Читать книгу: «The Wanderer; or, Female Difficulties (Volume 5 of 5)», страница 4

'Cast thus upon myself, and for a time indefinite, how hardly, and how variously have I existed! But for the dreadful fear of worse, darkly and continually hovering over my head, I could scarcely have summoned courage for my unremitting trials. But whatever I endured was constantly light in comparison with what I had escaped! Yet how was I tried, – Oh Sir Jaspar! how cruelly! in resisting to present myself to my family! in forbearing to pronounce the kind appellation of brother! the soft, tender title of sister! Oh! in their sight, when witnessing their goodness, when blest by their kindness, and urged by the most generous sweetness to confidence, how violent, how indescribable have been my struggles, to withhold from throwing myself into their arms, with the fair, natural openness of sisterly affection! But Lord Denmeath, who disputed, or denied, my relation to their family, was their uncle and guardian. To him to make myself known, would have been to blight every hope of concealment from the commissary, whose claims were precisely in unison with the plan of his lordship, for making me an alien to my country. What, against their joint interests and authority, would be the power of a sister or a brother under age? Often, indeed, I was tempted to trust them in secret; and oh how consolatory to my afflicted heart would have been such a trust! but they had yet no establishment, and they were wards of my declared enemy. How unavailing, therefore, to excite their generous zeal, while necessarily forced to exact that our ties of kindred should remain unacknowledged? Upon their honour I could rely; but by their feelings, their kind, genuine, ardent feelings, I must almost unavoidably have been betrayed.

'To my Gabriella, also, I have forborne to unbosom my sorrows, and reveal my alarms, that I might spare her already so deeply wounded soul, the restless solicitude of fresh and cruel uncertainties. She concludes, that though her letters have miscarried, or been lost, her honoured mother and uncle still reside safely together, in the villa of the Marchioness, in which she had bidden them adieu. And that noble mother charged me to hide, if it should be possible, from her unhappy child, the terrible history in which I had borne so considerable a part, till she could give assurances to us both of her own and the Bishop's safety. Alas! nine months have now worn away since our separation, yet no news arrives! – no Bishop appears!

'And now, Sir Jaspar, you have fully before you the cause and history of my long concealment, my strange wanderings, and the apparently impenetrable mystery in which I have been involved: why I could not claim my family; why I could not avow my situation; why I dared not even bear my name; all, all is before you! Oh! could I equally display to you the events in store! tell you whether my revered Bishop is safe! – or whether his safety, his precious life, can only be secured by my perpetual captivity! One thing alone, in the midst of my complicate suspenses, one thing alone is certain; no consideration that this world can offer, will deter me from going back, voluntarily, to every evil from which I have hitherto been flying, should the Bishop again be seized, and should his release hang upon my final self-devotion!'

CHAPTER LXXXI

Sir Jaspar had listened to this narrative with trembling interest, and a species of emotion that was indefinable; his head bent forward, and his mouth nearly as wide open, from the fear of losing a word, as his eyes, from eagerness not to lose a look: but, when it was finished, he exclaimed, in a sort of transport, 'Is this all? Joy, then, to great Cæsar! Why 'tis nothing! My little fairies are all skipping in ecstacy; while the wickeder imps are making faces and wry mouths, not to see mischief enough in the wind to afford them a supper! This a marriage? Why you are free as air!

 
'The little birds that fly,
With careless ease, from tree to tree,'
 

are not more at liberty. Ah! fair enslaver! were I as unshackled!' —

The smiles that, momentarily, broke their way through the tears and sadness of Juliet shewed how much this declaration was in unison with her wishes; but, exhausted by relating a history so deeply affecting to her, she could enter into no discussion; and remained ceaselessly weeping, till the Baronet, with an expression of surprize, asked whether the meeting that would now ensue with her own family, could offer her no consolation?

Rousing, then, from her sorrows, to a grateful though forced exertion, 'Oh yes!' she cried, 'yes! Your generous goodness has given me new existence! But horrour and distress have pursued me with such accumulating severity, that the shock is still nearly overpowering. Yet, – let me not diminish the satisfaction of your beneficence. I am going now to be happy! – How big a word! – how new to my feelings! – A sister! – a brother! – Have I, indeed, such relations?' smiling even brightly through her tears. 'And will Lady Aurora, – the sweetest of human beings! – condescend to acknowledge me? Will the amiable Lord Melbury deign to support, to protect me? Oh Sir Jaspar, how have you brought all this to bear? Where are these dearest persons? And when, and by what means, am I to be blest with their sight, and honoured with their sanction to my claim of consanguinity?'

