Kitabı oku: «The Heroine», sayfa 13

LETTER XXX

This morning I awoke almost free from pain; and towards evening, I was able to appear in the drawing-room. Lady Gwyn had asked several of her friends to tea, so that I passed a delightful afternoon; the charm, admiration, and astonishment of all.

On retiring for the night to my chamber, I found this note on my toilette, and read it with a beating heart.

To the Lady Cherubina.

'Your mother lives! and is confined in one of the subterranean vaults belonging to the villa. At midnight you will hear a tapping at your door. Open it, and two men in masks will appear outside. They will blindfold, and conduct you to her. You will know her by her striking likeness to her picture in the gallery. Be silent, courageous, and circumspect.

'An unknown Friend.'

What a flood of new feelings gushed upon my soul, as I laid down the billet, and lifted my filial eyes to heaven! I was about to behold my mother. Mother – endearing name! I pictured to myself, that unfortunate lady, stretched on a mattrass of straw, her eyes sunken in their sockets, yet still retaining a portion of their wonted fire; her frame emaciated, her voice feeble, her hand damp and chill. Fondly did I depict our meeting – our embrace; she gently pushing me from her, to gaze on all the lineaments of my countenance, and then baring my temple to search for the mole. All, all is convincing; and she calls me the softened image of my noble father!

Two tedious hours I waited in extreme anxiety, till at length the clock struck twelve. My heart beat responsive, and in a few moments after, I heard the promised signal at my door. I unbolted it, and beheld two men in masks and cloaks. They blindfolded me, and each taking an arm, led me along. Not a word passed. We traversed several suites of apartments, ascended flights of stairs, descended others; now went this way, now that; obliquely, circularly, angularly; till I began actually to imagine we were all the time in one spot.

At length my conductors stopped.

'Unlock the postern gate,' whispered one, 'while I light a torch.'

'We are betrayed!' said the other, 'for this is the wrong key.'

'Then thou beest the traitor,' cried the first.

'Thou liest, dost lie, and art lying!' cried the second.

'Take that!' exclaimed the first. A groan followed, and the wretch dropped to the ground.

'You have murdered him!' cried I, sickening with horror.

'I have only hamstrung him, my lady,' said the fellow. 'He will be lame for life.'

'Treason!' shouted the wounded man.

His companion burst open the gate; a sudden current of wind met us, and we fled along with incredible speed, while low moans and smothered shrieks were heard at either side of us.

'Gracious heaven, where are we?' cried I.

'In the cavern of death!' said my conductor, 'famous for rats and banditti.'

On a sudden innumerable footsteps echoed behind us. We ran swifter.

'Fire!' cried a ferocious accent, almost at my ear; and in a moment several pistols were discharged.

I stopped, unable to move, breathe, or speak.

'I am wounded all over, right and left, fore and aft!' cried my conductor.

'Am I bleeding?' said I, feeling myself with my hands.

'No, blessed St. Anthony be praised!' answered he; 'and now all is safe, for we are at the cell, and the banditti have turned into the wrong passage.'

He stopped, and unlocked a door.

'Enter,' said he, 'and behold your unhappy mother!'

He led me forward, took the bandage from my eyes, and retiring, locked the door upon me.

Agitated already by the terrors of my dangerous expedition, I felt additional horror on finding myself in a dismal cell, lighted with a lantern; where, at a small table, sat a woman suffering under a corpulency unparalleled in the memoirs of human monsters. She was clad in sackcloth, her head was swathed in linen, and had grey locks on it, like horses' tails. Hundreds of frogs were leaping about the floor; a piece of mouldy bread, a mug of water, and a manuscript, lay on the table; some straw, strewn with dead snakes and skulls, occupied one corner, and the farther side of the cell was concealed behind a black curtain.

I stood at the door, doubtful, and afraid to advance; while the prodigious prisoner sat examining me from head to foot.

At last I summoned courage to say, 'I fear, Madam, I am an intruder here. I have certainly been shewn into the wrong room.'

