them; – a week or a fortnight's torture, perhaps; – and afterwards enjoy the luxury of reuniting them.

Full of this laudable intention, I sat meditating awhile; and at length hit upon an admirable plan. It was no less than to make Mary (without her own knowledge) write a letter to William, dismissing him for ever! This appears impossible, but attend.

'My story,' said I, to the unsuspecting girl, 'is long and lamentable, and I fear, I have not spirits to relate it. I shall merely tell you, that I yesterday eloped with the younger of the gentlemen who were here this morning, and married him. I was induced to take this step, in consequence of my parents having insisted that I should marry my first cousin; who, by the by, is a namesake of your William's. Now, Mary, I have a favour to beg of you. My cousin William must be made acquainted with my marriage; though I mean to keep it a secret from my family, and as I do not wish to tell him such unhappy tidings in my own hand-writing – and in high life, my fair rustic, young ladies must not write to young gentlemen, your taking the trouble to write out the letter for me, would bind me to you for ever.'

'That I will, and welcome,' said the simple girl; 'only Ma'am, I fear I shall disgrace a lady like you, with my bad writing. I am, out and out, the worst scribbler in our family; and William says to me but yesterday, ah, Mary, says he, if your tongue talked as your pen writes, you might die an old maid for me. Ah, William, says I, I would bite off my tongue sooner than die an old maid. So, to be sure, Willy laughed very hearty.'

We then returned home, and retired to my chamber, where I dictated, and Mary wrote as follows:

'Dear William,

'Prepare your mind for receiving a great and unexpected shock. To keep you no longer in suspense, learn that I am married.

'Before I had become acquainted with you, I was attached to another man, whose name I must beg leave to conceal. About a year since, circumstances compelled him to go abroad, and before his departure, he procured a written promise from me, to marry him on the first day of his return. You then came, and succeeded in rivalling him.

'As he never once wrote, after he had left the country, I concluded that he was dead. Yesterday, however, a letter from him was put into my hand, which announced his return, and appointed a private interview. I went. He had a clergyman in waiting to join our hands. I prayed, entreated, wept – all in vain.

'I became his wife.

'O William, pity, but do not blame me. If you are a man of honour and of feeling, never shew this letter, or tell its contents to one living soul. Do not even speak to myself on the subject of it.

'You see I pay your own feelings the compliment of not signing the name that I now bear.

'Adieu, dear William: adieu for ever.'

We then returned to the sitting-room, and found William there. While we were conversing, I took an opportunity to slip the letter, unperceived, into his hand, and to bid him read it in some other place. He retired with it, and we continued talking. But in about half an hour he hurried into the room, with an agitated countenance; stopped opposite to Mary, and looked at her earnestly.

'William!' cried she, 'William! For shame then, don't frighten one so.'

'No, Mary,' said he, 'I scorn to frighten you, or injure you either. I believe I am above that. But no wonder my last look at you should be frightful. There is your true-lover's knot – there is your hair – there are your letters. So now, Mary, good-bye, and may you be for ever happy, is what I pray Providence, from the bottom of my broken heart!'

With these words, and a piteous glance of anguish, he rushed from the room.

Mary remained motionless a moment; then half rose, sat down, rose again; and grew pale and red by turns.

''Tis so – so laughable,' said she at length, while her quivering lip refused the attempted smile. 'All my presents returned too. Sure – my heavens! – Sure he cannot want to break off with me? Well, I have as good a spirit as he, I believe. The base man; the cruel, cruel man!' and she burst into a passion of tears.

I tried to sooth her, but the more I said, the more she wept. She was sure, she said, she was quite sure that he wanted to leave her; and then she sobbed so piteously, that I was on the point of undeceiving her; when, fortunately, we heard her father returning, and she ran into her own room. He asked about her; I told him that she was not well; – the old excuse of a fretting heroine; so the good man went to her, and with some difficulty gained admittance. They have remained together ever since.

