Montalbert/Chapter 33
FROM the temper of mind which Rosalie was in, the lines she had just heard Walsingham recite in a full yet mournful voice, could hardly fail of affecting her; and, while he a second time repeated them at her request, the tears slowly fell from her eyes, and it might possibly have been some time before she was enough recovered from the mournful reverie into which she had fallen, had not she and Walsingham been equally startled by the sudden appearance of two females figures from behind a projection of the cliff, on a fragment of which they had been sitting. One of them suddenly advancing to Walsingham, said, "Upon my honour, my dear Sir, you must excuse me if I break through common rules:—but I do so doat on talents—I am such an enthusiast in regard to poetry!——Your name is Walsingham, I think—I have often had the happiness of hearing you, and once of seeing you, at dear Mrs. Paramount's.—I should be mortified—oh! mortified beyond measure, if I supposed it possible for you to forget it!"
Walsingham, very little delighted with this bold and abrupt address, and recollecting at once who the lady was, determined to give her this measureless mortification.—He, therefore, answered drily, "That he was sorry to say his memory refused him the pleasure of acknowledging, as his acquaintance, a lady who did him so much honour."——Turning from him with an air of pique, the admirer of talents then addressed herself to Rosalie, and, with confidence, not at all checked by the coldness of her reception, said, "I have been determined, my dear Madam, to make myself known to you ever since I first saw you, and your charming boy.....What a sweet creature!—a perfect angel!——I was told when first I saw you, that you were an Italian lady of rank, which only increased my violent inclination to be admitted among the number of your friends; but my acquaintance, Mademoiselle Claudine, undeceived me."
Rosalie, recognizing the lady who had so often spoken to Claudine, was never so little willing as now to make her acquaintance, and was, in truth, unable to answer all these fine speeches as the laws of common civility required; she, therefore, suffered the stranger to proceed, only muttering something which her new acquaintance deemed sufficient encouragement for her to go on talking.
While this passed, the other lady sidled up to Walsingham, and, in the softest whisper of affection, her head reclined and her eyes half shut, said, "Is it then indeed possible, that Mr. Walsingham can have suffered the remarkable traces Lady Llancarrick must leave on every heart, to be obliterated!—That wonderful being! whose talents, whose virtues, have been the admiration of the age in which we live—and whose person, worshipped as it has been and is, is the least of her astonishing perfections!"
Walsingham, however he abhorred ever kind of affectation, might, at another time, have found a momentary amusement in the fine sentimental phrases and ridiculous contorsions of this young woman. He recollected her to be a Miss Gillman, whom he had seen at parties in town, and who had acquired the name of "The Muse." But he was at this time so disgusted with her folly, and so impatient at being thus broke in upon, that nothing less than the consideration of her being a woman, and in inferior circumstances, (for she was a humble dependent on the scientific dames of better fortune), could have induced him to even the little show of civility with which he answered—"That it was his misfortune to have forgotten Lady Llancarrick, owing, perhaps, to his long residence in other countries."——"Oh! then (eagerly interrupted Miss Gillman) you have never, perhaps, seen any of her productions.—She writes the most divine things!—there is an originality or sublimity undescribable in her compositions—the effect of the strongest understanding guiding the amiable propensities of the softest heart!—She did me the very high honour to desire I would walk down to this singular scenery, where——
"The beetling rock frowns o'er the foaming tide."
For she is writing something wherein she thought the wonders of nature might assist her imagination.....We were sitting pensively together my friend invoking the muse!—and I waiting in silence the happy effusions of her fine fancy, when we were struck with pleasing surprise on hearing the beautiful lines you recited. They are, I am persuaded, from your own ingenious pen—I hope you will give them to the world."
As little more was necessary in answer to this rhapsody than a bow, Walsingham now turned a sorrowful look towards Rosalie, who was suffering even a severer penance than he had undergone, and was much less able to disengage herself.—They had risen on the first appearance of Lady Llancarrick and her poetical associate, and were now walking towards home; but this did not promise to afford them the means of escape, for the ladies declared they also were returning that way. Little more, however, was required during the remainder of their walk than to listen: for Lady Llancarrick having now got somebody to hear her, to whom she thought all the fine things she had collected were entirely new, and who could not doubt of exciting wonder and admiration, was soaring into the most elevated regions—and common life and common sense were left at an immeasurable distance. She mistook the silence of Walsingham (which arose from vexation and impatience) for profound attention and silent admiration. From the first time of meeting him, she thought him an object well worth trying to attract, and wished to find out the nature of his attachment to Rosalie; though, be it what it might, it impeded not her views, for it was one among her many real or affected singularities, that she pretended to have the most profound contempt for beauty, while her own figure and face betrayed the great pains she took to acquire or preserve in her own person the advantage she contemned.
