Kitabı oku: «Camilla; or, A Picture of Youth», sayfa 66

CHAPTER II
A Narrative

It was four o'clock in the morning when Melmond returned. Camilla rushed to the street-door to meet him. His silence and his mournful air announced his ill success. She wrung her hands in anguish, and besought him to send instantly an express to Etherington, with the fatal tidings.

He went himself to the nearest stables, desiring she would prepare a letter while he got a man and horse for the journey.

In scrawling and indistinct characters she then wrote:

'O my Father – our Eugenia has disappeared! she was lost last night at the Opera – Mr. Bellamy was conducting her to Mrs. Berlinton's coach – but we have seen neither of them since! – what – what must we do?'

Melmond wrote the address, which her hand could not make legible; and Miss Margland prepared for the post a laboured vindication to Sir Hugh of her own conduct upon this occasion.

Indiana was long gone to bed. She was really very sorry; but she was really much tired; and she could do, as she said, no good.

But Mrs. Berlinton felt an alarm for Eugenia, and an astonishment concerning Bellamy, that would fully have wakened her faculties, had she been wholly unmoved by the misery of Camilla. Far other was, however, her nature, gentle, compassionate, and sympathising; and her own internal disturbance, though great even beyond her own conception why, sunk at sight of the excess of wretchedness which disordered her poor friend.

There could be but one possible opinion of this disastrous adventure, which was, that Bellamy had spirited this young creature away, to secure her fortune, by her hand. Melmond again went forth, to make enquiry at all the stables in London, for any carriage that might have been hired for a late hour. And at six o'clock, in great perturbation, he came back, saying, he had just traced that she was put into a chaise and four from a hackney coach; that the chaise was hired in Piccadilly, and engaged for a week. He was now determined to ride post himself in the pursuit, that, if any accidental delay retarded them, he might recover her before she arrived at Gretna Green, whither he could not doubt she was to be conveyed: but as she could not be married by force, his presence might yet be in time to prevent persecution, or foul play.

Camilla nearly embraced him with transport at this ray of hope, and, leaving his tenderest condolements for Indiana, whom he implored his sister to watch sedulously, he galloped northwards.

His heart was most sincerely in the business; what he owed to the noble conduct which the high sentiments and pure regard of Eugenia had dictated, had excited a tender veneration, which made him hold his life as too small an offering to be refused for her service, if its sacrifice could essentially shew his gratitude. And often his secret mind had breathed a wish, that her love of literature had been instilled into her cousin; though he studiously checked, as profane, all that was not admiration of that most exquisite workmanship of nature.

Mrs. Berlinton wanted not to be told this proceeding was wrong, yet still found it impossible to persuade herself Eugenia would not soon think it right; though Eugenia was the creature that she most revered in the whole world, and though, with Bellamy himself she felt irritated and disappointed.

Camilla in every evil reverted to the loss of Edgar, whose guardian care, had she preserved him, would have preserved, she thought, her loved Eugenia.

The express from Etherington brought back only a few lines written by Lavinia, with an account that Mr. Tyrold, in deep misery, was setting out post for Scotland.

A week past thus in suspence, nearly intolerable to Camilla, before Melmond returned.

Always upon the watch, she heard his voice, and flew to meet him in the dressing room. He was at the feet of Indiana, to whom he was pouring forth his ardent lamentations at this long deprivation of her sight.

But joy had evidently no part in his tenderness; Camilla saw at once depression and evil tidings, and, sinking upon a chair, could scarcely pronounce, 'Have you not then found her?'

'I have left her but this minute,' he answered, in a tone the most melancholy.

'Ah! you have then seen her! you have seen my dearest Eugenia? – O, Mr. Melmond, why have you left her at all?'

It was long before he could answer; he besought her to compose herself; he expressed the extremest solicitude for the uneasiness of Indiana, whose eternal interruptions of 'Dear! where is she? – Dear! why did not she come back? – Dear! who took her away?' he attributed to the agitation of the fondest friendship, and conjured, while tears of terror started into his eyes, that she would moderate the excess of her sensibility. It seems the peculiar province of the lover, to transfuse all that he himself most prizes, and thinks praise-worthy, into the breast of his chosen object; nor is he more blind to the defects with which she may abound, than prodigal in gifts of virtues which exist but in his own admiration.

'And my Father? my poor Father!' cried Camilla, 'you have seen nothing of my Father?'

'Pardon me; I have just left him also.'

'And not with Eugenia?'

'Yes; they are together.'

Rapture now defied all apprehension with Camilla; the idea of Eugenia restored to her Father, was an idea of entire happiness; but her joy affected Melmond yet more than her alarm: he could not let her fasten upon any false expectations; he bid his sister aid him to support Indiana, and then, with all the gentleness of the sincerest concern, confessed that Eugenia was married before she was overtaken.