Sir Jaspar begged her to compose her spirits, promising to satisfy her when she should become more calm. But, her thoughts having once turned into this channel, all her tenderest affections gushed forth to oppose their being diverted into any other; and the sound, the soul-penetrating sound of sister! – of brother! once allowed utterance, vibrated through her frame with a thousand soft emotions, now first welcomed without check to her heart.

Urgently, therefore, she desired an explanation of the manner in which this commission had been given; of the tone of voice in which she had been named; and of the time and place destined for the precious meeting.

Sir Jaspar, though enchanted to see her revived, and enraptured to give ear to her thanks, and to suck in her praises, was palpably embarrassed how to answer her enquiries; which he suffered her to continue so long without interruption or reply, that, her eagerness giving way to anxiety, she solemnly required to know, whether it were by accident, or through his own information, that Lord Melbury and Lady Aurora had been made acquainted with her rights, or, more properly, with her hopes and her fears in regard to their kindness and support.

Still no answer was returned, but smiling looks, and encouraging assurances.

The most alarming doubts now disturbed the just opening views of Juliet 'Ah! Sir Jaspar!' she cried, 'why this procrastination? Practise no deception, I conjure you! – Alas, you make me fear that you have acted commission?' —

He protested, upon his honour, that that was not the case; yet asked why she had settled that his commission came from Lady Aurora, or Lord Melbury?

'Good Heaven!' – exclaimed Juliet, astonished and affrighted.

He had only, he said, affirmed, that his commission was to take her to those noble personages; not that it had been from themselves that it had emanated.

Again every feature of Juliet seemed changed by disappointment; and the accent of reproach was mingled with that of grief, as she pronounced, 'Oh Sir Jaspar! can you, then, have played with my happiness? have trifled with my hopes?' —

'Not to be master of the whole planetary system,' he cried, 'with Venus, in her choicest wiles, at its head! I have honourably had my commission; but it has been for, not from your honourable relations. Those little invisible, but active beings, who have taken my conscience in charge, have spurred and goaded me on to this deed, ever since I saw your distress at the fair Gallic needle-monger's. Night and day have they pinched me and jirked me, to seek you, to find you, and to rescue you from that brawny caitiff.' —

'Alas! to what purpose? If I have no asylum, what is my security? – '

'If I have erred, my beauteous fugitive,' said Sir Jaspar, archly, 'I must order the horses to turn about! We shall still, probably, be in time to accompany the happy captive to his cell.'

Juliet involuntarily screamed, but besought, at least, to know how she had been traced; and what had induced the other pursuit; or caused the seizure, which she had so unexpectedly witnessed, of her persecutor?

He answered, that, restless to fathom a mystery, the profundity of which left, to his active imagination, as much space for distant hope as for present despair, he had invited Riley to dinner, upon quitting Frith Street; and, through his means, had discovered the pilot; whose friendship and services were secured, without scruple, by a few guineas. By this man, Sir Jaspar was shewn the advertisement, which he now produced; and which Juliet, though nearly overcome with shame, begged to read.

'ELOPED from her HUSBAND,

'A young woman, tall, fair, blue-eyed; her face oval; her nose Grecian; her mouth small; her cheeks high coloured; her chin dimpled; and her hair of a glossy light brown.

'She goes commonly by the name of Miss Ellis.

'Whoever will send an account where she may be met with, or where she has been seen, to – Attorney in – Street London, shall receive a very handsome reward.'

The pilot further acknowledged to Sir Jaspar, that his employer had, formerly, been at the head of a gang of smugglers and swindlers; though, latterly, he had been engaged in business of a much more serious nature.

