The Old Manor House/Part 3

by Charlotte Smith

War is a game, which, were their subjects wise,
Kings should not play at. Nations would do well
T'extort their truncheons from the puny hands
Of heroes, whose infirm and baby minds
Are gratified with mischief, and who spoil,
Because men suffer it, their toy the world.
COWPER

---

Chapter I

ORLANDO could not, though he attempted it, conceal the anguish of his heart during the day: for though he had arranged with his new confident the means of seeing Monimia, it was far from certain these plans would succeed; or, could he be content with the means which he had used, however desirable the end. Monimia, who while she yielded to his earnest entreaties had always felt, from the natural rectitude of her understanding, the impropriety of their clandestine correspondence, would, he feared, be more than ever sensible of her indiscretion, when she found that a servant was entrusted with it – and on thinking over what had passed between him and the under keeper, he found more reason to entertain a good opinion of his acuteness than of his integrity. – When to these reflections were added the certainty of his immediate departure, and the uncertainty of his return; the mournful looks of his mother, who could not behold him without tears; the deep, but more silent sorrow marked on the countenance of his father, and the pensive expression of regret on those of his sisters; he could with difficulty go through the forms of a melancholy dinner, at which the General in vain attempted to call off the attention of his hosts to topics of common conversation, and to divert them from private misery by those public topics which then interested none of them. The expulsion of the Americans from the province of Canada, which had happened the preceding August; and the victory gained by the British fleet near Crown Point against a small number of their gondolas and galleys, in the course of the following October, successes of which exaggerated official accounts were just received, were matters whereon the General triumphantly descanted, and on which he obtained more attention from his audience, because he asserted very positively that, in consequence of these amazing advantages, the whole continent of America would submit, and the troops of course return as soon as they had chastised the insolent colonists sufficiently for their rebellion. – Orlando then, he assured his family, was not at all likely to join his regiment, which would almost immediately be ordered home; but would be the safe soldier of peace, and perhaps return to them in a few weeks, no otherwise altered than by his military air and a cockade. The only smile that was seen the whole day on the faces of any of the family was visible on that of Mrs Somerive, on the General's description of an American flight, though none had a more tender heart or a more liberal mind: but having heard only one side of the question, and having no time or inclination to investigate political matters, she now believed that the Americans were a set of rebellious exiles, who refused on false pretences 'the tribute to Caesar,' which she had been taught by scriptural authority ought to be paid. Thus considering them, she rejoiced in their new defeat, and was insensible of their misery; though, had not the new profession of Orlando called forth her fears for him, she would probably never have thought upon the subject at all – a subject with which, at that time, men not in parliament and their families supposed they had nothing to do. They saw not the impossibility of enforcing in another country the very imposts to which, unrepresented, they would not themselves have submitted. Elate with national pride, they had learned by the success of the preceding war to look with contempt on the inhabitants of every other part of the globe; and even on their colonists, men of their own country – little imagining that from their spirited resistance

'The child would rue that was unborn
The taxing of that day.'

At length the hour arrived when Orlando obtained permission to return to the Hall: he told his father, that as he meant to take leave of Mrs Rayland that night, in order to pass the greater part of Sunday with his family, it was necessary for him to pay her this last compliment. Mr. Somerive acceded to the necessity he urged; but at parting from him, fixed his eyes on those of his son, with a look which expressed solicitude, sorrow, and pity. It questioned his sincerity, and yet seemed not to reproach him. Orlando could not bear it: he hurried away, and rode as speedily as he could to the Hall; where he sent up for leave to wait on Mrs Rayland to tea, and then went in search of Jacob, who easily found a pretence for attending him in his Study. Orlando with a palpitating heart questioned him: 'Have you,' cried he, 'discovered any means by which I can obtain access to Monimia, or get her down stairs, without the knowledge of Mrs Lennard?'

'Faith, Sir,' answered the man, ''tis no easy task as your honour have set me, I can tell you – However, I've contrived to speak to Miss – '

'Have you?' cried Orlando eagerly: 'there's an excellent fellow. And what does she say?'

'Aye, Sir,' replied Jacob, 'that's the thing. – She was in a sad twitter when she know'd you had told me, and said it was impossible to do what you desired – for the room where she sleeps is a closet within Madam Lennard's, hardly big enough to hold a bed, by reason that her room doors are locked; and for the window, it is barred up with a long iron bar; so that if Miss had courage to get down a ladder, she could not get out – or if she did, she could never get back again. Her aunt, she says, finds her being there vastly inconvenient; and, as soon as you are gone, reckons to send her back to her own room.'

'I shall be driven out of my senses,' exclaimed Orlando, as he traversed the room: 'if I cannot see her before I go, I shall be distracted – How did you obtain admittance to her? Cannot I speak to her by the same means?' – 'Why hardly; for you must know that I was forced to get one of the maids to help me. The new house-maid that Madam have hired this morning upon trial, is an old acquaintance of mine; I gave her an item of the matter, and so she contrived to take me up to mend the window-shutter, which she had broke on purpose; and bid me I should take a hammer and nails, and make a clatter if Madam Lennard came. I took care to make my job long enough; and when the old house-keeper ax'd me what I was doing, I had an excuse you know pat, and it passed off very well; and not only so, but she said to me, says she – "When you have done that job, Jacob, I wish you would just look at the wainscot under the window, and under them there drawers of mine; for it's as rotten as touchwood, and the rats are for ever coming in," says she; and says she, "I never saw the like of this old house – it will tumble about our ears, I reckon, one day or norther, and yet my lady is always repairing it," says she; "but the wainscoting of this here end of the wing," says she, "has been up above a hundred years; and we may patch it, and patch it, and yet be never the nearer: but for my part, I suppose it will last my time," says she.'

Orlando no sooner heard that another person, the new housemaid, had been incautiously admitted to participate a secret which he had hitherto so anxiously guarded, than his vexation conquered the pleasure he had for a moment indulged, in learning that it was possible for another, and therefore for him, to see Monimia. To the latter part of the game-keeper's oration he could not attend, occupied with the idea of the new uneasiness this circumstance must give to Monimia; and agitated by innumerable fears and anxieties, he remained a moment silent after his companion had ceased to speak, and then said – 'She told you, I think, that after I was gone her aunt would suffer her to return to her former apartment?'

'Yes, that was what she said.'

'Well, then, I will go. Indeed I am going by day-break to-morrow. Nay, I am going from this house to-night; and therefore I shall take leave of Mrs Rayland this evening.' He paused a moment, and then added, 'I suppose it is possible to convey a letter to Monimia, though I despair of seeing her.'

'O Lord! yes, Sir, that you may do for certain; for I told her that if she would let down a letter for you by a string at seven o'clock, I would be there to take it; and you might send her one back the same way.'

'What is it o'clock now?' cried Orlando.

'Almost six, Sir.'

'It is time then for me to go to my appointment with Mrs Rayland, whose tea I am afraid is ready. Do you be punctual to seven o'clock; and, if I can escape, I will be with you at the window. But I beseech you, Jacob, to remember, that all the obligation I shall owe you on this occasion will be cancelled, if you are not secret. I wish you had not mentioned this matter to any other person, especially to a woman – You know they are not to be trusted.'

'Aye! that I know well enough; they'll cackle, I know they will, if life and death depended upon it: but, Lord! Sire, how a-name of fortune was I to get at Miss, unless I had done so? and I do believe Nanny is as trusty as most.'

It was equally useless to argue on the necessity of the measure, or the discretion of Nanny. The die was cast; and to meet Monimia safely after so much hazard had been incurred, was all that it would now answer any purpose to think of. Orlando, during his short conference with his own thoughts, had determined to take that night his last leave of Mrs Rayland, and to say to her before Mrs Lennard, that he was to set out the next morning early, with General Tracy, for London. He hoped, by thus acting, to persuade the aunt of Monimia that she might safely send her back to her former apartment; and that by making an appointment with her for Sunday, when he would by the people at the Hall be believed on his way to London, he should enjoy without interruption the melancholy pleasure of bidding her adieu, and settling the safest method for their future correspondence.

For this purposed he wrote to her; and sealing the letter, he put it into his pocket and repaired to Mrs Rayland; who, understanding he was come to take his leave, received him with great solemnity, yet not with less kindness than usual.

Her conversation consisted chiefly of good advice. She declaimed against the vitiated state of modern manners, and related how much better things were in her time. She warned him to beware of the gamesters and bad women, who, she said, were the ruin of all young people; and gave him, though obliquely, to understand, that his future favor with her depended on his behaviour in this his first appearance in life.

With her the age of chivalry did not seem to be passed; for she appeared to consider Orlando as a Damoisell, now about to make his first essay in arms. Indeed, while she talked much of modern immorality and dissipation, she knew very little of modern manners, seldom seeing any of those people who are what is called people of the world; and forming her ideas of what was passing in it, only from newspapers and the Lady's Magazine; or some such publication, which excited only wonder and disgust – while her recollection came to her relief, and carried her back to those days she herself remembered – and with still greater pleasure to the relations her father had given of what passed in his. The freedom of modern life suited so ill with the solemnity of respect that was shown towards her in her youth, that she shrunk from the uneasiness it gave her, and made around her a world of her own: of which when Orlando became an inhabitant, all that regarded him was assimilated to her own antediluvian notions.

In answer to her long and sage lecture, Orlando assured her, and with great sincerity, that he had no wishes that were not centered in the spot and neighbourhood he was about to leave: that new as he was to the world, he yet believed it would offer him no objects that could a moment detach his affection from his family and his friends. There was so much earnestness, and something so impressive in the manner of his saying this, as not only enforced belief, but sensibly affected Mrs Rayland. She almost repented that she had ever consented to his going; but to detain him now without acknowledging him as her heir (which she had determined never to do), was not to be thought of; and General Tracy had succeeded in convincing her, not only that it was a justice due to her young relation to give him an opportunity of seeing more of mankind; but that, as he would not quit England, he would enjoy all the advantages of an honourable profession, without losing the advantage of her protection. Without giving implicit credit to the tales by which Pattenson attempted to prejudice him in her favour, she thought enough of them to let them influence in some degree her determination; and she believed that if he had formed any improper attachment, nothing was so likely to break it as sending him from the country, and into the scenes of life which would, she supposed, occupy his mind without injuring his morals.

It seemed as if towards the close of her life Mrs Rayland had acquired, instead of losing, her sensibility; for she who had hardly ever loved any body, now found that she could not without pain part from Orlando. She felt her pride and pleasure equally interested in exerting towards him that generosity, which from the rest of his family she had withheld; and the apparent dejection of his spirits, the reluctance with which he left the Hall, made him appear to her more worthy than ever of her favour. When therefore she had exhausted every topic of advice she could think of, and received, from the manly simplicity of his answers, all the assurances that words could give of his gratefully receiving it, she presented him with a bank note of two hundred and fifty pounds; which she told him was for the purpose of purchasing what he would have occasion for on his first entrance into the army. She had, however, so little idea of modern expenses, that she considered this a very great sum; and such as it was an amazing effort of generosity in her to part with: yet, while she made this exertion, her kindness towards him was so far from being exhausted, that she told him he should find her always his banker, so long as he continued to give her reason to think of him as she thought of him now.

Orlando kissed the hand of his ancient benefactress; but the tears were in his eyes, and he was unable to speak. He tried, however, to thank her for this last, and for all her former favours to him: but the words were inarticulate; and the old lady herself, 'albeit unused to the melting mood,' was now so much affected, that she could only faintly utter the blessing she gave him. 'You had better not say any more, Sir,' said Mrs Lennard, who seemed disposed to weep too – 'much better not, for indeed it will make my lady quite out of spirits.' Orlando, very willing to shorten such a scene, turned to Mrs Lennard, towards whom in a few hurried words he expressed his thanks for her past kindness, and his wishes for her health and happiness; and then hastened away, his heart oppressed by the scene that had passed, yet beating tumultuously with the thoughts of that which was to come.