She knew that Walsingham was reckoned a man of the first understanding and information, and was fully persuaded that Rosalie's youth and beauty would be weak attractions, when opposed to her charms, and those talents, which alone, she thought had power to fix a man of his genius.
Lady Llancarrick began life as a young woman whom accidental connections had raised into society much above her fortune, and who thought herself happy to be put on a level with them by marrying Sir Lodowick Llancarrick, a Welsh Baronet: but having unsuccessfully tried the charms of domestic felicity, she had, for some years, been one of those characters which the undistinguishing multitude have called—Veteran Women of Fashion—High Flyers—and other appellations which are doubtless quite undeserved.......The "universal passion," according to Dr. Young's description, was never more strongly exemplified—never did a female breast pant so vehemently for fame as that of Lady Llancarrick; and, after many struggles to raise herself to notoriety, she found every eminence pre-occupied that might have been obtained by singularity of dress or demeanour; she could not drive into the temple of Fame in a Phaeton, four in hand, without being incommoded by equal of superior skill—or ride thither without being crossed and jostled; neither could she leap a five-barred gate, or do many other feats to make people stare, without having innumerable rivals. One avenue to immortality, however, was less crowded, and Lady Llancarrick followed it: she became a poet and a politician—with a very moderate skill in her own language, she was certainly a singular, if not a successful, candidate for the Poetic Crown; but having neither the judgement that arises from natural good sense, or that which is acquired by study, her political opinions, and her poetical flights, were equally inconsistent and absurd. Together, however, they answered her purpose, for she became wonderful, if not admirable: some humble retainers of the Tuneful Nine were always ready to celebrate her genius; and she furnished so many paragraphs for the newspapers, that the editors could hardly fail of being grateful.
But with so much genius could she escape being susceptible?—Alas!—no.—Many instances were given of the softness of her heart, and many men of the very first world had been supposed to wear her chains. In proportion as these became fragile through time, she had covered them with flowers, almost the last fortunate captive, who had escaped this charming bondage, was Sommers Walsingham; which, perhaps, from family partiality, inspired Lady Llancarrick with her present inclination to throw the same pleasing fetters over his cousin.
Perfectly unconscious, however, of her design, hardly hearing, and not at all attending to the excellent things she was saying, Walsingham walked by her side, accusing his destiny of cruelty in compelling him to part with Rosalie for some time, and to leave her in such a state of mind, without having an opportunity of saying to her much that he had postponed till he took leave, and which now appeared absolutely necessary to his own peace, if not for the guidance and consolation of his interesting unhappy friend. Yet, however, he wished to have a long conversation with Rosalie before he rode back to Hastings, he was persuaded that Lady Llancarrick and Miss Gillman had forced themselves thus into his notice, only to gratify impertinent curiosity, or find ground for malignant remark in regard to Rosalie, that he determined, whatever it might cost him, not to put it in their power. For a moment he thought of returning to her lodging, after they had shaken off their unwelcome companions; but, conscious that so unusual a visit much excite the invidious remarks of the woman of the house, and suspecting that Lady Llancarrick and her companion would watch his steps, he found himself compelled, on Rosalie's account, to relinquish the idea of seeing her again that evening; but rage and vexation seized him, and he no longer wore even the semblance of civility, though Lady Llancarrick did not, or would not, perceive it. Their way lay near the door of the inn where Walsingham's horses were put up. His groom was walking before it waiting his orders; he called to him impatiently, and bade him bring the horses out; they followed him in an instant, when, approaching Rosalie, he wished her a good night, and said, in a low voice, that he would see her in a very few days; then, coldly bowing to the other two ladies, he mounted his horse, and was out of sight in a moment.
Rosalie, trying to suppress a sigh that arise partly from regret at his going so suddenly, and partly from recollection of the state of mind in which she knew he was, was now very coldly and formally courtesying her good night to her two unwished-for companions; but they did not intend to let her off so easily, and Lady Llancarrick, bidding her dear Gillman take the arm of her sweet friend, said, "Oh! we will see her safe to her lodgings, you know!"