How delicious will be the happy denouement of this pathetic episode, this dear novellette; and how sweetly will it read in my memoirs!

Adieu.

LETTER XXIV

The night was so dark when I repaired to the casement, that I have been trying to compose a description of it for you, in the style of the best romances. But after having summoned to my mind all the black articles of value that I can recollect – ebony, sables, palls, pitch, and even coal, I find I have nothing better to say, than, simply, that it was a dark night.

Having opened the casement, I sat down at it, and repeated these lines aloud.

SONNET

 
Now while within their wings each feather'd pair,
Hide their hush'd heads, thy visit, moon, renew,
Shake thy pale tresses down, irradiate air,
Earth, and the spicy flowers that scent the dew.
The lonely nightingale shall pipe to thee,
And I will moralize her minstrelsy.
 
 
Ten thousand birds the sun resplendent sing,
One only warbles to the milder moon.
Thus for the great, how many wake the string,
Thus for the good, how few the lyre attune.
 

As soon as I had finished the sonnet, a low and tremulous voice, close to the casement, sung these words:

SONG

 
Haste, my love, and come away;
What is folly, what is sorrow?
'Tis to turn from, joys to-day,
Tis to wait for cares to-morrow.
O'er the river,
Aspens shiver
Thus I tremble at delay.
Light discovers,
Vowing lovers:
See the stars with sharpened ray,
Gathering thicker,
Glancing quicker;
Haste, my love, and come away.
 

I sat enraptured, and heaved a sigh.

'Enchanting sigh!' cried the singer, as he sprang through the window; but it was not the voice of Stuart.

I screamed loudly.

'Hush!' cried the mysterious unknown, and advanced towards me; when, to my great relief, the door was thrown open, and the old peasant entered, with Mary behind him, holding a candle.

In the middle of the room, stood a man, clad in a black cloak, with black feathers in his hat, and a black mask on his face.

The peasant, pale as death, ran forward, knocked him to the ground, and seized a pistol and carving-knife, that were stuck in a belt about his waist.

'Unmask him!' cried I.

The peasant, kneeling on his body, tore off the mask, and I beheld – Betterton!

'Alarm the neighbours, Mary!' cried the peasant.

Mary put down the candle, and went out.

'I must appear in an unfavourable light to you, my good man,' said this terrifying character; 'but the young lady will inform you that I came hither at her own request.'

'For shame!' cried I. 'What a falsehood!'

'Falsehood!' said he. 'I have your own letter, desiring me to come.'

'The man is mad,' cried I. 'I never wrote him a letter.'

'I can produce it to your face,' said he, pulling a paper from his pocket, and to my great amazement reading these lines.

'Cherubina begs that Betterton will repair to her window, at ten o'clock to-night, disguised like an Italian assassin, with dagger, cloak, and pistol. The signal is to be his singing an air under the casement, which she will then open, and he may enter her chamber.'

'I will take the most solemn oath,' cried I, 'that I never wrote a line of it. But this unhappy wretch, who is a ruffian of the first pretensions, has a base design upon me, and has followed me from London, for the purpose of effecting it; so I suppose, he wrote the letter himself, as an excuse, in case of discovery.'

'Then he shall march to the magistrate's,' said the peasant, 'and I will indict him for house-breaking!'

A man half so frantic as Betterton I never beheld. He foamed, he grinned, he grinded the remnants of his teeth; and swore that Stuart was at the bottom of the whole plot.

By this time, Mary having returned with two men, we set forward in a body to the magistrate's, and delivered our depositions before him. I swore that I did not write the letter, and that, to the best of my belief, Betterton harboured bad designs against me.

The peasant swore that he had found the culprit, armed with a knife and pistol, in his house.

The magistrate, therefore, notwithstanding all that Betterton could say, committed him to prison without hesitation.