This intelligence, with an internal conviction that the marriage must have been forced, decided Sir Jaspar to denounce the criminal to justice; and then to take every possible measure, to have him either imprisoned for trial, or sent out of the country, by the alien-bill, before he should overtake the fair fugitive. His offences were, it seems, notorious, and the warrant for his seizure was readily granted; with an order for his being embarked by the first opportunity: nevertheless, the difficulty to discover him had almost demolished the scheme: though the Baronet had aided the search in person, to enjoy the bliss of being the first to announce freedom to the lovely Runaway; and to offer her immediate protection.

But the pilot, who, after being well paid for his information, had himself absconded, delayed all proceedings till he was found out, by Riley, upon the Salisbury-road. He evaded giving any further intelligence, till the glitter of a few guineas restored his spirit of communication, when he was brought to confess, that his master was in that neighbourhood; where they had received assurances that the fugitive herself was lodged. Sir Jaspar instantly, then, took the measures of which the result, seconded by sundry happy accidents, had been so seasonable and prosperous. 'And never,' said he, in conclusion, 'did my delectable little friends serve me so cogently, as in suggesting my stratagem at your sight. If you do not directly name, they squeaked in my ear, her brother and sister, she may demur at accompanying you: if her brother and sister honour your assertion, you will fix the matchless Wanderer in her proper sphere; if they protest against it, – what giant stands in the way to your rearing and protecting the lovely flower yourself? – This was the manner in which these hovering little beings egged me on; but whether, with the playful philanthropy of courteous sylphs, to win me your gentle smiles; or whether, with the wanton malignity of little devils, to annihilate me with your frowns, is still locked up in the womb of your countenance!'

He then farther added, that Riley had accompanied him throughout the expedition; but that, always exhilarated by scenes which excited curiosity, or which produced commotion; he had scampered into the inn, to witness the culprit's being secured, while Sir Jaspar had paid his respects at the chaise.

With a disappointed heart, and with affrighted spirits, Juliet now saw that she must again, and immediately, renew her melancholy flight, in search of a solitary hiding-place; till she could be assured of the positive embarkation of the commissary.

In vain Sir Jaspar pressed to pursue his design of conveying her to her family; the dread of Lord Denmeath, who was in actual communication and league with her persecutor, decided her refusal; though, while she had believed in Sir Jaspar's commission for seeking her, neither risk nor doubt had had power to check the ardour of her impatience, to cast herself upon the protection of Lord Melbury and Lady Aurora: but she felt no courage, – however generously they had succoured and distinguished her as a distressed individual, – to rush upon them, uncalled and unexpected, as a near relation; and one who had so large a claim, could her kindred be proved, upon their inheritance.

Her most earnest wish was to rejoin her Gabriella; but there, where she had been discovered, she could least hope to lie concealed. She must still, therefore, fly, in lonely silence. But she besought Sir Jaspar to take her any whither rather than to Salisbury, where she had had the horrour of being examined by the advertisement.

Proud to receive her commands, he recommended to her a farm-house about three miles from the city, of which the proprietor and his wife, who were worthy and honest people, had belonged, formerly, to his family.

She thankfully agreed to this proposal: but, when they arrived at the farm, they heard that the master and mistress were gone to a neighbouring fair, whence they were not expected back for an hour or two; and that they had locked up the parlour. Some labourers being in the kitchen, Sir Jaspar proposed driving about in the interval; and ordered the postilion to Wilton.

CHAPTER LXXXII

Absorbed in grief, and unable to converse, though endeavouring to listen to the Baronet, Juliet was only drawn from her melancholy reverie, by the rattling of the carriage upon a pavement, as it passed, through a spacious gate, into the court-yard of a magnificent country seat.

She demanded what this meant.

Where better, he demanded in return, could she while away the interval of waiting, than in viewing the finest works of art, displayed in a temple consecrated to their service?

This was a scheme to force back all her consideration. In hearing him pronounce the word Wilton, she had merely thought of the town; not of the mansion of the Earl of Pembroke; which she now positively refused entering; earnestly representing the necessity, as well as propriety, in a situation so perilous, of the most entire obscurity.

He assured her that she would be less liable to observation in a repository of the beaux arts, at the villa of a nobleman, than by waiting in a post-chaise, before the door of an inn; as he must indispensably change horses; and grant a little repose to his old groom, who had been out with him all day.

This she could not dispute, convinced, herself, that her greatest danger lay in being recognized, or remarked, within the precincts of an inn.