'It is, it is my own, my only daughter, my Cherubina!' cried she, with a tremendous voice. 'Come to my maternal arms, thou living picture of the departed Theodore!'

'Why, Ma'am,' said I, 'I would with great pleasure, but I am afraid that – Oh, Madam, indeed, indeed, I am quite sure you cannot be my mother!'

'For shame!' cried she. 'Why not?'

'Why, Madam,' answered I, 'my mother was of a thin habit; as her picture proves.'

'And so was I once,' said she. 'This deplorable plumpness is owing to want of exercise. You see, however, that I retain all my former paleness.'

'Pardon me,' said I, 'for I must say that your face is a rich scarlet.'

'And is this our tender meeting?' cried she. 'After ten years' imprisonment, to be disowned by my daughter, and taunted with sarcastic insinuations against my face? Here is a pretty joke! Tell me, girl, will you embrace me, or will you not?'

'Indeed, Madam,' answered I, 'I will embrace you presently.'

'Presently!' cried she.

'Yes,' said I, 'depend upon it I will. Only let me get over the first shock.'

'Shock!' vociferated she.

Dreading her violence, and feeling myself bound to do the duties of a daughter, I kneeled at her feet, and said:

'Ever excellent, ever exalted author of my being, I beg thy maternal blessing!'

My mother raised me from the ground, and hugged me to her heart, with such cruel vigour, that almost crushed, I cried out stoutly, and struggled for release.

'And now,' said she, relaxing her grasp, 'let us talk over our wrongs. This manuscript is a faithful narrative of my life, previous to my marriage. It was written by my female confidant, to divert her grief, during the long and alarming illness of her Dutch pug. Take it to your chamber, and blot it with your tears, my love.'

I put the scroll in my bosom.

'Need I shock your gentle feelings,' continued she, 'by relating my subsequent story? Suffice it, that as soon as you were stolen, I went mad about the woods, till I was caught; and on recovering my senses, I found myself in this infernal dungeon. Look at that calendar of small sticks, notched all over with my dismal days and nights. Ten long years I have eaten nothing but bread. Oh, ye favourite pullets, oh ye inimitable apple-pies, shall I never, never, taste you more? Oft too, my reason wanders. Oft I see figures that rise like furies, to torment me. I see them when asleep; I see them now – now!'

She sat in a fixed attitude of horror, while her straining eyes moved slowly round, as if they followed something. I stood shuddering, and hating her more and more every moment.

'Gentle companion of my confinement!' cried she, apostrophizing a huge toad that she pulled out of her bosom; 'dear, spotted fondling; thou, next to my Cherubina, art worthy of my love. Embrace each other, my friends.' And she put the hideous pet into my hand. I screamed and dropped it.

'Oh!' cried I, in a passion of despair, 'what madness possessed me to undertake this execrable enterprize!' and I began beating with my hand against the door.

'Do you want to leave your poor mother?' said she, in a whimpering tone.

'Oh! I am so frightened!' said I.

'You will spend the night here, however,' cried she; 'and probably your whole life too; for no doubt the ruffian who brought you hither was employed by Lady Gwyn to entrap you.'

When I heard this terrible suggestion, my blood ran cold, and I began crying bitterly.

'Come, my love!' said my mother, 'and let me lull thee to repose on my soft bosom. What is the world to us? Here in each other's society, we will enjoy all that affection, all that virtue can confer. Come, my daughter, and let me clasp thee to my heart once more!'

'Ah,' cried I, 'spare me!'

'What!' exclaimed she, 'do you spurn my proffered embrace?'

'Dear, no, Madam,' answered I. 'But – but you squeeze one so!'

My mother made a huge stride towards me; then stood groaning and rolling her eyes.

'Help!' cried I, half frantic; 'help! help!'

I was stopped by a suppressed titter of infernal laughter, as if from many demons; and on looking towards the black curtain, whence the sound came, I saw it agitated; and about twenty terrific faces appeared peeping through slits in it, and making grins of a most diabolical nature. I hid my face in my hands.