He hardly dared, however, give himself time to think. He had told Mrs Rayland a falsehood, for which his ingenuous heart already smote him. He was about to act in direct violation of all he had promised, and all she expected of him. He knew that, were he detected lingering about the house, after what he had just said of his intentions of leaving it immediately, he should lose for ever all the advantage of that favour which Mrs Rayland now so openly avowed for him; and that if his attachment to Monimia were known, it would excite more anger and resentment than almost any of the errors against which she had been warning him. But all these considerations, strongly as they ought to have operated against any other indiscreet indulgence, were powerless when put in competition with his tender affection for Monimia; and to leave her without being able to speak to her and console her, was what he could not for a moment have endured to think of, if poverty, disgrace, and exile from every other human being had been the alternatives.

On entering his room he found it wanted only a few moments of seven. He glided therefore round the house, and found his punctual confident already waiting for the signal. 'We need not both be here,' said Orlando: 'go, Jacob, and wait for me in my room: I have asked leave for you to go with me to-night to carry a portmanteau to West Wolverton.' Jacob obeyed; and Orlando, almost breathless with fear lest he should be disappointed in this his forlorn hope, waited under the window.

The casement at length softly opened, and Monimia appeared at it. He spoke to her, and bade her to let down the string for a letter, 'on the success of which,' said he, 'more than my life depends. – Read it then, Monimia, read it quickly and give me an answer.'

The trembling girl, whose hurry of spirits alone supported her, now hastened away with the letter; and, in an instant, threw down a piece of paper on which she had written with a pencil – 'If I am suffered to go back to my own room to-night, I will be ready on the usual signal; but, if I am not, I cannot write. If I am not, farewell, Orlando – farewell for ever; for I shall be too wretched to make it possible for me to live. Remember, dear Orlando, your poor friend; and may you be very happy, whatever becomes of me! Go, now, for heaven's sake! – I am sure my aunt will be here in a few moments: and all depends upon her believing you gone.'

As it was too dark for Orlando to discern these words, he was compelled to go back to his own room to read them. The doubt they left upon his mind distracted him; but it was a doubt which, if he attempted to remove it, would become a certainty that would destroy this faint ray of hope. He went back, however, to the window, in hopes that he might yet speak one word to Monimia, but he saw that there was now another candle in the room; and, retiring a little farther so as to be able to see more of it, he distinctly saw Mrs Lennard walking in the room, and apparently busied in the usual occupations to which she dedicated Saturday nights. To stay, therefore, was not only useless, but dangerous; and he thought it better to make a great bustle in going, that all the inhabitants of the Hall might be apprised of his absence. He sent Jacob into the kitchen to give some farther orders about forwarding his trunks and baggage to the next market town, as they were to be sent to London by waggon; and then, mournfully and reluctantly, prepared to leave the room where he had passed so many happy hours – the room where his mind first tasted the charms of literature, and his heart of love. It was indeed possible that he might once more revisit it, once more that evening with Monimia; but it was also possible, perhaps most probable, that he might not see her again.

A thousand painful reflections presented themselves. He left her exposed to numberless inconveniences; and his late rashness had, perhaps, added to them by putting her into the power of servants. Yet he might be denied an opportunity to put her upon her guard against any of the circumstances he foresaw, or even to settle how she might receive his letters.

He traversed the library, yielding to these tormenting thoughts; and, by the light of the solitary candle he had set down in the window seat, every thing appeared gloomy and terrific. Every object and every sound seemed to repeat the sentence, that constantly occurred to him – 'Orlando will revisit this house no more.' It is difficult to say how long he would have indulged this mournful reverie (notwithstanding his resolution just before taken to quit the house with as much noise as possible), if he had not been alarmed by the sound of a female step in the adjoining parlour. He started. It was perhaps Monimia! He flew to the door; and there, with too evident marks of disappointment in his countenance, he discovered it to be Mrs Lennard herself, who with a candle in her hand, and much perpendicular dignity in her air, stalked into the Study – 'I am glad, Mr. Orlando, you are not yet gone, for I have a message from my Lady.' Orlando would have faced a cannon with less trepidation than he waited for this message, which his conscience told him might relate to Monimia. It proved, however, to be only that he would give to Lennard the keys of the rooms; and that she might see the window safe and barred. To this, though it disappointed him wholly of his hopes of meeting Monimia there, it was impossible to object. The cautious housekeeper, therefore, barricaded every avenue to this apartment, without forgetting the door that led to the chapel; and then, formally enquiring if Orlando had taken out every thing he wished to have, to which he answered Yes (as his boxes had been moved the preceding day), she said she would follow him; and he left the room with an additional pang, while Mrs Lennard locked the door and marched solemnly after him.

Towards the middle of the great parlour, through which they were passing, he stopped, and said in a voice that betrayed his emotion – 'You will be so good, dear Madam, to assure Mrs Rayland of my grateful respects, and to accept yourself a repetition of my good wishes.'

'Thank you, Sir,' answered the lady, 'I am sure I wish you very well: but Mr Orlando, since we part friends' – 'I hope we always were friends, Madam,' said Orlando, attempting to smile, and turn the discourse, which he feared tended to the subject he most dreaded.

'I hope so too, Sir; but I must say, that I am afraid in regard to that girl, my niece, there has been some wrong doings. It was not right in you, Mr Orlando, I must say, to hold a secret correspondence with her, which I am very sure you did, by means of that sad slut Betty, who latterly has been always giving me hints of it: but I, who did not think Monimia so cunning and artful, did not understand them; and, even to this day, I cannot imagine how you contrived so often to talk to her out of the window, without being seen or heard. However, it's all over now, I hope; and I am willing to let it be forgot as a childish frolic. When you return here, Sir, you will by that time have seen too much of the world to think about such a chit as Monimia – if, indeed, she should happen to be here so long.'

Orlando, divided between his joy to find that the real avenue by which they conversed was unknown, and the pain the last hint gave him, knew not what to reply; but, confused and hesitating, he stammered out a sentence which Mrs Lennard did not give him time to finish – 'Come, come, Mr Orlando,' she said, 'I know you are above any false representations: besides, I assure you, you cannot take an old bird with chaff – However, as I said before, there is an end of the matter – I shall take care of young Madam here; and I dare say you will find plenty of ladies where you are going, better worth looking after.'

Orlando, utterly unable to answer this raillery, now wished her once more health and happiness; and said (again vainly attempting to appear unconcerned) – 'I really do not love to contradict ladies, my dear Mrs Lennard! so you must have your own way, however your suspicions may wrong me.' He then hastened away to mount his horse, with which Jacob waited for him at the door of the servants' hall that opened towards the stables: – but as he passed through, he found all the servants assembled at it to take leave of him. Even Pattenson was there; but, by the expression of his air and manner, with very different sentiments from the rest – for they all testified their concern; while the old butler, with a contemptuous sneer on his countenance, appeared to be delighted by his departure.

At once flattered and pained by the good wishes and prayers for his prosperity with which they crowded around him, while most of the women shed tears, Orlando spoke kindly to each of them, assured them that he should rejoice in any good that might befal them: 'But,' added he, 'I hope, my kind friends, we do not part for great length of time, and that on my return I shall find you all here, unless any of you lasses should be carried off by good husbands.' Then, again wishing them all well, he mounted his horse; and Jacob following, he rode away from the Hall – but not with a design of going to the house of his father; he rather meant to linger about the woods till the hour when he thought there was a chance of his finding Monimia once more in the turret.

Chapter II

ORLANDO, already repenting, though he hardly knew why, that he had told the game-keeper so much, was very unwilling to entrust him with more. He had not so exactly described the way of his communication with Monimia, as to enable any other person to find it; and he wished rather to recall than to increase the confidence he had placed in a man of whom he knew very little, and who might perhaps make an ill use of his confidence. A new difficulty therefore arose: he knew not what to do with Jacob and the horses, which he now repented that he had used. If he sent them on to his father's, it would be suspected by a family who were every hour looking out for him, that he had staid behind with Monimia: if he left them in the wood, the man would probably be discontented; and if he sent them to an alehouse near the mill at the extremity of the park, Pattenson (who was the great friend and patron of the man who kept it) or some of the other servants might be there, whose enquiries could neither be satisfied nor evaded. Determined however as he was to open his heart to his father before his last adieu, he, after some deliberation, resolved to send them home; and he thought the enquiries his father would make, would give him a good opportunity to put an end (at least as far as he could) to a mystery of which he felt ashamed, as unworthy of himself, and of the object of his affection. – Thus resolved, he told the game-keeper he meant to return back to the Hall, in the hope of seeing Monimia for five minutes; and that he should go to West Wolverton with his horse and portmanteau, whither he would himself follow in about two hours, as he should tell his father, if he asked after him, on hearing or seeing the horses arrive without him.

The man obeyed; and Orlando, making a circuit through the woods, in order to return to the Hall by the least frequented way, and to have as little of the open part of the park to cross as possible, arrived once more at the mansion which he had so lately quitted as for the last time. – He walked very slowly on purpose; and his thoughts were such as brought with them only dejection and sorrow.

He could not help recollecting with regret, those hours, now gone for ever, when, in his early youth, he traversed these paths – happy in the present, and thoughtless of the future; – when he had no passion to torment, no fears for its object to depress him; but went to Monimia with the same simple eagerness as any of his sisters or his other playfellows, and was unconscious that the rest of their lives would be embittered with anxiety and disappointment – perhaps remorse. – Orlando already felt something like it: with the most candid and ingenuous temper he had lived some time in a course of deception – he had taught it to the innocent, unsuspecting Monimia, and had sullied the native candour and integrity of her character. The sophistry by which he had formerly prevailed upon her to consent to their clandestine meetings, now seemed mean and contemptible; but perhaps, in thinking thus, Orlando was too much like other transgressors, who repent because they can sin no more.

He thought himself, however, firmly determined that, had he staid at the Hall, he would, at whatever hazard, act with more openness; but as he was going from it, there could be no harm in this last adieu. In writing to Monimia there could be nothing wrong, especially as he meant not to make a secret of it to his father and Selina, nor indeed to any of his own family: while the peculiarities of Mrs. Rayland, and the watchful malignity of Mrs Lennard, seemed fully to justify his not revealing to them what would be so hazardous to Monimia and to himself.

Amid these disquieting and contradictory reflections, he at last reached the Hall. It was the darkest of December nights, but calm and still. Orlando walked slowly round the house, which, save a glimmering light from the window of Mrs Lennard's room, bore no appearance of being inhabited. His longing eyes, which had anxiously watched for some consoling beam from the turret, whither they had so often been turned with transport, now sought for the propitious ray in vain. Still it was possible Monimia might be there, but, from her aunt's late suspicions, deprived of a light. As the house seemed perfectly quiet, he ventured up to the well-known door, and, listening awhile, tapped at it; no answer was given! – he repeated the signal louder; still no delicious sounds were heard in return! – and, convinced at length that his project had wholly failed, and Monimia was still a prisoner, he became half frantic, from the reflection that he had hazarded their secret in vain: he had in vain imagined a finesse, and asserted a falsehood, and perhaps must at last go without seeing her, his heart torn at once by his own sufferings and by the idea of hers.