Nevertheless, how enter into such a mansion in a garb so unfit for admission? She besought him to ask leave that she might remain in some empty apartment, as an humble dependent, while he viewed the house.

Extremely pleased by an idea so consonant to his fantastic taste, he answered her aloud, in alighting, 'Yes, yes, Mrs Betty! if you wish to see the rooms, that you may give an account of all the pretty images to my little ones, there can be no objection.'

She descended from the chaise, meaning to remonstrate upon this misconstruction of her request; but, not allowing her the opportunity, he gaily represented, to the person who shewed him the mansion, that he was convoying a young nursery-maid, the daughter of a worthy old tenant, to his grand-children; and that she had a fancy to see all the finery, that she might make out some pretty stories, to tell the little dears, when she wanted to put them to sleep.

Juliet, whose deep distress made her as little desire to see as to be seen, repeated that she wished to sit still in some spare room: he walked on, pretending not to hear her, addressing himself to his Cicerone, whom he kept at his side; and therefore, as there was no female in view, to whom she could apply, she was compelled to follow.

Not as Juliet she followed; Juliet whose soul was delightedly 'awake to tender strokes of art,' whether in painting, music, or poetry; who never saw excellence without emotion; and whose skill and taste would have heightened her pleasure into rapture, her approbation into enthusiasm, in viewing the delicious assemblage of painting, statuary, antiques, natural curiosities, and artificial rarities, of Wilton; – not as Juliet, she followed; but as one to whom every thing was indifferent; whose discernment was gone, whose eyes were dimmed, whose powers of perception were asleep, and whose spirit of enjoyment was annihilated. Figures of the noblest sculpture; busts of historical interest; alto and basso relievos of antique elegance; marbles, alabasters, spars, and lavers of all colours, and in all forms; pictures glowing into life, and statues appearing to command their beholders; – all that, at another period, would have made her forget every thing but themselves, now vainly solicited a moment of her attention.

It was by no means the fault of the Baronet, that this nearly morbid insensibility was not conquered, by the revivyfying objects which surrounded her. He suffered her not to pass an Æsculapius, without demanding a prescription for her health; a Mercury, without supplicating an ordonnance for her spirits; a Minerva, without claiming an exhortation to courage; nor a Venus, without pointing out, that perpetual beauty beams but through perpetual smiles: couching every phrase under emblematical recommendations of story-subjects for the nursery.

When the guide stood somewhat aloof, 'What say you, now,' he exultingly whispered, 'to my famous little friends? Did they ever devise a more ingenious gambol? From your slave, by a mere wave of their wand, they have transformed me into your master! Ah, wicked syren! a dimple of yours demolishes all their work, and again totters me down to your feet!'

Nevertheless, even in this nearly torpid state, accident having raised her eyes to Vandyke's children of Charles the First, the extraordinary attraction of that fascinating picture, was exciting, unconsciously, some pleasure, when the sound of a carriage announcing a party to see the house, she petitioned Sir Jaspar to avoid, if possible, being known.

All compliance with whatever she could wish, the Baronet promised to nail his eyes to the lowest picture in the room, should they be joined by any stragglers; and then, relinquishing all further examination, he begged permission to wait for his horses, in an apartment which is presided by a noble picture of Salvator Rosa; to which, never discouraged, he strove to call the attention of Juliet.

Nothing could more aptly harmonize, not only with his enthusiastic eulogiums, but with his quaint fancy, than that exquisite effusion of the painter's imagination, 'where, surely,' said the rapturous Baronet, 'his pencil has been guided, if not impelled, in every stroke, by my dear little cronies the fairies! And that variety of vivifying objects; that rich, yet so elegant scenery, of airy gaiety, and ideal felicity, is palpably a representation of fairy land itself! Is it thither my dear little friends will, some day, convey me? And shall I be metamorphosed into one of those youthful swains, that are twining their garlands with such bewitching grace? And shall I myself elect the fair one, around whom I shall entwine mine?'

This harangue was interrupted, by the appearance of a newly arrived party; but vainly Sir Jaspar kept his word, in reclining upon his crutches, till he was nearly prostrate upon the ground; he was immediately challenged by a lady; and that lady was Mrs Ireton.