This was a blow for which Camilla was still unprepared. She concluded it a forced marriage; horror froze her veins, her blood no longer flowed, her heart ceased to beat, she fell lifeless on the ground.

Her recovery was more speedy than it was happy, and she was assisted to her chamber, no longer asking any questions, no longer desiring further information. All was over of hope: and the particulars seemed immaterial, since the catastrophe was as irreversible as it was afflicting.

Mrs. Berlinton still attended her, grieved for her suffering, yet believing that Eugenia would be the happiest of women; though an indignation the most forcible mingled with her surprise at the conduct of Bellamy.

This dread sort of chasm in the acuteness of the feelings of Camilla lasted not long; and Mrs. Berlinton then brought from Melmond the following account.

With the utmost speed he could use, he could not, though a single horseman, overtake them. They never, as he learnt by the way, remitted their journey, nor stopt for the smallest refreshment but at some cottage. At length, in the last stage to Gretna Green, he met them upon their return. It was easy to him to see that his errand was vain, and the knot indissolubly tied, by the blinds being down, and the easy air with which Bellamy was looking around him.

Eugenia sat back in the chaise with a handkerchief to her eyes. He stopt the vehicle, and told Bellamy he must speak with that lady. 'That lady, Sir,' he proudly answered, 'is my wife; speak to her, therefore; … but in my hearing.' Eugenia at this dropt her handkerchief, and looked up. Her eyes were sunk into her head by weeping, and her face was a living picture of grief. Melmond loudly exclaimed: 'I come by the authority of her friends, and I demand her own account of this transaction.' 'We are now going to our friends,' replied he, 'ourselves, and we shall send them no messages.' He then ordered the postillion to drive on, telling him at his peril to stop no more; Eugenia, in a tone but just audible, saying: 'Adieu, Mr. Melmond! Adieu!'

To have risked his life in her rescue, at such a moment, seemed to him nothing, could he but more certainly have ascertained her own wishes, and real situation: but as she attempted neither resistance nor remonstrance, he concluded Bellamy spoke truth; and if they were married, he could not unmarry them; and if they were going to her friends, they were doing all he could now exact. He resolved, however, to follow, and if they should turn any other road, to call for assistance till he could investigate the truth.

They stopt occasionally for refreshments at the usual inns, and travelled no more in the dark; but Bellamy never lost sight of her; and Melmond, in watching, observed that she returned to the chaise with as little opposition as she quitted it, though weeping always, and never, for a voluntary moment, uncovering her face. Bellamy seemed always most assiduous in his attentions: she never appeared to repulse him, nor to receive from him any comfort.

On the second day's journey, just as Bellamy had handed her from the chaise, at the inn where they meant to dine, and which Melmond, as usual, entered at the same time, he saw Mr. Tyrold – hurrying, but so shaking he could scarcely support himself, from a parlour, whence he had seen them alight, into the passage. The eyes, ever downcast, of Eugenia, perceived him not, till she was clasped, in mute agony, in his arms. She then looked up, saw who it was, and fainted away. Bellamy, though he knew him not, supposed who he might be, and his reverend appearance seemed to impress him with awe. Nevertheless, he was himself seizing the now senseless Eugenia, to convey her to some room; when Mr. Tyrold, reviving from indignation, fixed his eyes upon his face, and said: 'By what authority, Sir, do you presume to take charge of my daughter?' – 'By the authority,' he answered, 'of a husband.' Mr. Tyrold said no more; he caught at the arm of Melmond, though he had not yet seen who he was, and Bellamy carried Eugenia into the first vacant parlour, followed only by the woman of the house.

Melmond then, respectfully, and filled with the deepest commiseration, sought to make himself known to Mr. Tyrold; but he heard him not, he heeded no one; he sat down upon a trunk, accidentally in the passage where all this had passed, saying, but almost without seeming conscious that he spoke aloud: 'This, indeed, is a blow to break both our hearts!' Melmond then stood silently by, for he saw, by his folded hands and uplighted eyes, he was ejaculating some prayer: after which, with a countenance more firm, and limbs better able to sustain him, he rose, and moved towards the parlour into which the fainting Eugenia had been carried.

Melmond then again spoke to him by his name. He recollected the voice, turned to him, and gave him his hand, which was of an icy coldness. 'You are very kind, Mr. Melmond,' he said; 'my poor girl' – but stopt, checking what he meant to add, and went to the parlour-door.