''Tis the banditti!' cried my mother.

As she spoke, the door opened, a bandage was flung over my eyes, and I was hurried off, almost senseless, in some one's arms; till at length, I found myself alone in my own chamber.

Such was the detestable adventure of to-night. Oh, Biddy, that I should have lived to meet this mother of mine! How different from the mothers that other heroines contrive to rummage out in northern turrets and ruined chapels! I am out of all patience. Liberate her I will, of course, and make a suitable provision for her, when I get possession of my property, but positively, never will I sleep under the same roof with – (ye powers of filial love forgive me!) such a living mountain of human horror.

Adieu.

LETTER XXXI

While her ladyship is busied in preparing for the ball of to-morrow night, I find time to copy my mother's memoirs for your perusal. Were she herself elegant and interesting, perhaps I might think them so too; and if I dislike them, it must be because I dislike her; for the plot, sentiment, diction, and pictures of nature, differ little from what we find in other novels.

Il Castello di Grimgothico, OR MEMOIRS OF LADY HYSTERICA BELAMOUR

A NOVEL

By Anna Maria Marianne Matilda Pottingen, Author of the Bloody Bodkin, Sonnets on most of the Planets, &c. &c. &c

Oh, Sophonisba, Sophonisba, oh!

Thompson.

CHAPTER I

Blow, blow, thou wintry wind. – Shakespeare.

Blow, breezes, blow. – Moore

A Storm. – A rustic Repast. – An Alarm. – Uncommon readiness in a Child. – An inundated Stranger. – A Castle out of repair. – An impaired Character

It was on a nocturnal night in autumnal October; the wet rain fell in liquid quantities, and the thunder rolled in an awful and Ossianly manner. The lowly, but peaceful inhabitants of a small, but decent cottage, were just sitting down to their homely, but wholesome supper, when a loud knocking at the door alarmed them. Bertram armed himself with a ladle. 'Lackadaisy!' cried old Margueritone, and little Billy seized the favourable moment to fill his mouth with meat. Innocent fraud! happy childhood!

The father's lustre and the mother's bloom. – Thompson.

Bertram then opened the door; when lo! pale, breathless, dripping, and with a look that would have shocked the Humane Society, a beautiful female tottered into the room.

'Lackadaisy, Ma'am,' said Margueritone, 'are you wet?'

'Wet!' exclaimed the fair unknown, wringing a rivulet of rain from the corner of her robe; 'O ye gods, wet!'

Margueritone felt the justice, the gentleness of the reproof, and turned the subject, by recommending a glass of spirits.

Spirit of my sainted sire.

The stranger sipped, shook her head, and fainted. Her hair was long and dark, and the bed was ready; so since she seems in distress, we will leave her there awhile; lest we should betray an ignorance of the world, in appearing not to know the proper time for deserting people.

On the rocky summit of a beetling precipice, whose base was lashed by the angry Atlantic, stood a moated, and turreted structure, called Il Castello di Grimgothico.

As the northern tower had remained uninhabited since the death of its late lord, Henriques De Violenci, lights and figures were, par consequence, observed in it at midnight. Besides, the black eyebrows of the present baron had a habit of meeting for several years, and quelquefois, he paced the picture-gallery with a hurried step. These circumstances combined, there could be no doubt of his having committed murder. Accordingly, all avoided him, except the Count Stiletto, and the hectic, but heavenly Hysterica. The former, he knew, was the most pale-faced, flagitious character in the world. But birds of a plume associate. The latter shall be presented to the reader in the next chapter.

CHAPTER II

'Oh!' – Milton.

'Ah!' – Pope.

A History. – a Mystery. – An original Reflection on Death. – The Heroine described. – The Landscape not described. – An awful Reason given

One evening, the Baroness De Violenci, having sprained her left leg in the composition of an ecstatic ode, resolved not to go to Lady Penthesilea Rouge's rout. While she was sitting alone, at a plate of prawns, the footman entered with a basket, which had just been left for her.