As they were leading him away, he cast a furious look at the magistrate, and said:

'Ay, Sir, I suppose you are one of those pensioned justices, who minister our vague and sanguinary laws, and do dark deeds for our usurping oligarchy, that has assumed a power of making our most innocent actions misdemeanours, of determining points of law without appeal, of imprisoning our persons without trial, and of breaking open our houses with the standing army. But nothing will go right till we have a reform in Parliament – neither peace nor war, commerce nor agriculture – '

'Clocks nor watches, I suppose,' said the magistrate.

'Ay, clocks nor watches,' cried Betterton, in a rage. 'For how can our mechanics make any thing good, while a packed parliament deprives them of money and a mart?'

'So then,' said the magistrate, 'if St. Dunstan's clock is out of order, 'tis owing to the want of a reform in Parliament.'

'I have not the most distant doubt of it,' cried Betterton.

''Tis fair then,' said the magistrate, 'that the reformists should take such a latitude as they do; for, probably, by their encouragement of time-pieces, they will at last discover the longitude.'

'No sneering, Sir,' cried Betterton. 'Now do your duty, as you call it, and abide the consequence.'

This gallant grey Lothario was then led off; and our party returned home.

Adieu.

LETTER XXV

I rose early this morning, and repaired to my favourite willow, to contemplate the placid landscape. Flinging myself on the grass, close to the brook, I began to warble a rustic madrigal. I then let down my length of tresses, and, stooping over the streamlet, laved them in the little urn of the dimpling Naiad.

This, you know, was agreeable enough, but the accident that befel me was not. For, leaning too much over, I lost my balance, and rolled headlong into the middle of the rivulet. As it was shallow, I did not fear being drowned, but as I was a heroine, I hoped to be rescued. Therefore, instead of rising, as I might easily have done, there I lay, shrieking and listening, and now and then lifting up my head, in hopes to see Stuart come flying towards me on the wings of the wind, Oh no! my gentleman thought proper to make himself scarce; so dripping, shivering, and indignant, I scrambled out, and bent my steps towards the cottage.

On turning the corner of the hedge, who should I perceive at the door, but the hopeful youth himself, quite at his ease, and blowing a penny trumpet for a chubby boy.

'What has happened to you?' said he, seeing me so wet.

'Only that I fell into the brook,' answered I, 'and was under the disagreeable necessity of saving my own life, when I expected that you would have condescended to take the trouble off my hands.'

'Expected!' cried he. 'Surely you had no reason for supposing that I was so near to you, as even to have witnessed the disaster.'

'And it is, therefore,' retorted I, 'that you ought to have been so near me as to have witnessed it.'

'You deal in riddles,' said he.

'Not at all,' answered I. 'For the farther off a distrest heroine believes a hero, the nearer he is sure to be. Only let her have good grounds for supposing him at her Antipodes, and nine times out of ten she finds him at her elbow.'

'Well,' said he, laughing, 'though I did not save your life, I will not endanger it, by detaining you in your wet dress. Pray hasten to change it.'

I took his advice, and borrowed some clothes from Mary, while mine were put to the fire. After breakfast, I once more equipped myself in my Tuscan costume, and a carriage being ready for us, I took an affectionate leave of that interesting rustic. Poor girl! Her attempts at cheerfulness all the morning were truly tragical; and, absorbed in another sorrow, she felt but little for my departure.

On our way, Stuart confessed that he was the person who wrote the letter to Betterton in my name; and that he did so for the purpose of entrapping him in such a manner as to prevent him from accompanying me farther. He was at the window during the whole scene; as he meant to have seized Betterton himself, had not the peasant done so.

'You will excuse my thus interfering in your concerns,' added he; 'but gratitude demands of me to protect the daughter of my guardian; and friendship for her improves the duty to a pleasure.'

'Ah!' said I, 'however it has happened, I fear you dislike me strangely.'

'Believe me, you mistake,' answered he. 'With a few foibles (which are themselves as fascinating as foibles can be), you possess many virtues; and, let me add, a thousand attractions. I who tell you blunt truths, may well afford you flattery.'