The distance was not far, but Rosalie thought it now lengthened on purpose: both the ladies besetting her with questions which she could not answer truly, and would very fain have been excused from answering at all. Indeed, during the former part of their walk, while Lady Llancarrick had engaged Walsingham, the gentle, sentimental Erminia Eliza Gillman had, albeit in the sweetest accents and with the most insinuating softness, put so many questions to poor Rosalie, that greater art and knowledge of the world, than she possessed, would have been necessary to prevent the sly sentimentalist from discovering that there was a great deal of mystery in her affairs, and that their obscurity arose from their being of a nature which she dared not reveal, yet knew not how artfully to hide.
When, at length, Rosalie was once more alone in her own parlour, all of the events of the day revived in painful confusion to her memory; but the death of her mother swallowed up every other sorrow, and, with a flood of tears, she accused herself of insensibility, for having, at such a time, suffered any other consideration to call off her thoughts a moment from that object of just and endless regret. Of the two ladies she had seen, she thought no more than to determine upon not continuing their acquaintance, and rather to quit the place than to associate frequently with people so utterly disagreeable.—Her heart heavy with regret, and her head aching from having wept so much during the day, she drank a glass of water and hastened to her bed, where the most tormenting reflections, on the cruel fate of her beloved mother, long prevented her tasting any repose. At length wearied nature gave her up to momentary forgetfulness; but she had hardly slept an hour, when she was awakened by one of the most violent storms of thunder, lightning, wind, and hail, that she had ever recollected to have heard. For herself she was unconscious of apprehension, but clasping to her palpitating heart its only certain possession, her lovely child, she shrunk from the slashing fires which made their way through her window shutters; she endeavoured, however, to appease the fears of Claudine, who crept into her room half dead with terror, but suddenly, as she was reasoning with her maid, she recollected that, from the time which had passed since Walsingham set out, it was impossible he could have reached Hastings. Her apprehensions, lest any evil might befall him, and the idea that she was the innocent cause of his being exposed, became extremely painful to her bosom; she yielded to those gloomy thoughts which too frequently aggravated sorrow—and exclaimed, "Alas! I am so unfortunate, that it seems as if I communicated calamity to all who are interested about me......Born the child of proscription, I destroyed the peace of my mother, and on my account it probably was, that my unhappy father was driven into exile!—Should he have survived long years of calamity, I shall never behold him, never have an opportunity of expressing for him the filial tenderness I should feel, or of weeping with him over the memory of my dear, dear mother. Again proscribed in my marriage, I have, perhaps, undone Montalbert, and loaded him with the malediction of his mother......Perhaps—oh! thought too terrible to be dwelt upon!——perhaps his tenderness for me may have cost him his life, and he may have perished amid the sulphurous gulphs and unwholesome exhalations at Messina.—No, I will not encourage such an idea. The precautions of his cruel mother counteracted it, and, by doing so, made my imprisonment and persecution favours.—Alas! I have present evil enough without dwelling on the past.—The noble-minded, the disinterested Walsingham, seems to be infected with my unhappiness; perhaps, even now, is the victim of his generous attention to me!—and you, dear little unconscious companion of my woes, sole sweetener of my sorrowful existence, may not you one day lament that you were ever born?"
This reflection was too distressing—and an ardent prayer to Heaven, that she alone might suffer, and that her boy might be as happy as she was miserable, ended the sad soliloquy.—The violence of the tempest abated, but not till morning broke.
Rosalie, after a short interval of rest, arose; she heard from her maid, as well as from her other servant and the people of the house, melancholy details of the mischief occasioned by the lightning; of which some particulars were true, but the greater part much exaggerated, or wholly groundless.
Rosalie, still depressed by the idea of Walsingham's possible danger, and by the effects of a sleepless night, tried to shake off both her mental and personal uneasiness by a walk. It was an hour when she hoped that she might venture to the sea side without meeting either of the ladies whom she so much desired to avoid. In this, however, she was disappointed:—they joined her as she returned home; talked over the circumstance of the storm—Lady Llancarrick declaring that she enjoyed its sublime horrors, and Miss Gillman tempering the same sentiment, with delicately expressing concern for the fate of those who might have suffered in it.
"Apropos, (said Lady Llancarrick)—my dear Mrs. Sheffield, do you know it came into our heads, as Gillman and I sat together looking at the lightning over the sea, that our agreeable acquaintance, Mr. Walsingham, could hardly have reached whatever place he was going to before the tempest came on:—he resides, I think, at some distance?"