In stepping back to return down the stairs, when after a long stay all hope had forsaken him, his foot struck something before him, which seemed to be a parcel: as not a ray of light entered the place where he was, he felt for this with his hands, and, at length finding it, he discovered it to be a small book: it was tied with a packthread; and Orlando immediately supposed, what was indeed the truth, that Monimia, not being permitted to return that evening to sleep in her former apartment, had, however, on some pretence or other entered it, and deposited at the door that book, which contained a letter. He opened the book with trembling hands, and found what he expected by the seal; but to read it was impossible, where he had no means of procuring light: he therefore put it into his pocket as eagerly as if he was afraid somebody would take it from him, and then ran towards home; where, hardly feeling the ground as he went, he arrived, in a state of mind so uneasy and confused, that he no longer was capable of caution or reserve; but hastening into the kitchen, where he first perceived a light, he snatched up a candle without speaking, and was hurrying with it to his own room, when his father, who had been anxiously waiting his arrival, opened the door through which he was preparing to pass up stairs; and seeing him pale and breathless, his eyes wild, and his hair disheveled, he concluded that something very terrible had happened to his brother. – The rash, unthinking, and vehement character of Philip, his wild profusion, and unsettled principles, had of late so harassed the imagination of his father, that he now thought only of committing suicide; and the sudden appearance of Orlando, in such an agitated state, struck him with the idea that this fatal event had happened – 'Almighty God!' cried he, as he seized the arm of Orlando, who, muttering something, would have passed to his room – 'Almighty God! what I have dreaded has happened.' – Orlando, who thought at that moment only of Monimia, and was impatient at every interruption, was, however, so struck with this exclamation, and with the look of anguish that accompanied it, that he stopped, and, with terror equal to that with which he had been addressed, cried, 'What, my dear Sir! for Heaven's sake what has happened? My mother, my sisters!' 'Oh, your brother!' interrupted Mr Somerive – 'tell me the worst at once, it cannot be more dreadful than my fears represent it.' – 'Indeed, Sir, I know nothing of my brother; nothing has happened to him that I know of – I hope you have heard nothing?'

'No!' cried Mr Somerive, a little recovering from his apprehension. 'Speak low, Orlando; I would not for the world alarm you mother, who is in bed: – but your looks, your haste, your staying out, and your sudden appearance, gave me I know not what idea, that some dreadful accident had happened to poor Philip.'

'Dear Sir,' replied Orlando, 'you will really destroy yourself, if you give way to such horrible apprehensions; Philip, I am persuaded, is well. – Pray compose yourself; I am extremely sorry I alarmed you, and beg you will make yourself easy.'

'Ah! Orlando,' said Mr Somerive as he sat down in the parlour, whither he desired his son to follow him – 'ah, Orlando! you relieve me from one misery only to plunge me into another, less insupportable indeed, but still most painful to me. – What is the meaning, my dear boy, of these haggard looks, of this disordered manner, of these late walks, and this breathless return? Some mystery hangs over your actions, which cannot but be injurious, since those actions, were they not such as your own conscience condemns, need not be concealed from your family – from your father!'

'They shall not, Sir!' replied Orlando warmly – 'I will not leave you in doubt about my conduct; you will find nothing in it that need make you blush for your son: spare me but this one night, and to-morrow there shall not be a wish of my heart concealed from you.'

'Alas, poor boy!' said Mr Somerive tenderly, 'I guess but too much of them already: – but, Orlando, I depend upon your integrity; I have never known it deceive me. Go, therefore, now – and let me not see to-morrow that wild and unsettled look, that pale countenance, and so many symptoms of suffering, which I, my son, see but too plainly, and yet dare hardly say I pity, for fear I should encourage what I ought to condemn.' Then with a deep sigh, he added, 'Good night, dear Orlando! I will go and endeavour to compose myself, or at least conceal from your mother the uneasiness that devours me. – Ah, my child! many and many nights I do not close my eyes: the sad image of Philip, bringing ruin on himself, on my wife, and on my poor girls, haunts me eternally; and then, Orlando, when my expectation rests on you, when I think that I have another son who will protect and support them when I am gone – for I feel that I shall not live long – then the apprehension of some fatal entanglement that will ruin all our hopes, comes over my heavy heart; and I see nothing for my wife, and my dear girls, but poverty and despair.'

'Oh! this is too much,' cried Orlando; 'I cannot indeed bear it – What shall I say – what shall I swear, to quiet these distracting apprehensions? – Good God, Sir! what have I ever done, what selfish actions have I ever been guilty of, which could lead my father to suppose that, to gratify myself, I would abandon my dear – my affectionate mother, or forget the interest of my sweet sisters?' – 'Nay, Orlando, you never have given me reason for such a supposition; but let us talk of it no more – once more, good night!' Orlando then kissed his father's hand, and left him. Eagerly he tore open the letter, which had already, from his excessive impatience, occasioned to him so much pain. It contained these few words: –

'My aunt refused to let me return to my former room this night, and you well know I dared not press it; I could obtain no more than permission to go thither for half an hour to put it to rights, as she has told me I shall go back to it to-morrow; and I use that opportunity to leave this letter, inclosed in a book, which I hope you will not miss. Orlando, if you go to-morrow, we shall meet no more! – but as you mention not setting out till Monday morning, I flatter myself that if that is so, you will not go without seeing me: at all events I will be in the great pond-wood between four and five to-morrow evening; and will wait on the old bench not far from the boat-house. I will not say what I shall suffer till you come, if indeed you do come: but be not uneasy for me, for my aunt will have no doubt of your being quite out of the country by to-morrow, and therefore will let me go out to walk without any questions. If you can come, I shall not expect to find an answer at my door. – If you cannot – but, indeed, Orlando, my trembling hand, and the tears that fall upon the paper, prevent my saying any more. I cannot write a farewell to you! – But if I never should see you again, do not forget me, Orlando! – And may God bless you, and make you happy!'

The paper was indeed blistered, and some of the words almost obliterated, by the tears that had mingled with the ink. Orlando kissed these marks of tender sensibility a thousand and a thousand times: he laid the precious paper to his heart, and believed the talisman abated its throbbing; then took it to read again, and endeavoured to calm his spirits with the assurance that he should meet the adored writer of it, and repeat an hundred times protestations of tenderness which he never felt more forcibly than now. But as soon as his disquieting apprehensions about Monimia, and his fears of not seeing her, were appeased, the scene he had just passed through with his father recurred with more acute pain to his mind: he had promised to reveal the secret which was already suspected; but, though he firmly adhered to this resolution, surely his father would not insist upon his promise to give up all thoughts of Monimia – That he felt to be a promise which he could not make – his whole heart recoiled from it. Ah! why was it thus impossible to reconcile his duty and his love; and why should his attachment to Monimia be inconsistent with the attention his family would have a right to – if – if his father should die? – The very idea of his father's death was insupportable; and yet he was going from him, and could not watch his health, or contribute to his comfort. Thus wretched Orlando tried in vain to sleep – his blood throbbed tumultuously in his veins; his heart seemed too big for his bosom; by carrying his thoughts of the dreadful parting of the next day, he was rendered incapable of tasting any present repose; and day appeared before his troubled thoughts had so wearied his frame as to allow him to fall into unquiet slumber. Even his short and disturbed sleep, tormenting visions assailed him – he saw the funeral of his father, who yet appeared living, or at least appearing to him, though dead – and pointing with one hand to his mother and his sisters, while with the other he waved him away from Monimia, who, at a distance seemed to sit dejected and alone, in a wild and dreary scene, where birds of prey screamed around her – from which she endeavoured to escape towards Orlando, and held out her hands to him for help in vain. A repetition of these unformed horrors took away all inclination to sleep. At seven o'clock Orlando left his bed, more dejected than ever he felt before; and dreading the dialogue that must ensue, he joined his father, who was walking, melancholy and alone, in the garden.

Chapter III

SOMERIVE received his son with tenderness; but his dejection was but too visible. Orlando approached him with apprehension, and his voice trembled as he spoke the salutation of the morning. They traversed a long gravel walk twice before either of them spoke again. At length Mr Somerive asked Orlando, if he had seen his mother and sisters? He answered, that he believed they had not yet left their chambers; and another painful silence ensued, which neither of them seemed to have resolution to break.

At length Mr Somerive said, 'This, Orlando, is the last day way shall pass together for some time – let it not be clouded by dissimulation on your part; it shall not be so with remonstrance on mine; but my advice you will hear, since indeed, my son, it is for your sake, not my own, I give it – I shall soon be out of the reach of all the evils of this world!'

'Do not talk so, dear Sir!' exclaimed Orlando, seizing his father's hand; 'do not, I beseech you! – Such gloomy presentiments will overcloud this day with more pain for me, than your severest remonstrance. Pray think more cheerfully: you are yet but in the middle of life; you have a constitution naturally good; and you may yet many years see around you a family who idolize their father.'

'No, Orlando!' cried Somerive interrupting him, 'it will not be – Your brother, on whom my first hopes were fixed, he has inflicted the wound which, from long irritation, is become incurable; and where – alas! where is this family so fondly beloved? – Philip is gone! for I see that nothing can save him – My eldest daughter is married into another kingdom, where I can never see her – And you, Orlando, you are now going from me: I am not superstitious, but I feel something like an assurance that we part to-day for ever; or if I am so favoured by Providence as to embrace you again, will you be the same after having entered the world; will you bring back to me the excellent heart, the ingenious temper, the integrity of principle that has hitherto made me glory in my son?'

Orlando, who expected a very different opening to this conversation, warmly repeated his protestations, that nothing should make him forget the duty he owed his father – the affection he felt for his family. 'Ah, Sir!' cried he, 'if you knew how little is to be apprehended from the world, where the whole heart is already absorbed in attachment, contracted in the early dawn of life, and interwoven with the very existence, you would not feel these fears, nor wound me with these doubts.'

'I have lived near fifty years, Orlando; you have not yet finished your twenty-first. I have seen, though passing in obscurity much of my time – I have seen young men set out in life uncorrupted, and apparently endowed with every noble principle that could render them honours to their country or their families; yet, in a few years, I have seen them, either hardened by ambition, or degraded by debauchery, not unfrequently combing both; and if they have interest, pursuing the one only as the means of indulging the other.'

'It is very true, Sir,' answered Orlando: 'but the ambition of a soldier is surely glorious ambition; it leads to honour through hardship and danger; and he who follows his profession earnestly, can have little time for the sallies of irregularity.'

'You are to be a soldier of peace, Orlando; but I will do you justice, I do not believe you will disappoint my hopes by becoming a gamester or a libertine.'

'No, Sir!' said Orlando vehemently. 'To be the first I have no inclination, and for the second you have a security which I am sure you will believe infallible – I promised you last night that I would open my whole heart to you; dare I now then solicit your patience, while I acquit myself of what I hold to be an indispensable duty, and speak with that sincerity to you, which I have reproached myself for ever neglecting to observe, though indeed it was not always possible?'

'I attend,' said Mr Somerive in a grave and low voice: 'I would not, Orlando, touch upon this subject, because I wished to see if you had candour and resolution to speak when you might have evaded it.'

Orlando, whose momentary courage already failed him, now half repented that he had said so much – now shrunk from the unworthy idea of concealing any thing. He began then in a low and tremulous tone; and while his heart throbbed with a thousand painful emotions, he related to his father the whole progress of his passion, even from his first recollection of the time when he began to love Monimia better than any of his sisters; when, in going to the Hall, he thought more of seeing her than of the amusements in which he was indulged, and often refused to ride out on an horse Mrs Rayland allowed him occasionally to have when he was about eleven years old, or to go to play with the men in the park; because, at the hours when these recreations were offered him, he had opportunities of sitting with Monimia, who was employed by her aunt to pick cowslips from their stalks, to collect rose leaves, or dry flowers and herbs in the housekeeper's room. He concealed nothing from his father that happened in the progress of his passion; and as his timidity gradually vanished, he spoke of her with all the enthusiasm and all the tenderness of passion. His father sighed more deeply than he did as he proceeded in his story; when he ceased speaking, remained a moment silent; and then, with another long-drawn sigh, he said, 'I have always suspected something of this sort; but my conjectures were short of the truth. – If I had known, Orlando, that the Hall contained so dangerous an inmate, not all the hopes that have been raised by Mrs Rayland's partiality to you, should have induced me to have suffered your residence there.'