It was locked. The woman of the house had left it, and said, the lady was recovered from her fit. Mr. Tyrold, from a thousand feelings, seemed unable to demand admission for himself: he desired Melmond to speak, and claim an audience alone for him with his daughter.

Bellamy opened the door with a look evidently humbled and frightened, yet affecting perfect ease. When Melmond made known his commission, Eugenia, starting up, exclaimed: 'Yes, yes! I will see my dear Father alone! – and O! that this poor frame might sink to rest on his loved bosom!'

'In a moment! in a moment!' cried Bellamy, motioning Melmond to withdraw; 'tell Mr. Tyrold he shall come in a moment.'

Melmond was forced to retreat; but heard him hastily say, as again he fastened the door, 'My life, O Eugenia! is in your hands – and is it thus you requite my ardent love and constancy?'

Mr. Tyrold now would wait but a few minutes: it was palpable Bellamy feared the interview; and he could fear it but from one motive: he sent him, therefore, word by Melmond, that if he did not immediately retire, and leave him to a conference alone with his daughter, he would apply no more for a meeting till he claimed it in a court of justice.

Bellamy soon came out, bowed obsequiously to Mr. Tyrold, who passed him without notice, and who was then for half an hour shut up with Eugenia. Longer Bellamy could not endure; he broke in upon them, and left the room no more.

Soon after, Mr. Tyrold came out, his own eyes now as red as those of the weeping bride. He took Melmond apart, thanked him for his kindness, but said nothing could be done. He entreated him therefore to return to his own happier affairs; adding, 'I cannot talk upon this miserable event. Tell Camilla, her sister is, for the present, going home with me – though not, alas! alone! Tell her, too, I will write to her upon my arrival at Etherington.'

'This,' concluded Mrs. Berlinton, 'is all my brother has to relate; all that for himself he adds, is, that if ever, to something human, the mind of an angel was accorded – that mind seems enshrined in the heart of Eugenia!'

Nothing that Camilla had yet experienced of unhappiness, had penetrated her with feelings of such deadly woe as this event. Eugenia, from her childhood, had seemed marked by calamity: her ill health, even from infancy, and her subsequent misfortunes, had excited in her whole house the tenderest pity, to which the uncommon character with which she grew up, had added respect and admiration. And the strange, and almost continual trials she had had to encounter, from the period of her attaining her fifteenth year, which, far from souring her mind, had seemed to render it more perfect, had now nearly sanctified her in the estimation of them all. To see her, therefore, fall, at last, a sacrifice to deceit or violence, – for one, if not both, had palpably put her into the possession of Bellamy, was a grief more piercingly wounding than all she had yet suffered. Whatever she had personally to bear, she constantly imagined some imprudence or impropriety had provoked; but Eugenia, while she appeared to her so blameless, that she could merit no evil, was so amiable, that willingly she would have borne for her their united portions.

How it had been effected, since force would be illegal, still kept amazement joined to sorrow, till the promised letter arrived from Mr. Tyrold, with an account of the transaction.

Eugenia, parted from Miss Margland by Bellamy, in the crowd, was obliged to accept his protection, which, till then, she had refused, to restore her to her company. The coach, he said, he knew, had orders to wait in Pall Mall, whither the other ladies would be conveyed in chairs, to avoid danger from the surrounding carriages. She desired to go, also, in a chair: but he hurried her by quick surprize into a hackney-coach, which, he said, would be more speedy, and bidding the man drive to Pall Mall, seated himself opposite to her. She had not the most remote suspicion of his design, as his behaviour was even coldly distant, though she wondered Pall Mall was so far off, and that the coachman drove so fast, till they stopt at a turnpike – and then, in one quick and decided moment, she comprehended her situation, and made an attempt for her own deliverance – but he prevented her from being heard. – And the scenes that followed she declined relating. Yet, what she would not recount, she could not, to the questions of her Father, deny, that force, from that moment, was used, to repel all her efforts for obtaining help, and to remove her into a chaise.

Mr. Tyrold required to hear nothing more, to establish a prosecution, and to seize her, publickly, from Bellamy. But from this she recoiled. 'No, my dear Father,' she continued, 'the die is cast! and I am his! Solemn has been my vow! sacred I must hold it!'