As she said this, she fixed on Rosalie her fierce inquiring eyes. Rosalie, though no human being could be more void of offence, blushed deeply, and, before she could form a reply, Walsingham's groom came up to her, and delivered a packet with his master's compliments, and he had orders to wait for an answer.
Rosalie now saw, in the countenance of the two ladies, an expression which added, for a moment, to her pain and confusion. Relieved, however, from the uneasiness she had been in about Walsingham, she felt all the dignity of conscious innocence, and resolved to disregard censure, which, whatever appearances might say, she knew herself incapable of deserving; she recovered her composure, and telling the servant she would return home and write an answer, which he might call for in a quarter of an hour, she slightly wished the two ladies a good morning, and left them.
Their curiosity, which was strongly excited on many accounts, they scrupled not to attempt gratifying by questioning the servant; from whom, however, they obtained but little additional information. While these ladies were thus unworthily employed, Rosalie read the following letter from Walsingham——
LETTER.
"I was compelled to leave you, dear Madam, last night in an uneasy state of mind—for how could I be otherwise, when I saw you in such depressed spirits; and I fear your new acquaintances are not of that description of women, with whom, either in the hour of sadness or gaiety, you would wish to associate.—I hope, that if you find them too much disposed to trespass upon you, you will not suffer the fear of violating the common forms of society to force you into the most uneasy of all restrains, keeping up a show of regard to conceal dislike and disgust. I believe neither of them to be worthy of the friendship of Mrs. Montalbert. You know, I hope, that if this or any other circumstance renders your present abode less agreeable to you, my services shall be exerted to find one more eligible—but favour me with your commands immediately, as I shall go to-morrow to London, to plead with an old acquaintance of my father's on behalf of an unfortunate son, who, having two years ago married a young woman, whose only fault was her being a destitute fortune, and, having been brought up to no profession, is in a very distressed situation, with a wife and two sweet little children. I met him a few days before I had last the honour of seeing you, as he is here with his family; I bade him consider what I could do to serve him, and he has desired me to see his father on his behalf: persuaded that I should succeed in restoring him to comfort and his father. Without having very high ideas of my powers of persuasion, especially when the hard-cold heart of avarice is to be moved, I will, however, make the attempt, and, unless there is any thing in which I can first have the pleasure of being employed for you, Madam, I shall begin my journey to-morrow early. My friend's father lives in Nottinghamshire.
"May the bearer of this bring me as favourable an account of your health and spirits as can be expected after the just concern you have so recently felt:—I hope you were not terrified by the tempest of last night. It overtook me on a place so wild and dreary, that I cold have supposed it the scene where Shakespeare imagined the meeting between Macbeth and the Weird Sisters. The spot I allude to is a wide down; in some places scattered over with short furze, in others barren even of turf, and the uncloathed chalk presenting the idea of cold desolation:—on the left is a ruined chapel, or small parish church, in which service is performed only once in six weeks; on the right are, in some places, marshes that extend to the sea—in others a broad spit of sand and stones, where nature seems to refuse sustenance even to the half-marine plants, which, in most places, are thinly sprinkled among the saltpetre of the beach.
"The hollow murmur of the distant sea, on which the lightning faintly flashed, foretold the coming storm some time before I reached this heath—there it overtook me; but as there are times when outward accidents make little or no impression on me, I quickened not my pace; and shall I own it without incurring the charge of affected eccentricity; that I found a melancholy species of pleasure of surveying the gloomy horrors of the scene——in fancying I was the only human being abroad, within the circuit of many miles—in cherishing the same spirit with which Young says in his Night Thoughts—-
"Throughout the vast glove's wide circumference
"No being wakes but me."
Yet I was more moderate, and more philosophical in my somber enjoyment; and, when I came to my lodgings, I wrote what follows, which I beg you will put into the fire when you have read——.
"Swift fleet the billowy clouds along the sky,
"Earth seems to shudder at the storm aghast;
"While only beings, as forlorn as I.
"Court the chill horrors of the howling blast.
"Even round yon crumbling walls, in search of food,
"The ravenous owl forgoes his evening flight;
"And in his cave, within the deepest wood,
"The fox eludes the tempest of the night:—
"But
"But, to my heart, congenial is the gloom
"Which hides me from a world I wish to shun—
"That scene, where ruin saps the moulding tomb,
"Suits with the sadness of a wretch undone;
"Nor is the darkest shade, the keenest air,
"Black as my fate—or cold as my despair."