'Good God! Sir,' exclaimed the young man, 'can you call an angel dangerous? oh say rather that my Monimia will prove to me a guardian seraph! – In thinking of her, I find my mind elevated, and purified – I live only for her – I wish only to live worthy of her.'

'Just now, Orlando, you talked of living only for your family – for your mother – for your sisters; and now this angel is the only object of your future life! – An angel! every idle boy that reads ballads or writes them, every scribbler that send his rhymes to a magazine, calls the nymph who inspires him an angel; and such an angel is this Monimia of yours! and from such sort of reading you have learned to fancy yourself in love with her. The niece of Lennard is the last person in the world whom I would wish you to elect, and . . . '

'And why the niece of Lennard, Sir?' said Orlando somewhat impatiently – 'surely my father is too liberal to confound their merits. Poor Monimia! She is indeed the niece of Lennard; but, believe me, she does not in any instance resemble her – And what is her birth? does it render her less amiable, less lovely?'

'Oh, softly!' cried Somerive, interrupting him in his turn, 'I have not the least doubt, Orlando, but that you could prove in a moment that this seraphic damsel is not only the most perfect of human beings, but the better for belonging to a woman who has always stood between me and the countenance of my relation; a woman who, in all probability, will finally rob me of my birth-right. – Unhappy, ill-starred boy! Do you not see that, by this misplaced attachment, you have put it into the power of Mrs Lennard to destroy all the hopes you have been cherishing? Do you not see that you have put yourself upon her mercy? that, under the pretence of not knowing of this clandestine love, she has suffered it to go on? secure of being able to ruin you at any time with her Lady by discovering it, and making a merit of her own disinterested conduct.'

Orlando felt that there was too much truth in this observation; but the greater those hazards were that he incurred for Monimia, the dearer she became to him. 'Well, Sir,' said he, 'and if Mrs Rayland's favour can be held only by the sacrifice of every honest affection, I will disclaim it. Why should she discard me for loving an amiable, beautiful girl, who – ?'

'Nay, nay!' cried his father impatiently – 'Why has she invincible pride, and obstinate prejudice? Why has she always held me at a distance, because my father, though her only relation, was the son of a man who could distinctly count no more than two generations? Why has she always expressed her detestation of the memory of my mother, whom fortune reduced to be her companion? Why has she ever despised your mother, because she was the daughter of a man in trade? It is of no use to inveigh against, or investigate the cause of all these supercilious distinctions in the mind of our old cousin: we know that, unluckily for us, they exist; and we know they are invincible. How do you think a woman so haughty and arrogant would like to hear that the young man she has been distinguishing by her favour, and to whom there is some reason to think she may make up the injustice she has done this family, has engaged himself to marry one of her domestics; a girl brought up in her house through charity, the daughter of a nobleman's steward, and the niece of her housekeeper?'

'If such are her prejudices, Sir' exclaimed Orlando warmly, 'that I must make myself eternally wretched lest I should offend them, I had rather, much rather, give up for ever all those hopes, of which the reality would be too dearly purchased, if the best part of my life, and all that can render it valuable, is to be the price. I thank General Tracy more than ever for giving me a commission, which, little as it will afford me, and weak as my hopes are of preferment, will at least render me in some degree independent.'

'I am obliged to General Tracy too,' said Mr Somerive, 'for you will now be taken out of the most perilous situation that it is possible for a young man of your temper and imagination to be in. If Lennard is satisfied with having got you out of the house (for I doubt not but it was she who so much accelerated your going), it will be well; – a little more knowledge of the world will cure you of this romantic passion. I hope you are not engaged to this girl?'

'Engaged, Sir!'

'Aye, Orlando – engaged?'

'If I give you no more trouble, Sir,' said Orlando dejectedly, 'with what you are pleased to term my romantic passion, I must be forgiven if I answer no questions as to my future conduct; it shall not be such as shall disgrace my family, or give any reasonable cause of uneasiness.'

The emphasis laid on the word reasonable did not at all please Mr Somerive – 'You must give me leave, Sir,' said he rather sternly, 'to judge of the reasonableness of my feelings myself: you evade my question, after all your professions of sincerity. Good God! what a fate is mine! One of my sons is lost to me; the other is going to throw himself away, if not as unworthily, at least more irrecoverably: – your brother may be reclaimed by time and affection; but an unfortunate marriage, contracted so early in life, is certainly ruin.'

This speech was ill calculated to appease the concern and impatience with which Orlando found that his father, generally so considerate and indulgent, suffered his dislike to Mrs Lennard to stifle every generous and liberal sentiment of his heart; and he was on the point of answering with more warmth than he ever in his life ventured to use, when fortunately, to save him from repentance, which would instantly have followed if he had given his father greater pain, the General joined them, and, after a few common compliments, they were met, as they walked towards the house, by Mrs Somerive with a summons to breakfast. Though the interposition of the General had a little relieved both, the enquiring eyes of Mrs Somerive were not easily evaded or deceived: she saw, and trembled to see, the emotions that shook the soul of her husband; while, on the expressive features of Orlando, disquiet and anguish, mingled with something of disappointment and resentment, were too visibly to be traced by maternal solicitude. The presence of the General, however, and of the three girls, prevented her speaking of what so much affected her; by degrees the clouds upon her husband's brow seemed less heavy; but Orlando was pensive and silent: the attempts he evidently made to shake off his concern, were quite ineffectual; and as soon has his hasty breakfast was over, he took his hat, turning to his mother, enquired whether the dinner hour was as usual (for on Sundays the family were sometimes accustomed to dine earlier)? she answered that it was; and Orlando, then slightly bowing to the rest, was leaving the room, when his father cried, 'I thought you were to pass this last day of your stay in the country with us, Orlando!' – 'I shall be back to dinner, Sir,' replied he as he shut the door. – Somerive, who, in the dread of his losing Mrs Rayland's favour, and in his hatred to Mrs Lennard, had spoken of Monimia with more asperity than he felt, was now convinced that harshness would have little influence on the warm impetuous spirit of his son; that he would have done better to have trusted to mildness and persuasion, and to have treated him in this instance, as he had hitherto always done, rather with the gentleness of a friend, than the authority of a parent.

Stung with regret, anguish, and disappointment, Orlando wandered away from the house, hardly knowing why, or whither he was going. Instead of obtaining from Monimia his father's protection, and the countenance of his family during his absence, with which he had fondly flattered himself, he had heard what almost amounted to a prohibition against thinking of her any more; and his own candour and sincerity, to which he had been taught so religiously to adhere, had apparently done him more mischief than the hints which his brother had thrown out, who had (as he lately learned from Selina) never ceased attempting, during his last visit at home, to impress his father and mother with a notion, that Orlando had not only a correspondence, but a correspondence of the most criminal nature, with Mrs Lennard's niece. Mrs Somerive, always unwilling to see the faults of one son, or to hear the supposed faults of another, had sometimes evaded, and appeared, when she was forced to hear it, quite indifferent to this information; while Somerive, whatever credit he might give to the existence of what he thought such a foolish and boyish inclination, discouraged this invidious disposition in his eldest son; and though he sometimes felt a good deal alarmed about Orlando, he thought so contemptibly of Mrs Lennard, because he had learned early in life to despise and dislike her, that he could hardly imagine it possible for a relation of hers to make a lasting impression on a young man of so much taste and spirit. He was however often uneasy, and particularly after the dinner party at Stockton's, on this subject; but, upon enquiry, he could not find that Monimia was a girl likely long to captivate his son, or to engage him in a serious attachment. Some persons told him, indeed, that she was a pretty girl; others, that she was a handsome girl; but more, that there was not any thing very extraordinary in her: while from other quarters he heard that her aunt treated her like a common servant, except that she never sat in the kitchen or the servants' hall; and that she hardly ever was seen by any of the family, being employed in attending Mrs Rayland only when she was sick, and at other times in waiting upon or working for Mrs Lennard in her own room. Somerive therefore thought, that whatever childish affection his son might have felt for her, could hardly have any serious termination, or any that could injure him with Mrs Rayland; and if now and then, on remarking some peculiarity in Orlando's conduct or looks, he recollected Philip's wild assertions about this 'fair maid of the Hall,' as he was accustomed in ridicule to call her, the hope that such childish love would be forgotten, and the idea he had taken up that Mrs Lennard kept her niece quite out of Orlando's way, and treated her as a mere servant, quieted his alarms; for which indeed he had no remedy, for he could not either object to any person whom Mrs Rayland chose should inhabit her house, or remove Orlando from it till the present period, when he had her consent and assistance.

But to whatever motives the conduct of Mr Somerive was really owing, Orlando had seen it in that view only that was the most flattering to his sanguine hopes: they now appeared to be destroyed for ever, and he saw only despair before him. Far from being allowed to ask his mother's permission for Selina to see his Monimia, he dared not name her again, lest he should receive an injunction which the certainty of immediate death would not compel him to obey; and his projected confession that he was going in the evening to meet her for the last time, he now had not courage to make. Yet he could not disguise it; for, since the General's residence in this family, their simplicity of living, and their hours, had been entirely changed; and instead of dining at three, as had been always their custom, they now called it four; but it was often, in compliance with the General's habits, near an hour later; five was the hour Monimia named in her note; it was perhaps the only one in which she had a chance of escaping: therefore, whatever might be the displeasure it occasioned to his father and his family, whatever might be their conjectures and remarks, he must either fail returning to dine with them, or break away perhaps before the removal of the table cloth; to do the former would have been less uneasy to himself, but he feared it would be more offensive to his family. Resolutely determined to see Monimia at all events, he fixed upon the latter; but as he could bear no more of his father's displeasure than what he was sure, he thought, of hearing when he returned from his last dear interview, he could not resolve to go back to the house, but continued walking, almost mechanically, towards Rayland Hall, forgetting in the extreme agitation of his spirits, how very material it was that he should not be seen after he had taken his last leave of Mrs Rayland, and she believed him gone out of the country.

This never occurred to him till, under a hollow sand cliff that bounded one side of the great pond, near the mill, on the verge of the park, he suddenly heard the rattle of a carriage, and, looking behind him, saw Mrs Rayland's coach stopping at the gate, within two hundred yards of him. He then recollected the contemptible figure he should make, and the irreparable injury it would do him with her, if he were detected in a falsehood, accompanied too with apparent ingratitude; but it was almost too late to escape, for on one side was the water, and on the other a high and almost perpendicular bank, that in some places hung over the road: – he had not, however, a moment's time to deliberate; but, seizing one of the roots that grew out of the sides, he sprang up, not without some hazard of pulling the crumbling loose soil, of which the bank was formed, upon him: – two steps brought him to the top, where, however, he would have been in a more exposed situation than below, if the holly, hazle, broom, and branches of pollard oaks that clothed the top of the eminence, had not afforded him a friendly concealment: – he threw himself among them; and then, perfectly sure that he could not be seen, he peeped among the withered leaves of the oak and the thicker green of the holly, and saw very distinctly the carriage approach, in which, with a palpitating heart, he perceived Monimia sitting backwards with her aunt, while Mrs Rayland alone occupied the opposite seat. He then recollected, that this was the day on which Mrs Rayland usually went in state to the church of a neighboring parish; a ceremony that was performed four times a year, when the weather did not forbid it. He was amazed at his own thoughtless indiscretion; and saw that he owed his escape from its consequences to a mere accident. On these occasions a footman went behind, and Mr Pattenson rode in great form by the coach side. It happened that the man behind the coach had been ordered by his Lady, at the churchdoor, to call with a message upon her tenant, the miller, whom not being immediately able to find, he staid while he was enquired for; and Pattenson was under the necessity of dismounting to open the gate, which, as he was extremely unwieldy, and rode a spirited and well fed horse, was by no means the work of a moment. Orlando, after his apprehensions were at an end, found in this little incident something from which he drew a favourable omen: he was pleased to see that, in consequence of his supposed absence, Monimia was indulged with a greater degree of liberty, and seemed much in favour with Mrs Rayland and her aunt: and it seemed as if destiny, however remotely, was determined to favour him; for, in this last, as well as in innumerable preceding instances, he had trembled on the very brink of detection, and yet he had hitherto escaped; at least he had reason to rest assured that Mrs Rayland suspected nothing, and was far from imagining that her young kinsman was devotedly attached to her little, humble, Mary.