She then briefly narrated, that though violence was used to silence her at every place where she sought to be rescued, every interval was employed, by Bellamy, in the humblest supplications for her pardon, and most passionate protestations of regard, all beginning and all ending in declaring, that to live longer without her was impossible, and pledging his ardent attachment for obtaining her future favour; spending the period from stage to stage, or turnpike to turnpike, in kneeling to beseech forgiveness for the desperation to which he was driven, by the most cruel and hopeless passion that ever seized the heart of man. When they were near their journey's end, he owned that his life was in her hands, but he was indifferent whether he lost it from the misery of living without her, or from her vengeance of this last struggle of his despair. She assured him his life was safe, and offered him pardon upon condition of immediate restoration to her friends; but, suddenly producing a pistol, 'Now then,' he said, O! amiable object of my constant love! bless me with your hand, or prepare to see me die at your feet!' And, with a terrifying oath, he bound himself not to lose her and outlive her loss. She besought him to be more reasonable, with the gentlest prayers; but his vehemence only encreased; she offered him every other promise he could name; but he preferred death to every other she should grant. She then pronounced, though in trembling, a positive refusal. Instantly he lifted up his pistol, and calling out; 'Forgive, then, O hard-hearted Eugenia, my uncontroulable passion, and shed a tear over the corpse I am going to prostrate at your feet!' was pointing it to his temple, when, overcome with horror, she caught his arm, exclaiming; 'Ah! stop! I consent to what you please!' It was in vain she strove afterwards to retract; one scene followed another, till he had bound her by all she herself held sacred, to rescue him from suicide, by consenting to the union. He found a person who performed the marriage ceremony on the minute of her quitting the chaise. She uttered not one word; she was passive, scared, and scarce alive; but resisted not the eventful ring, with which he encircled her finger, and seemed rousing as from a dream, upon hearing him call her his wife. He professed eternal gratitude, and eternal devotion; but no sooner was all conflict at an end, than, consigning herself wholly to grief, she wept without intermission.

When Mr. Tyrold had heard her history, abhorrence of such barbarous force, and detestation of such foul play upon the ingenuous credulity of her nature, made him insist, yet more strongly, upon taking legal measures for procuring an immediate separation, and subsequent punishment; but the reiterated vows with which, since the ceremony, he had bound her to himself, so forcibly awed the strict conscientiousness of her principles, that no representations could absolve her opinion of what she now held her duty; and while she confessed her unhappiness at a connection formed by such cruel means, she conjured him not to encrease it, by rendering her, in her own estimation, perjured.

'Patiently, therefore,' continued Mr. Tyrold, 'we must bear, what vainly we should combat, and bow down to those calamities of which the purpose is hidden, nor fancy no good is answered, because none is obvious. Man develops but little, though he experiences much. The time will come for his greater diffusion of knowledge; let him meet it without dread, by using worthily his actual portion. I resign myself, therefore, with reverence to this blow; though none yet has struck so hardly at my heart. We must now do what we can for this victim to her own purity, by seeking means to secure her future independence, and by bettering – if possible! – her betrayer. What a daughter, what a sister, what a friend, has her family thus lost! How will your poor Mother receive such killing tidings! Misfortune, sickness, and poverty, she has heroism to endure; but innocence oppressed through its own artlessness, and inexperience duped by villainy, will shake her utmost firmness, and harass into disorder her, as yet, unbroken powers of encountering adversity. Alas! – no evils that visited the early years of this loved child, have proved to her so grievous as the large fortune with which they were followed! We repined, my Camilla, at the deprivation you sustained at that period. – We owe to it, perhaps, that you have not as treacherously been betrayed!

'How has the opening promise of our Eugenia more than answered our fondest expectations! Her knowledge is still less uncommon than her simplicity, her philosophy for herself than her zeal in the service of others. She is singular with sweetness, peculiar, yet not impracticable; generous without parade, and wise without consciousness. Yet now, so sacrificed seems all, – that I dwell upon her excellencies as if enumerating them over her tomb!'

A letter from Lavinia contained some further particulars. Their Father, she said, finding the poor victim resolute, meant to spare Sir Hugh all that was possible of the detestable craft of Bellamy; and Eugenia was already struggling to recover her natural serenity, that she might appear before him without endangering his own. Bellamy talked of nothing but love and rapture; yet the unsuspicious Eugenia was the only person he deceived; for so little from the heart seemed either his looks or his expressions, that it was palpable he was acting a part, to all who believed it possible words and thoughts could be divided.

A postscript to this letter was added by Eugenia herself.

'Ah, my Camilla!.. where now are all our sweet promised participations? But let me not talk of myself; nor do you, my affectionate sister, dwell upon me at this period. One thing I undertook shall yet be performed; the moment I am able to go to Cleves, I will deliver, through Lavinia, what I mentioned. Does anything else remain that is yet in my power? Tell me, my Camilla, and think but with what joy you will give joy again to your

Eugenia.'

Broken hearted over these letters, Camilla spent her time in their perpetual perusal, in wiping from them her tears, and pressing with fond anguish to her lips the signature of her hapless sister, self-beguiled by her own credulous goodness, and self-devoted by her conscientious scruples.