'Flattery,' said I, pleased by his praises, and willing to please him in return by serious conversation, 'deserves censure only when the motive for using it is mean or vicious.'

'Your remark is a just one,' observed he. 'Flattery is often but the hyperbole of friendship; and even though a compliment itself may not be sincere, our motive for paying it may be good. Flattery, so far from injuring, may sometimes benefit the object of it; for it is possible to create a virtue in others, by persuading them that they possess it.'

'Besides,' said I, 'may we not pay a compliment, without intending that it should be believed; but merely to make ourselves agreeable by an effort of the wit? And since such an effort shews that we consider the person flattered worthy of it, the compliment proves a kind intention at least, and thus tends to cement affection and friendship.'

In this manner Stuart insensibly led me to talk on grave topics; and we continued a delightful conversation the remainder of the day. Sometimes he seemed greatly gratified at my sprightly sallies, or serious remarks; but never could I throw him off his guard, by the dangerous softness of my manner. He now calls me the lovely visionary.

Would you believe that this laughing, careless, unpathetic creature, is a poet, and a poet of feeling, as the following lines will prove. But whether he wrote them on a real or an imaginary being, I cannot, by any art, extract from him.

THE FAREWELL

 
Go, gentle muse, 'tis near the gloomy day,
Long dreaded; go, and say farewell for me;
A sad farewell to her who deigned thee, say,
For far she hastens hence. Ah, hard decree!
 
 
Tell her I feel that at the parting hour,
More than the waves will heave in tumult wild:
More than the skies will threat a gushing shower,
More than the breeze will breathe a murmur mild.
 
 
Say that her influence flies not with her form,
That distant she will still engage my mind:
That suns are most remote when most they warm,
That flying Parthians scatter darts behind.
 
 
Long will I gaze upon her vacant home,
As the bird lingers near its pilfered nest,
There, will I cry, she turned the studious tome;
There sported, there her envied pet caressed.
 
 
There, while she plied accomplished works of art,
I saw her form, inclined with Sapphic grace;
Her radiant eyes, blest emblems of her heart,
And all the living treasures of her face.
 
 
The Parian forehead parting clustered hair,
The cheek of peachy tinct, the meaning brow;
The witching archness, and the grace so rare,
So magical, it charmed I knew not how.
 
 
Light was her footstep as the silent flakes
Of falling snow; her smile was blithe as morn;
Her dimple, like the print the berry makes,
In some smooth lake, when dropping from the thorn.
 
 
To snatch her passing accents as she spoke,
To see her slender hand, (that future prize)
Fling back a ringlet, oft I dared provoke,
The gentle vengeance of averted eyes.
 
 
Yet ah, what wonder, if, when shrinking awe
Withheld me from her sight, I broke my chain?
Or when I made a single glance my law,
What wonder if that law were made in vain?
 
 
And say, can nought but converse love inspire?
What tho' for me her lips have never moved?
The vale that speaks but with its feathered choir,
When long beheld, eternally is loved.
 
 
Go then, my muse, 'tis near the gloomy day
Of parting; go, and say farewell for me;
A sad farewell to her who deigned thee, say,
Whate'er engage her, wheresoe'er she be.
 
 
If slumbering, tell her in my dreams she sways,
If speaking, tell her in my words she glows;
If thoughtful, tell her in my thoughts she strays,
If tuneful, tell her in my song she flows.
 
 
Tell her that soon my dreams unblest will prove;
That soon my words on absent charms will dwell;
That soon my thoughts remembered hours will love;
That soon my song of vain regrets will tell.
 
 
Then, in romantic moments, I will frame,
Some scene ideal, where we meet at last;
Where, by my peril, snatched from wreck or flame,
She smiles reward and talks of all the past.
 
 
Now for the lark she flies my wistful lay.
Ah, could the bard some winged warbler be,
Following her form, no longer would he say,
Go, gentle muse, and bid farewell for me.
 

I write from an inn within a mile of Lady Gwyn's. Another hour and my fate is decided.

Adieu.