Chapter IV

SUFFICIENTLY punished by the alarm he had been in for his indiscretion, Orlando no longer ventured to appear where any of the tenants or servants of the hall might probably meet him; but, as he was afraid of returning to the house of his father till the whole family were assembled, lest he should hear more of the reproof he could so ill bear, he lingered about the coppices; and as a chain of them led to a sharp eminence clothed with wood, that overlooked a part of the park, where, among the venerable trees scattered around it, the Hall-house appeared, he sat himself down on an old seat which had been placed here for the prospect afforded by this woody knoll, and indulged reflections which, though far from pleasant, were mournfully soothing. He recollected that, in this copse, but a few years before, he had once been permitted with some other children to accompany Monimia in gathering the nuts with which it abounded – How gay and happy they were then! how unconscious of evils to come! – Under that tuft of hazle Monimia sat, while he threw the fruit into her lap; and there he pursued a squirrel for her, which escaped up that old beech tree! – The letters carved by the rustics, whose Sunday's walk in summer sometimes led them to this bench, remained: he remembered them well; and, for the first time in his life, felt disposed to take his share of this species of fame ^[1]; and, with his knife, he engraved on that part of this covered seat which had suffered least from

– 'The sylvan pen
Of rural lovers ^[2],'

the words – 'ORLANDO, 9th December 1776' – flattering himself that this rude memorial might be seen by Monimia, and draw from her soft bosom one sigh more of tender recollection, in his absence.

Thus passed the time till the hour nearly approached when he believed the whole family would be together, and when he should therefore escape any farther conversation with his father. He made his way towards home over hedges and through the most pathless part of this woody country; and, entering the house by the kitchen, he enquired for his mother and sisters. The servants answered that their mistress was ill, and had lain down on the bed; but that the young ladies were in the parlour.

Concerned for his mother, whom he fondly loved, Orlando hastened into the common parlour, where he saw Isabella leaning her head on her hand, in which was a handkerchief, and Selina hanging over her, her eyes streaming with tears. Orlando, imputing all to his mother's illness, enquired eagerly how she did, and how she so suddenly became ill? Selina, in answer, exclaimed: 'O dearest Orlando! how glad I am you are come back! we have been wishing and seeking for you.'

'But my mother!' cried Orlando, 'my dear mother!'

'She is only very much agitated,' replied Selina, 'and I hope will be better presently: but Isabella – '

'What, for God's sake, has happened to you?' said he, interrupting one sister, and addressing his hurried enquiry to the other. 'Tell him, Selina,' said Isabella, 'and ask him how he would act if he were situated as I am? – I will go to my own room.'

'What is all this, my dear girl?' said Orlando as soon as she had left the room: 'Isabella seems less affected than you are!'

Selina then related to him, that soon after breakfast her Father and General Tracy had walked out together, at the desire of the latter: where the General had opened his intention of offering himself to Isabella as a husband – of making very great settlements if she accepted of him – and, in short, said Selina, 'he made the proposal appear so advantageous to my father, that the disparity of age seemed by no means a sufficient objection against accepting it: – he therefore referred the General wholly to Isabella herself, with whom he conversed as soon as he returned home, representing his own situation, which certainly affords us all but a melancholy prospect, Orlando. He even told Belle, in regard to our circumstances, some particulars which have been owing to Philip's expences, that my father says he has not ventured to tell even to my mother, because they would half kill her. – It seems that we shall not have any provision in case of our poor father's death, as Philip has stripped him of all he had saved; and as this estate would be Philip's, we should not have, to support us all, above fourscore pounds a year; my mother's settlement, which, as she had so small a fortune, was all she would let my father settle upon her. – This, you know, is not twenty pounds a piece for us; and Isabella would not certainly be happy with such a pittance, if it were possible for her to live upon it: only, therefore, consider what a contrast the General's offers make – Besides the power such a match would give her to make our dear parents easy (which I own is the only circumstance that would shake my resolution were I in her place), she would be raised so much in rank! and have such a large fortune! – so much splendour round her! things which you know Belle has no dislike to, that I believe she will consent, though she has a hundred times ridiculed the General; and when he has been making love to her – '

'Making love to her!' said Orlando; 'has he long made love to her?'

'I think he has,' replied Selina. 'I know very little how people make love; but I am sure if that was not making love, I cannot guess what is. Belle, at first, only laughed at him, and used to say such rude things about his wig and his false teeth, and the art he used to make himself look young, that I have wondered an hundred times how he bore it: but afterwards he grew more importunate, indeed I thought impertinent, and Belle threatened to speak to my father As for my mother, we agreed to tell her the sort of language he held whenever he could get my sister alone, or with only me and Emma; and my poor mother, afraid of disobliging a man who she thought had been such a friend to you, and might be to the whole family, desired we would not tell my father, who would certainly have resented such behaviour, and contented herself with keeping us out of his way, and never suffering us to be out of her sight. So the poor General, not being able to succeed in carrying away Isabella on his own terms – '

'Curse on his insolent presumption!' cried Orlando passionately; 'he never could dare to think of it.'

'My mother,' answered Selina, 'believes he did: – but you see he repents of his evil intentions, and is determined to be generous and honest at last.'

'And does my sister Belle accept of him then?'

'That is the matter now in debate. My father has represented the situation she will be in, if he dies and leaves her unmarried. She knows all the pecuniary advantages that attend such a situation as the General offers her: and the question only is, whether, as she has no attachment whatever, the charms of grandeur, the chance of being a Countess (for the General's elder brother has but one son, a poor puny boy), and being called the honourable Mrs Tracy, are not sufficient temptations to make her forget that her husband who is to give her all these advantages is a good deal older than her father?'

'And how do you think the debate will terminate?' said Orlando.

'Isabella, has been crying about it, as you see; and my mother's being so extremely affected made me cry: but I believe, Orlando, that the General need not despair. Isabella, however, has desired till this evening to consider of it; when she is to give him her answer herself. He said that he could not go to town and leave undecided a matter on which the whole happiness of his life depended: nor could he bear to be in the presence of the adored object, till the hour when this decision was to be made: so as soon as he had made his fine speeches, he mounted his horse, and is gone to dine at Stockton's.'

'Selina,' enquired Orlando, 'tell me honestly, my sweet sister, what you would do, were you in Isabella's place.'

'I am very glad I am not, Orlando; but I will tell you honestly as much as I know of my own heart – Were my father to say to me, as he has said to my sister Belle, that to see me so opulently married would make his latter days easy, and save him from those hours of anguish that now torment him about the future fate of us all, I should certainly marry this old man, if he were ten thousand times more odious to me than he is. To make my father happy, Orlando, whom I now see often sinking under a weight of anxiety that is destroying him – to secure to our dear indulgent mother the comforts of affluence, if we should lose him – and to promote your interest, Orlando, and poor Philip's, and my sister's, I would throw myself alive into the fire; or, what would to me be much more hateful, I would marry a man whom I abhor.'

The fine blue eyes of Selina, on which those of her brother were tenderly fixed, filled with tears as she said this – her voice failed her a moment – but her brother did not interrupt her and she went on – .

'But were only myself in question; then, were I to see poverty and even servitude on one side, and General Tracy with his brother's coronet in one hand, and a settlement of ten thousand a year in the other, I do assure you that I should refuse him.'

'Generous, charming girl!' cried Orlando; 'I do believe you, my Selina; and I rejoice that you are not exposed to the alternative. Belle, though I love her dearly, has not, I know, quite your heart; and I hope does not so much dislike this man, if it is indeed so probable that she will accept of him – Besides, the situation in life which he can offer, has charms for her gayer and more ambitious mind, which my soft Selina cannot taste.'

'What shall I say to my sister is your opinion, Orlando?'

'That she must consult her own heart, my dear; for I cannot in such an affair give any opinion. But now, Selina, as we shall not have half a moment longer together, tell me, could you contrive to go with me this evening to meet Monimia for the last time?' Selina, at first, started some objections – If they both went out together their design in going could hardly be concealed; and she should perhaps incur the displeasure of her father and mother, who would not be well content that Orlando, whom they probably wished to consult on the important affair in agitation, should quit them immediately after dinner. It was however, after some debate, settled that he should go first; and that Selina, to whom every thing was soon rendered easy that could contribute to the happiness of her beloved brother, should follow him; for she said that she might then perhaps not be missed; because it was often her custom to sit of an evening with Emma up stairs, as they had usually a great deal of work to do for themselves and their mother; and though this was not a day when they could make that excuse, yet their habit of doing so would make their absence little remarked on an evening when a business was in debate so momentous as Isabella's answer. The brother and sister had hardly settled their little plan of operations, before they were told the dinner was ready; and on their entering the dining room the rest of the family were already assembled there.

Mrs Somerive, though she had collected resolution to appear at dinner, could not conceal the agitation of her mind – Orlando so soon to leave her, and the fate of Isabella in suspense! – Her dread lest her daughter should sacrifice herself and be unhappy, opposed to her wishes that she might be established in such high affluence, made her mind a chaos of contending emotions; while Somerive himself, reading in her countenance all that passed in her heart, and knowing, even better than she did, how necessary such an alliance was to the preservation of all the family, was even more affected; but he had yet strength of mind enough to conceal it better, and to appear calm, though thoughtful and melancholy, frequently turning his eyes on Isabella, who seemed in a kind of elegant languor, the effect of her debate between duty and indifference; though, in fact, it had been held much more between aversion and vanity, in which the latter hardly needed the aid of any other consideration to come off conqueror.

In a family party so situated, there was not, of course, much conversation, and the dinner passed without any body's eating, though each pressed the other to eat, and affected to eat themselves. – Orlando hardly spoke three words, and those were addressed to his mother, the interesting concern of whose still beautiful countenance wounded his very soul. Distracted between the fear of adding to that concern by his abrupt departure, and of a failing in his appointment with Monimia, he believed this dinner, useless as it was, was the very longest he ever sat down to. Just as the table-cloth was removed, he heard the clock strike five; and, looking at his watch, which went by the great clock at the Hall, he found their own was ten minutes too slow. – Monimia then was waiting for him in the wood, listening to every noise, and accusing him of cruelty and delay! Before this idea, every other consideration vanished; and, starting up, without even attempting an excuse, he hurried away: nor had his father, who called to ask whither he was going – nor the more tender voice of his mother, who cried, 'Orlando! my son! surely you will not leave us!' power to detain him a moment. He rushed out of the house, and ran, with the swiftness of an Indian, to the great pond-wood.

By the time he arrived there, it was almost dark; but he discerned between the stems of the tall firs the figure of Monimia sitting on the seat he had marked to her as the place of their meeting. Never before did he seem to love her so ardently as at that moment; his heart was softened by the thoughts of their immediate separation, while, oppressed with the occurrences of the day, it seemed ready to burst. – Breathless from the speed with which he ran, and hardly knowing what he did, he threw himself on his knees before her, and, seizing her hands, bathed them with his tears.

The trembling girl, who had been there even earlier than her appointment, and who had, amid an hundred other fears, despaired of his coming, alarmed, and unable immediately to weep, hung over him, as with frantic gestures he spoke to her; and when she would have reproached him for the apprehensions in which he had left her, her words were inarticulate; and it was some time before either of them was able to congratulate the other that they thus met once more!

Alas! the bitter certainty that a long, long separation must so soon follow, poisoned the pleasure of their meeting: neither knew how to speak of it, yet it was impossible for either to think of any thing else.