'Lay it down, John,' said she, touching his forehead with her fork.

That gay-hearted young fellow did as he was desired, and capered out of the room.

Judge of her astonishment, when she found, on opening it, a little cherub of a baby sleeping within.

An oaken cross, with 'Hysterica,' inscribed in chalk, was appended at its neck, and a mark, like a bruised gooseberry, added interest to its elbow.

As she and her lord never had children (at least she could answer for herself), she determined, sur le champ, on adopting the pretty Hysterica.

Fifteen years did this worthy woman dedicate to the progress of her little charge; and in that time, taught her every mortal accomplishment. Her sigh, particularly, was esteemed the softest in Europe.

But the stroke of death is inevitable; come it must at last, and neither virtue nor wisdom can avoid it. In a word, the good old Baroness died, and our heroine fell senseless on her body.

O what a fall was there, my countrymen!

But it is now time to describe our heroine. As Milton tells us, that Eve was 'more lovely than Pandora' (an imaginary lady, who never existed but in the brains of poets), so do we declare, and are ready to stake our lives, that our heroine excelled in her form the Timinitilidi, whom no man ever saw; and, in her voice, the music of the spheres, which no man ever heard. Perhaps her face was not perfect; but it was more – it was interesting – it was oval. Her eyes were of the real, original old blue; and her eyelashes of the best silk. You forget the thickness of her lips, in the casket of pearls which they enshrined; and the roses of York and Lancaster were united in her cheek. A nose of the Grecian order surmounted the whole. Such was Hysterica.

But alas! misfortunes are often gregarious, like sheep. For one night, when our heroine had repaired to the chapel, intending to drop her customary tear on the tomb of her sainted benefactress, she heard on a sudden, the distant organ peal a solemn voluntary. While she was preparing, in much terror and astonishment, to accompany it with her voice, four men in masks rushed from among some tombs, and bore her to a carriage, which instantly drove off with the whole party. In vain she sought to soften them by swoons, tears, and a simple little ballad: they sat counting murders, and not minding her.

Oh, horrid, horrible, and horridest horror!

As the blinds of the carriage were closed the whole way, we wave a description of the country which they traversed. Besides, the prospect within the carriage will occupy the reader enough; for in one of the villains, Hysterica discovered – Count Stiletto! She fainted.

On the second day, the carriage stopped at an old castle, and she was conveyed into a tapestried apartment, where the delicate creature instantly fell ill of an inverted eyelash, caused by continual weeping. She then drew upon the contemplation of future sorrows, for a supply of that melancholy which her immediate exigencies demanded.

CHAPTER III

Be thou a spirit of health, or goblin damn'd? – Shakespeare.

Fresh Embarrassments. – An Insult from a Spectre. – Grand Discoveries. – A Shriek. – A Tear. – A Sigh. – A Blush. – A Swoon

It is a remark founded upon the nature of man, and universally credited by the thinking part of the world, that to suffer is an attribute of mortality.

Impressed with a due conviction of this important precept, our heroine but smiled as she heard Stiletto lock her door. It was now midnight, and she took up her lamp to examine the chamber. Rusty daggers, mouldering bones, and ragged palls, lay scattered in all the profusion of feudal plenty.

Several horrors now made their appearance; but the most uncommon was a winged eyeball that fluttered before her face.

Say, little, foolish, fluttering thing?

She began shrieking and adjusting her hair at a mirror, when lo! she beheld the reflection of a ghastly visage peeping over her shoulder! Much disconcerted, the trembling girl approached the bed. An impertinent apparition, with a peculiar nose, stood there, and made faces at her. She felt offended at the freedom, to say nothing of her being half dead with fright.