Juliet, inexpressibly shocked, hastily glided from the room, striving to cover her face with her luxuriously curling hair. She rambled about the mansion, till she met with a chambermaid, from whom she entreated permission to wait in some private apartment, till the carriage to which she belonged should be ready.

The maid, obligingly, took her to a small room; and Juliet, taught by her cruel confusion at the sight of Mrs Ireton, the censure, if not slander, to which travelling alone with a man, however old, might make her liable; determined, at whatever hazard, to hang, henceforth, solely upon herself. She resolved, therefore, to beg the assistance of this maid-servant, to direct her to some safe rural lodging.

But how great was her consternation, when, requiring, now, her purse, she suddenly missed, – what, in her late misery, she had neither guarded nor thought of, her packet and her work-bag!

Every pecuniary resource was now sunk at a blow! even the deposit, which she had held as sacred, of Harleigh, was lost!

At what period of her disturbances this misfortune had happened, she had no knowledge; nor whether her property had been dropt in her distress, or purloined; or simply left at the inn; the consequence, every way, was equally dreadful: and but for Sir Jaspar, whom all sense of propriety had told her, the moment before, to shun, yet to whom, now, she became tied, by absolute necessity, her Difficulties, at this conjuncture, would have been nearly distracting.

When the carriage was returned, with fresh horses, Sir Jaspar found her in a situation of augmented dismay, that filled him with concern; though he also saw, that it was tempered by a grateful softness to himself, that he thought more than ever bewitching.

He assured her that Mrs Ireton, whom he had adroitly shaken off, had not perceived her; but the moment that they were re-seated in the chaise, she communicated to him, with the most painful suffering, the new, and terrible stroke, by which she was oppressed.

Viewing this as a mere pecuniary embarrassment, the joy of becoming again useful, if not necessary, to her, sparkled in his eyes with almost youthful vivacity; though he engaged to send his valet immediately to the inn, to make enquiries, and offer rewards, for recovering the strayed goods.

This second loss of her purse, she suffered Sir Jaspar, without any attempt at justification, to call an active epigram upon modern female drapery; which prefers continual inconvenience, innumerable privations, and the most distressing untidiness, to the antique habit of modesty and good housewifery, which, erst, left the public display of the human figure to the statuary; deeming that to support the female character was more essential than to exhibit the female form.

This second loss, also, by carrying back her reflections to the first, brought to her mind several circumstances, which cast a new light upon that origin of the various misfortunes and adventures which had followed her arrival; and all her recollections, now she knew the rapacity and worthlessness of the pilot, pointed out to her that she had probably been robbed, at the moment when, impulsively, she was pouring forth, upon her knees, her thanks for her deliverance. Her work-bag, which, upon that occasion, she had deposited upon her seat, she remembered, though she had then attributed it to his vigilance and care, seeing in his hands, when she arose.

Arrived at the farm-house, they found themselves expected by the farmer and his wife, who paid the utmost respect to Sir Jaspar; but who saw, with an air of evidently suspicious surprize, the respect which he himself paid to Mrs Betty, the nurse-maid; whose beauty, with her rustic attire, and disordered hair, would have made them instantly conclude her to be a lost young creature, had not the decency of her look, the dignity of her manner, and the grief visible in her countenance, spoken irresistibly in favour of her innocence. They spoke not, however, in favour of that of Sir Jaspar, whose old character of gallantry was well known to them; and induced their belief, that he was inveigling this young woman from her friends, for her moral destruction. They accommodated her, nevertheless, for the night; but, whatever might be their pity, determined, should the Baronet visit her the next day, to invent some other occupation for their spare bedroom.

Unenviable was that night, as passed by their lodger, however acceptable to her was any asylum. She spent it in continual alarm; now shaking with the terrour of pursuit; now affrighted with the prospect of being pennyless; now shocked to find herself cast completely into the power of a man, who, however aged, was her professed admirer; and now distracted by varying resolutions upon the measures which she ought immediately to take. And when, for a few minutes, her eyes, from extreme fatigue, insensibly closed, her dreams, short and horrible, renewed the dreadful event of the preceding day; again she saw herself pursued; again felt herself seized; and she blessed the piercing shrieks with which she awoke, though they brought to her but the transient relief that she was safe for the passing moment.