'You go to-morrow, Orlando?' said Monimia. 'Yes,' answered he; and then relating what had passed in regard to Isabella, he added, that perhaps if his sister determined to accept the offers of General Tracy, as he believed she would, it might be in some respects advantageous to him; 'for I understand,' said he, 'that the enamoured old beau means, if his love is successful, to return in a few weeks – perhaps three weeks or a month, in order to carry off his young bride; and that he has hinted to my father, that from thence forward, considering me rather as his brother than his protegé, he shall not only procure leave of absence from the General of my regiment – for I am not in his, but in that where his nephew, Captain Warwick, has a company – but use his utmost endeavours to procure me immediate promotion. I own, Monimia, that though I think this marriage most preposterous, and that my sister Isabella is marrying merely for money; yet I am so weak, and I am afraid so selfish, that the idea of gaining by this alliance the advantage of seeing you, which I could not often do otherwise, makes me half forget the disparity of the ages, and overlook the absurdity of a man of sixty-five marrying a girl of twenty-one; indeed, whether I approved or disapproved of it, would in this case make no difference; therefore, as I could not prevent the evil, if it be one, there is, I trust, no meanness in my availing myself of the good.'

Monimia felt a weight, heavy as the hand of death, taken off her heart, when he told her they were, in consequence of this new family arrangement, likely so soon to meet again. Her mind, which had dwelt with horror on the idea of a separation for months, perhaps for years, was now relieved, by supposing it might not be for more than three weeks; and knowing nothing of military rules, she supposed that after the first forms of entering on his new profession were gone through, he might return to the Hall; and that if she could not, from that active watchfulness which her aunt might then renew, see him every day, she should at least know that he was under the same roof, or within a few miles of her; to know even that he was in the same county, was a satisfaction; she should hear Mrs Rayland speak of him, if she was herself deprived of the happiness of meeting him; she should see him in the park, and hear his voice speaking to others, if he was not allowed to speak to her. Perhaps Mrs Lennard, convinced by this absence that her suspicions had been groundless, might less vigilantly oppose their future intercourse. All these hopes – for the hopes of a young and inexperienced mind, are sanguine and easily received – served so far as to assuage the pain Monimia had felt on their first meeting, that she became soon able to converse with calmness; and not only quieted her own troubled spirits, but endeavoured to soothe and compose those of Orlando. Her voice had upon his heart the power of magic – deliciously soothing as it was, it excited that sort of painful pleasure which is only expressed by tears. From this state of tender sympathy they were soon awakened, by a voice calling at a distance for Orlando. – Monimia started, in terror; but her lover immediately appeased her fears, by telling her what his haste and the tumult of his mind had made him before omit, that he had appointed Selina to meet them. They now therefore (as it was so nearly dark that they could hardly distinguish their way) hastened together towards that part of the wood from whence the voice came; and they soon met the poor terrified Selina, who, almost speechless with fear, on finding herself so far from home alone, and in a night that threatened impenetrable darkness, trembled like a leaf, and said to Orlando, as he took her arm within his, that the whole world should not have bribed her to venture what she had now done for him.

He led again towards the bench by the boat-house, though Selina pressed him to return home as soon as he could. 'I tremble,' said she, 'and am terrified to death, lest I should be missed: my father indeed is never very angry; but just at this time I would not for the world add to the many causes of uneasiness which he has about the rest of us.'

'Nor would I,' replied her brother; 'no Selina, there is not in the world any sacrifice I would not make to both or either of my parents, except that of my affections for Monimia.' He then, though both urged him to put an end to this interview, which seemed indeed only productive of needless pain, insisted upon their sitting down by him; and, holding their hands, which he kissed as he united them, he besought them to love each other when he was gone, and to consider each other as more than sisters! He told Monimia, it was in cover of his letters to Selina he proposed to write to her, and not by the means of the under game-keeper, as he had once proposed; and he then enquired if they could not appoint some one day in the week when they might meet in that spot: 'I shall then be present with you,' said he, mournfully, 'at least in imagination – yes, however distant my person shall be, my soul will be here! I shall, in fancy at least, enjoy the delight of seeing together the two beings whom I most fondly love, and of knowing they are occupied with the thoughts of their poor Orlando! There is a story in one of the popular periodical publications, I believe in the Spectator, of two lovers, who agreed at a certain hour to retire, each from their respective engagements, to look at the moon; the romantic satisfaction they enjoyed in knowing that the eyes of the person beloved were, at the moment they were gazing on it, fixed on the same planet, will by this means be doubled to me; for I shall know that at such an hour on such a morning my Monimia and my Selina will be just in this place; I shall see them – I shall see the eagerness with which Monimia will ask for news of me – the pleasure with which Selina will give it. – Every object round this spot will be present to me; and wherever I may be, however occupied in my duty, my soul will at that moment be particularly here.'

Selina, not less anxious to gratify him in this romantic fancy than Monimia herself, now named Monday, as the morning when this innocent assignation should be made; and gave as her reason for it, that on that day her mother was less likely to miss her, from her being then particularly engaged in settling her domestic concerns; and that as they did not always certainly receive letters from the neighbouring post town, except on Sundays, the morning of the following day of the week would be that in which it would be most likely she should have those that were to be sent her for Monimia.

Poor Monimia, with a deep sigh, reflected, that if all this was necessary to soften a separation of only three weeks (for Orlando had again assured her it would not be more), a longer would be quite insupportable to them both. The deep sound of the great clock at the Hall tolling six, sullenly conveyed towards them by the water, roused her from her momentary dread of future sorrow to a perfect sense of that for which was immediately before her. It was necessary to hasten this dreadful parting; there was not a moment to lose; for at a quarter past six she was to be in the parlour to make the tea for Mrs Rayland and her aunt, and the nearest way was near a mile to the house. – Falteringly she spoke to Orlando of the danger of her stay – he heard her, but he could not answer. – Selina, who was almost as fearful of being missed as she was, repeated it. – 'Come then,' cried Orlando, dejectedly, 'since it must be so, let us go.' – He took one under each arm, and was moving towards Rayland Hall, when Selina cried, 'Dear brother! You will not go to the Hall?' – 'No,' answered he; 'but I will not suffer Monimia to go so far alone; therefore we will see her safe in sight of the house, and then return.' – 'We must be very quick then,' said Selina. – 'As quick as you can walk, my sister,' answered he, still in extreme agitation: 'for I care not how soon the pain I endure at this moment is at an end – I suffer the tortures of the damned!' The poor girls, terrified at the vehemence with which he spoke, and the wild way in which he hurried on, made no reply, and only exerted themselves to keep up with him. In silence they ascended an high stile, which in one place separated the park; and in silence ascended the hill which arose behind the north front of the house. – Monimia then desired him to stop – 'We are now,' said she, 'within sight of the house, and there can be no danger for me.' – 'Within sight!' said Orlando: 'How is that, my Monimia, when it is so dark that we are hardly within sight of each other?' – 'No,' replied she; 'but what I mean is, that there is nothing to fear in my crossing the park alone.' – 'I shall go with you, however,' said Orlando, 'to the old thorn in the dell below.' – 'At the hazard,' said Monimia, trembling, 'of our being met by some of the servants at the Hall, or people going home from their Sunday's visits to them?' – 'At the hazard,' added Selina, 'of terrifying and displeasing my father and mother?' – 'At the hazard of every thing!' replied Orlando, with a degree of impetuosity which neither of them had courage farther to oppose. They again became silent; and as they continued to walk very fast, or rather to run, they presently reached the place which Orlando had himself named for their parting; where Monimia again stopped, and disengaging her arm from his before he could prevent her, she said, faintly, 'And now, Orlando, God bless you! – dear, dear Selina!' She was quite unable to finish the sentence, but, turning, would have left them, when Orlando, throwing his arms round her, wildly pressed her to his bosom. – 'Be not so much concerned,' said she, trying gently to disengage herself; 'remember you have told me we shall meet soon – very soon again: Orlando! if you really love me – if you pity me, do not, I implore you, detain me now.' – 'I will not,' said he: 'God forbid that I should injure you, dearest, loveliest – !' She was gone! – he stood a moment like a statue, while her white cloaths made her distinguishable through the gloom. – Selina then entreated him to hasten home – 'No!' he said, dejectedly; 'No, I must stay here till I hear the door, by which I know she will enter the house, shut after her; and then I shall be sure she is safe.' Selina could not oppose this; it could indeed take up but a moment – 'Hush!' cried Orlando, 'do not speak; let us listen – ha! The doors shuts! – Well, Selina, I will now go back with you; and a thousand and a thousand times I thank you, my best Selina, for your indulgence to me.'

They then hurried back the way they came, and with as much haste as the darkness of the night would permit: it was above three miles by the nearest path; and Orlando, occupied solely by the anguish of having parted with Monimia, uttered not a syllable; while Selina, excessively alarmed lest her mother should have missed her, felt her heart beat so much with apprehension, that it was with the utmost difficulty she could keep pace with him.

Chapter V

ON their arrival, however, at the house, Selina was agreeably surprised to find, from little Emma, who was reading in the room they shared above stairs, that she had never been enquired for; that the General had arrived just before to tea, which was, on his account, ordered later than usual; and that Isabella, who had been below ever since dinner, with her father and mother, was now, she believed, alone with the General, to whom she was to give her answer.

The palpitating heart of Selina then became quieter: she took off her hat and cloak, adjusted her hair, and prepared for the summons she expected to have to make the tea. Orlando a moment afterwards glided up to them: he said there had been no enquiries for Selina, and all was right. – 'I went,' said he, 'as is my general custom when I come home, into my father's study, but I found nobody; and, from what I can gather from the servants, this important answer has been given, and our old brother is with his papa and mamma, and with his future bride; they are all settling the ceremony together.'

'How can you laugh, Orlando,' said Selina, 'at anything so serious?'

'Nay,' replied he, assuming a levity he was far from feeling, 'you would not have me cry, Selina! If Isabella is happy in this match, surely her family have reason to be glad of it; but one cannot help thinking of January and May!' Selina had read but little, and knew not to what he alluded; nor had she time to reply, for at that moment Mrs Somerive looked in upon them; she smiled, as it seemed, through tears. – 'Orlando,' said she, 'I am glad you are returned – Why did you leave us so abruptly after dinner? But come, my children, we wait for you below.' – 'And are we to find there a new relation, Madam?' said Orlando. 'Is the General to compose hereafter a part of our family?' – 'Your sister has decided that it shall be so,' replied Mrs Somerive, stifling a sigh; 'and you, Orlando, will be pleased to see how much pleasure this alliance (notwithstanding there is certainly a too great disparity of years) gives to your dear father. The difference of age is indeed the only objection: in every other respect General Tracy is a match infinitely superior to what any of my daughters could have pretensions to.' Mrs Somerive then led the way down stairs, and her children followed her.

During supper the General assumed, as well as he could, the triumphant air of a successful lover. Isabella was silent, and affected resignation to the will of her parents; while her father looked at her with eyes in which doubt and concern were mingled with hope and satisfaction. It seemed as if he at once rejoiced in having his daughter so well established, and yet feared that to the dazzling advantages of rank and fortune she might sacrifice her happiness. None of the party seemed much disposed for conversation, and as the General and Orlando were to depart early the next morning, they separated sooner than usual: Mrs Somerive in better spirits than she would have been, if the General had not assured her that he would himself bring Orlando down with him, when he returned to claim the happiness of becoming allied to her, and might call himself the most fortunate of men.

Calmed by these promises, of which she saw nothing that should impede the execution, she beheld her son depart on the following morning, without any of those paroxysms of grief which Orlando had so much dreaded, and which he was so ill able to bear. Before the travellers got into the chaise, in which they were to go post to London, the General demanded an audience of his future bride; and Orlando was at the same time closeted by his father, who enjoined him to preserve his morals, to attend to the cultivation of that good opinion with which the General honoured him (points which a little experience proved to be incompatible), and lastly, to endeavour by every possible means to persuade him to return home.