'Is it not enough,' thought she, 'to be harassed by beings of this world, but those of the next too must think proper to interfere? I am sure,' said she, as she raised her voice in a taunting manner, 'En verité, I have no desire to meddle with their affairs. Sur ma vie, I have no taste for brim-stone. So let me just advise a certain inhabitant of a certain world (not the best, I believe,) to think less of my concerns, and more of his own.'

Having thus asserted her dignity, without being too personal, she walked to the casement in tears, and sang these simple lines, which she graced with intermittent sobs.

SONG

 
Alas, well-a-day, woe to me,
Singing willow, willow, willow;
My lover is far, far at sea.
On a billow, billow, billow.
Ah, Theodore, would thou could'st be,
On my pillow, pillow, pillow!
 

Here she heaved a deep sigh, when, to her utter astonishment, a voice, as if from a chamber underneath; took up the tune with these words:

SONG

 
Alas, well-a-day, woe to me,
Singing sorrow, sorrow, sorrow;
A ducat would soon make me free,
Could I borrow, borrow, borrow;
And then I would pillow with thee,
To-morrow, morrow, morrow!
 

Was it? – It was! – Yes, it was the voice of her love, her life, her long-lost Theodore De Willoughby!!! How should she reach him? Forty times she ran round and round her chamber, with agitated eyes and distracted tresses.

Here we must pause a moment, and express our surprise at the negligence of the sylphs and sylphids, in permitting the ringlets of heroines to be so frequently dishevelled. O ye fat-cheeked little cherubims, who flap your innocent wings, and fly through oceans of air in a minute, without having a hair of your heads discomposed, – no wonder that such stiff ringlets should be made of gold!

At length Hysterica found a sliding pannel. She likewise found a moth-eaten parchment, which she sat down to peruse. But, gentle reader, imagine her emotions, on decyphering these wonderful words.

MANUSCRIPT

– Six tedious years – and all for what? – No sun, no moon. – Murd – Adul – because I am the wife of Lord Belamour. – then tore me from him, and my little Hysterica – Cruel Stiletto! – He confesses that he put the sleeping babe into a basket – sent her to the Baroness de Violenci – oaken cross – Chalk – bruised gooseberry – I am poisoned – a great pain across my back – i – j – k – Oh! – Ah! – Oh! —

Fascinante Peggina Belamour.

This then was the mother of our heroine; and the MS. elucidated, beyond dispute, the mysteries which had hitherto hung over the birth of that unfortunate orphan.

We need not add that she fainted, recovered, passed through the pannel, discovered the dungeon of her Theodore; and having asked him how he did,

'Comment vous portez vous?'

fell into unsophisticated hysterics.

CHAPTER IV

 
Sure such a pair were never seen,
So justly formed to meet by nature. – Sheridan.
 

A tender Dialogue. – An interesting Flight. – A mischievous Cloud. – Our Hero hits upon a singular Expedient. – Fails. – Takes a trip to the Metropolis

'And is this you?' cried the delighted youth, as she revived.

'Indeed, indeed it is,' said she.

'Are you quite, quite sure?' cried he.

'Indeed, indeed I am,' said she.

'Well, how do you do?' cried he.

'Pretty well I thank you,' said she.

They then separated, after fixing to meet again.

One night, as they were indulging each other in innocent endearments, and filling up each finer pause with lemonade, a sudden thought struck Lord Theodore.

'Let us escape,' said he.

'Let us,' said she.

'Gods, what a thought was there!'

They then contrived this ingenious mode of accomplishing their object. In one of the galleries which lay between their chambers, there was a window. Having opened it, they found that they had nothing to do but get out at it. They therefore fled into the neighbouring forest.

Happy, happy, happy pair! – Dryden.

But it is an incontrovertible truism, that les genres humains are liable to disaster; for in consequence of a cloud that obscured the moon, Hysterica fell into a snow-pit. What could Theodore do? To save her was impossible; to perish with her would be suicide. In this emergency, he formed a bold project, and ran two miles for assistance. But alas! on his return, not a trace of her could be found. He was quite au desespoir; so, having called her long enough, he called a chaise, and set off for London.