Orlando promised to obey all these injunctions, to the utmost of his power; and glad to escape hearing any other charges, which he might have found it impossible to obey, he received the summons now sent to him to attend the General with pleasure; for nothing is more painful than the sensations which arise at the moment of separation from such friends, even though the absence be but transient. The General had paid his compliments all round, and Orlando now embraced his family with tears in his eyes. His father wrung his hand, and once more gave him his blessing. – His mother could not utter the last adieu! but went back into the parlour with her daughters; while Orlando, seated by his military patron, left his paternal mansion as fast as four post-horses could carry him.

He was not disposed to talk; but as the distance increased between him and Monimia – between him and his family, all he held dear in the world! the depression of his spirits increased also; while his companion, as he approached the scene of his former habits, and thought of the raillery he should encounter upon his new system of reformation, became more silent and contemplative: the clamours of his mistresses, of whom he had now three upon his hands, and the ridicule of his friends, arose to his imagination in a very formidable light; but then the beauty, youth and vivacity of Isabella Somerive seemed excuses for a much greater folly than he was about to commit. He recollected many of his acquaintance, whom he was willing to suppose much older than himself, who had married young women without half her attractions. He fancied, that he was weary of the dissipated life he had hitherto led; that as he would soon be no longer a young man, but be declining towards middle age, it was time to have somebody who should be truly attached to him; while his being married did not at all preclude him from gallantries, which he saw every body else pursue whether they were married or not. The greatest inconvenience he foresaw, was what arose from the precipitate affection he had shewn towards his nephew, Captain Warwick, the orphan son of his sister, whom he had taught to consider himself as heir to his fortune, who would be much mortified at the disappointment. However, he reconciled himself to this objection, by reflecting that it would be very hard indeed if his kindness to his nephew should prevent his gratifying himself; and by resolving to make young Warwick an immediate present of a thousand pounds, and to settle a very handsome income upon him after his death, that he might not be quite thrown out of those expectations to which he had been brought up, when the General should have a family of his own.

Nothing was farther from the General's intentions than to marry Isabella Somerive, even when he had first changed his battery, and pretended to her honourable love; but he found so little prospect of succeeding with her, even if all was to happen in her family as he had foreseen, and he felt it so impossible to live without her, that what he had begun with the most insidious designs, concluded at last in an honest, though an absurd one: and having once taken the resolution to commit matrimony, he endeavoured to reason himself out of every objection that pride, libertinism, or the fear of ridicule, continually raised against it. Isabella, whose heart was perfectly free from every impression in favour of any other man, had so behaved as to make the enamoured General believe, that only her charming reserve, owing to her rustic education, prevented her avowing her attachment to his person; though, on a thousand occasions previous to his serious declarations, she had placed his vanity and affection of youth in the most ridiculous point of view, and had shewn him that she did not care a straw for him.

But such power has vanity in obscuring the best understandings, that her ancient lover really supposed he could inspire her with sincere affection for him. Still, however, he felt an awkward kind of sensation, when he thought of the numberless gay young men with whom his blooming Isabella would be surrounded when she was his wife. Above all, he reflected with disquiet on his nephew, who was reckoned one of the handsomest men of the times – he was three-and-twenty; and the General felt no satisfaction in being called uncle – uncle! it sounded so antique. Warwick, indeed, was never admitted to live with him; and he now repented that he had procured leave for him to come home from America, in consequence of a wound he received there, and heartily wished him back again; but his return thither was not, according the General's own account, very likely to happen. If the presence of Warwick at his own house in Grosvenor Place was not agreeable to him, that of Orlando was as little so; and, though not for quite the same reason, for another very similar. Before the last conquest made by Isabella Somerive over the susceptible heart of General Tracy, at least a third of it had been possessed by a young woman, whom he had purchased of her mother, and whose assumed virtue and great attractions had induced him to admit her into his house, where she had reigned ever since very despotically. As he had not yet settled whether he should part with her or not, or acquired courage to tell her his intentions, she must, till he could make up his mind on this point, remain where she was; and, whatever might be his future resolution, he did not greatly like that the handsome, young Orlando should be introduced to her acquaintance. As he could not give this reason to Mr Somerive for not asking Orlando to take up his abode in his house, he had sedulously avoided mentioning it at all. Orlando had never thought about it; but, occupied solely by what he had left, he considered not a matter so inconsequential as whither he was to go when he got to town. Tracy had once or twice led the conversation to topics which he thought would engage Orlando to say what he intended in this respect; but Orlando took no notice of it, till, at length, just as they crossed Fulham Bridge, Tracy said, 'Mr Somerive, shall my chaise and horses put you down in London? – You know I stop on this side the turnpike, at Hyde-Park Corner; but the chaise shall go with you wherever you please.'

'I am much obliged to you, Sir,' answered Orlando, who never till that moment recollected that the General had not invited him to his house – 'but there is no sort of occasion to take your carriage. – I shall go,' added he, 'this evening to Mr Woodford's.'

That was a plan that the General did not quite approve of: he knew that, if his intended marriage was once known at that house, it would be instantly spread among his friends by means of the communication Woodford had with many of their families, which was a circumstance he was not yet prepared for. The ambition of Woodford himself, and the malice and disappointment of the two young ladies, would busy them all in circulating the report; and the General, in love as he was, and determined to marry, had not yet prepared himself to stand the ironical congratulations of his male and female friends, but particularly the latter, on his resolution of uniting himself in holy matrimony to the niece of his wine merchant. These thoughts made Orlando's intentions of going to Woodford's, which however he might easily have foreseen, very unpleasing to him; and he remained silent some time, considering how he might guard against the inconveniences he apprehended.

His reasons for not giving him an apartment in his own house kept their ground; but he would very fain have prevented his going to Woodford's, at least till he had himself taken some means to parry the first burst of the ridicule he so much dreaded. He could not take one very obvious means to prevent the circulation of the news of his intended marriage, by requesting Orlando not to speak of it; for he had often remarked that he was quick-spirited, not without a considerable share of pride, and affectionate solicitude for the honour of his sisters: to affect, therefore, making a secret in London of what he had so openly avowed in the country, could hardly fail of awakening the high-spirited Orlando to some degree of resentment, if not of doubt in regard of the reality of his intentions. After a long debate on the subject, the General at last recollected that it was impossible to suppose Somerive himself would not write to a brother-in-law, whom he was so much accustomed to consult, on a subject so interesting and important; and that, therefore, any precautions he might take in regard to Orlando would be useless. It is true that his being by his intended marriage allied to his own wine merchant, had before given him many severe squalms, which a glance from the arch and bright eyes of Isabella had at once dissipated: but now, as he approached his town-house, and saw those bright eyes no longer, these fits of half repentance, originating in pride and prejudice, recurred with more force; and when he arrived at his own door, he stared from one of the reveries thus brought on, and again said to Orlando, 'Shall my servants get you a hackney coach?'

There was something in the abrupt manner of asking this, which suddenly convinced Orlando that the General had no inclination to ask him into his house. Piqued by his observation, he answered coldly, that there was no occasion to trouble his servants, for that he should walk to the house of his uncle, and would send a porter for the small portmanteau he had in the chaise. – By this time the General's valet de chambre had opened the chaise-door, and Orlando , who was on that side, got out. He stopped; and the General, as he followed him, asked, in a low voice, some question of one of the footmen who had been left in town, and who came to the chaise-door also: to which question the man answered aloud, 'No, Sir! She is gone out.' The General, turning to Orlando, who was coolly wishing him a good evening, said – 'You will certainly do me the favour to walk in?'

Orlando by this time comprehending that there was some lady usually resident with him who was not to be seen, and that he was only asked in because she was at this time absent, answered, that he would not intrude upon him: – 'but as I shall want the advantage of your instructions, Sir,' said he, 'on many things of which I am totally ignorant, I shall be obliged to you to tell me where I am to receive your orders.'

There was a coldness, and indeed a haughtiness, in the manner of Orlando's saying this, that convinced the General he saw and was offended by the evident design he had himself formed of evading to give him an invitation. More disconcerted than he had almost ever felt in his life, he again pressed him to go into the house, which Orlando again refused; and then saying he hoped to hear from him at Mr Woodford's, when and where he might attend him for the purpose of receiving those instructions relative to his future proceedings which he had promised his father to give him, he again wished him a good evening, and walked away.

Orlando had never been in London but once when he was about sixteen, and had then only attended his mother on a visit for about a week in the spring, which she had passed with her brother. He remembered that he never was so happy as when they left it, and, on a fine evening of May, returned from the smoke of the Strand, in one of the streets of which Mr Woodford lived, to his dear native county, where only there seemed to be any happiness for him. Since that time he had never felt a wish to revisit London; and in a melancholy mood he now proceeded along the streets, recollecting little more than his way from Piccadilly to the Strand. Every object wore a very different appearance from what they did when he saw them before. It was now a dreary, foggy evening in December, and just at the hour when the inhabitants of the part of the town he was in were at their desserts, so that hardly any carriages but a few straggling hackney-coaches and drays were rumbling over the pavement. As he approached Charing Cross the bustle became more; and the farther he advanced, the throng of coaches coming out of the city, and going towards the playhouses from other parts of the town, deafened him with noise: but it was a mournful reflection, that, among all the human beings he saw around him, there was not one interested for him. While the dirt through which he waded, and the thickness of the air, filled him with disgust, his mind went back to the dear group at home: he saw them all assembled round the fire in the little parlour – his father trying to dissipate with a book the various anxieties that assailed him for his children, now and then communicating some remarkable occurrence to his wife as she sat at her work-table: – he saw Isabella employed in making some little smart article of dress, and fancying how well she should look in it – and Selina, while she and Emma were assisting his mother in completing some linen for him, more attentive to her father's reading, often asking questions, and soliciting information.

But when he had finished this picture, his fancy, with more pain and more pleasure, fled to the lovely figure of his Monimia in her solitary turret, sighing over the tender recollection of those hours which would never perhaps return, sometimes wishing she had never known them, but oftener regretting that they were now at an end. – He saw her stepping cautiously into the library, whenever she could to find it open, to take or to replace some book which they had read together – she shed tears as she read over the well-known pages where he had with a pencil marked some peculiar beauty in the poetry. He fancied he saw her take out the lock of his hair which he had given her in a little crystal locket, press it to her lips, and then, imagining she heard the footsteps of her aunt, return it hastily into her bosom, and place it near her heart. A thousand tender images crowded on his mind; he quite forgot whither he was going, and was roused from this absent state of mind only by finding himself at Temple-Bar. Recalled then from the indulgence of his visionary happiness to the realities around him, he recollected that he had passed the street where his uncle lived: with some enquiries, however, he found his way back; and, on arriving at the house, he heard that Mr Woodford was out, having dined in the city; and that his wife and his daughters were gone to the play with a party of friends who were to sup with them. He was told, however, by the maid-servant who let him in, that he was expected, and that a bed had been prepared for him by direction of her master, who had received notice of his intended arrival by a letter from the country the day before. Orlando could not help remarking to himself, that he was likely to have but a cool reception in an house, the inhabitants of which could not one of them stay at home to receive him; but he was new to the world, and his heart open to all the generous sympathies of humanity. He thought that relations loved one another as well in London as in the country; but he soon saw enough of these to make him resign, with perfect composure, a too strict adherence to old-fashioned claims of kindred.

Chapter VI

A MOMENT'S reflection recalled the confused and dissipated thoughts of Orlando back to the transactions of the day. He had never liked General Tracy much; and he now liked him less than ever, and regretted that Isabella was to be his wife. He almost doubted whether he ever meant to make her so; and the idea of any deception raised his indignation. But he had nobody to whom he could communicate his thoughts: and it was perhaps fortunate for him that he had not; for his open, unguarded temper, incapable of dissimulation, and despising it wherever it appeared, was likely to have betrayed him into confidences with his uncle which would have hurt his father.

The moment, however, he saw Woodford, he shrunk into himself; and, instead of remembering that he had not been at home to receive him, felt only concern that he was come home at all.

Warm from a city dinner, the boisterous manners of his uncle apeared particularly disgusting to Orlando, who had lately been accustomed to associate only with women, or with his father and the General; the conversation of the former of whom was pensively mild, and that of the latter so extremely courtly that he seemed always to fancy himself in the drawing-room. Orlando, therefore, was almost stunned with the halloo of his uncle on receiving him: he shook him, however, heartily by the hand, crying – 'Well, my boy! I'm glad to see thee: though devilishly thou art bit, my little hero, to find that all that old Tabby's fine promises end in sending thee to carry a rag upon a pole, and get shot through the gizzard by the Yankies. – Aha! I was right, you see. – Take my word another time. I know the world, and never saw the waiting for such chances answered – A young fellow may wait till he is grey on one of those hags, and the devil a bit to find himself the forwarder at last. – They never die; for o' my conscience I believe they have each of them as many lives as a cat: and when at last they have the conscience to turn the corner, it's ten to one but they bilk you after all. – No, no: take my advice another time – never depend upon them; 'tis better to shift for one's self.'

'Well, Sir,' said Orlando, whom this harangue equally tired and disgusted, 'you see that I have followed your advice, by embracing a profession – '

'A profession!' cried Woodford with a contemptuous look; 'and what a profession! – To be shot at for about five-and-thirty pounds a year! Hey? Or how much is it? Thereabouts, I believe. – A rare profession, when a man ties himself down to be at the command of about a dozen others!' – In this manner he ran on, nothing doubting the shrewdness of his remarks, and not meaning to be rude and brutal in making them: yet Orlando felt that he was both; nor was he much relieved by the change in the conversation that brought the General's intended match into discussion. Woodford was at once flattered by such an alliance, and mortified that his own daughters had missed it. He felt proud that he should boast of having the Honourable Lieutenant General Tracy his nephew, but was vexed that he had not had any share in bringing it about; and this contrariety of sensations found vent in the coarse raillery he uttered to Orlando, who was once or twice on the point of losing his temper, before the entrance of the ladies and their party from the play put an end to a dialogue so very disagreeable to him.

Young Woodford, who, having quitted trade to study the law, was now a motley composition between a city buck and a pert Templar, accompanied his mother and sisters; which he took care to signify was a great favour, and not owing to his wish to oblige them – but to see how he liked a young woman they had with them from the city, and who was the only daughter of a rich broker of the tribe of Israel, who had, however, married a Christian, and was indifferent enough about his own religion to let his daughter be called a Christian also. Her fortune was supposed to be at least seventy thousand pounds; and Mr Woodford had long been scheming to procure a match between her and his Jemmy: – to which Jemmy declared he would condescend, if he could but bring himself to like the girl. But he 'thought her confounded ugly, and had no notion of sacrificing himself to money.' The girl herself, just come from a boarding-school, her head full of accomplishments and romance, was in great haste for a lover. Mr James Woodford was reckoned, by some of his young acquaintance, a very smart, fashionable man; and Miss Cassado needed very little persuasion to fancy herself in love with him.

The intended husband of Maria Woodford, and a young man who seemed to have pretensions to the other sister, were the rest of the party; who, preceded by Mrs Woodford, now appeared. The ladies of the family spoke with cool civility to Orlando – the younger Woodford with the air that he imagined a man of fashion would assume for the reception of his country cousin: but under this apparent contempt he concealed the mortification he felt from the observation that Orlando, who was always admired by the women, was much improved in his person since he last saw him.

With his two female cousins Orlando had never been a favourite, notwithstanding his acknowledged beauty; and that for no other reason than because he had never paid to their charms the tribute of admiration they expected from every body. Eliza particularly disliked him, because he had refused a sort of proposal made by her father to give him her hand and a share of the business. But the young Jewess, who consulted only her eyes, immediately discovered by their information, that this stranger was the sweetest, handsomest, most enchanting man in the world; and that James Woodford was nothing to him. She had her imagination filled with heroes of novels, and the figure and face of Orlando exactly corresponded with the ideas of perfection she had gathered from them; while the natural good-breeding which accompanied whatever he said, and that sort of pensive reserve he maintained in such a company, which gave to his manner peculiar softness, placed him at once among the dear creatures with which her head was always full; and she either so little knew, or so little wished to conceal, the impression he had made, that James Woodford and his mother perceived it, both with an accession of ill-humour which did not sweeten their manners towards Orlando.

At supper every body talked together; though their eagerness to be heard could not be justified by the importance of what they had to say, which was chiefly remarks on the players, criticism on their acting, or anecdotes of their lives, of which the younger Mr Woodford had apparently a great fund. Orlando, who knew none of them, and for whose conversation there was no vacancy if he had been disposed to converse, sat a silent auditor of this edifying discourse; now wondering at the importance affixed to people and events which appeared to him of so little consequence – now comparing the noisy group in which he sat, with the dear circle at home, and his delicious tête-à-têtes with his soft and sensible Monimia – and not unfrequently looking with some degree of wonder on the rosy cheeks, disfigured forms, and disproportioned heads of the ladies – but especially on that of Mrs Woodford, whose cheeks were as red, and whose plumage waved as formidably as that of any of the misses. He soon determined, that till he could finish his business about his commission, and prepare for his duty, he would take a lodging, and not remain where he was likely to find so little society to his taste, and where his reception was hardly civil.

Having taken this resolution for the morrow, he felt no other wish but that the disagreeable night would end; and totally neglected by every body but Miss Cassado, who now and then addressed herself to him in a sweet sentimental tone, he had disengaged his mind from the scene around him, and was picturing in his imagination the turret of his Monimia. He saw her sleeping; and her innocent dreams were of him! Every piece of furniture in the room, the books, and the work that lay scattered about it, were present to him. It was the image only of Orlando that sat at the table of Mr Woodford; the soul that animated that image was at Rayland-Hall.

But from this illussion he was startled by Woodford; who, giving him a smart blow on the shoulder with his open hand, cried, 'Why, Captain! You are in the clouds! Hey-day! What pretty plump dairy-maid at the Hall is the object of this brown study? Never mind, my lad – a soldier finds a mistress wherever he goes; and though I dare swear thou hast broken a sixpence with her as a token of true love – she will not break her heart, I warrant her, while there's a sturdy young carter in the county of Sussex – Come, most magnanimous Captain, cheer up! We are going to drink, in a bumper of such claret as thou hast not often tasted, Confusion to the Yankies, and that there may soon be not a drop of American blood in their rebellious hearts! – As thou art going to fight against them, thou wilt help us drink against them – Come; your glass Sir; your glass! And when that toast has passed, I have another.'

Orlando, who was more shocked and disgusted by every word his uncle spoke, now took his glass in silence; and Woodford, engaged in some of that conversation which he called roasting, with another of the young men, let him drink the wine without insisting on his repeating words, from which, almost ignorant as he was of the nature of the contest with America, his reason and humanity alike recoiled.

But he did not so escape from the future toast with which his insupportable uncle had threatened him. When the whole company had drawn round the fire (for their supper was now concluded), and every glass was again by the order of Mr Woodford charged – he, who in dining out, and in the liberal potations he had taken since he came home, had already swallowed more than was sufficient to elevate his robust spirits, stood up with his back to the fire in the middle of his family and his guests, and there gave a toast which had a very direct reference to General Tracy's marriage with his niece Isabella, in terms so very improper that Orlando, to whom it was particularly addressed, felt every principle of personal honour or general propriety insulted by it, and positively refused not only to drink it, but to stay in the room while it was drunk. Being once roused, and feeling himself right, the vulgar ridicule of his uncle had as little effect as the more serious and angry remonstrance of his coxcomb cousin, who assured him, that only his little knowledge of the world, and rustic education, could cover him from the most serious resentment. A severe pang touched the sensible heart of Orlando, as he recollected that his beloved mother would be vexed at this difference between her brother and her son: but, when he related the cause, he was sure she would not blame, but commend him; and conscious of all the dignity of an unadultered mind, scorning to stoop to even an unworthy expression because it was authorised by custom, or insisted upon by a relation, he took his hat, and, wishing the ladies good night with great politeness, was leaving the house, when Woodford himself overtook him at the door, and apologised for his unguarded proposal, by which, however, he protested he meant not to offend him. On this apology, and on an assurance that he should hear no more of such offensive conversation, Orlando returned to the room, though fully determined to leave the house the next day.

The licentious and vulgar mirth, however, which Mr Woodford chose to call conviviality, was at an end after this incident. James Woodford, already detesting Orlando, could hardly be civil to him: the lady of the house beheld him with a mixture of envy, contempt and terror: the misses, his cousins, felt only resentment and contempt: but the little Jessica, gone already an age in love, admired his spirit, and adored his beauty; and when her father's chariot, with an old Hilpah who acted as a sort of duenna in it, came to fetch her home, she made a tolerably confident advance to engage the 'brave pretty creature' to escort her home. Orlando, however, either did not or would not understand her; and James Woodford, piqued at the preference given to Orlando, which the lady was at no pains to conceal, suffered her to depart alone.

The rest of the party immediately separated: the young barrister retired to his chambers, hardly deigning to wish his country cousin good night – Orlando, whose trouble no kindness from this family had power to allay, as their neglect had no power to increase it, went to his room little disposed to sleep; fatigue of body and mind gave him up to a few hours of forgetfulness. At dawn of morning he awoke, and, as he knew it would be long before any of the servants rose in an house where night was converted into day, he dressed himself; and as the day was to be dedicated to business, and he wished to lose as little time as possible, he went to breakfast at a coffee-house, and left a note for his uncle, saying, in civil but cold terms, that, as he had so many affairs to transact in a very short time, he must keep very irregular hours, and therefore should be a troublesome inmate in a family; for which reason he should take a lodging near the part of the town where his engagements lay, and should only occasionally trespass upon him for a dinner.

From the coffee-house where he breakfasted he wrote to General Tracy, requesting his directions, as he determined not to call at his house. To this letter, however, he did not expect an answer till after one o'clock, as the General was seldom visible sooner; and he employed the long interval in writing to his family a short account of his safe arrival in London, and in pouring out his whole heart to Monimia in a letter, which he inclosed in one to his sister Selina.

General Tracy was in the mean time suffering, on one side, all the apprehensions of what would be thought and said, when his intended marriage should be known, by those whose interest it was to keep him single; and on the other, from his fear of losing Isabella, his passion for whom absence did not promise to do much towards curing. Warwick had been returned from his recruiting party above a week, and had been several times in Grosvenor Place enquiring for his uncle; and the behaviour of the lady of the house towards her ancient lover was such as gave him great reasons to suppose that his intended reform was suspected, if not known. Of this, however, he had no longer any doubt, when, going late in the evening after his arrival in town to the house he usually frequented in St James's-street, he was attacked upon this tender subject by all his old friends, and rallied without mercy. As he could not deny an affair of which they seemed so well acquainted with the particulars, he took at once the resolution to avow it; their ridicule then ceased, and Tracy returned home, glad that this first burst of laughter was over.

But much was yet to come of a more serious nature, against which he armed himself as well as he could, by reflecting that he had a very good right to please himself, and that neither Captain Warwick, nor any of those other persons to whom he had given a claim over him, had any other dependence than on his bounty. To the women on whom he had made settlements, he knew he must pay them; but whatever he had done for Warwick was entirely voluntary; and as his nephew had no other dependence, he would hardly, for his own sake, so behave as to cut himself off from a share of his future fortune because he could not have it all.

Armed with these reflections, he determined to end this disagreeable state at once, by telling Warwick what he intended for himself and for him. And when his nephew, apprised of his being returned to London, waited on him the next morning at breakfast, Tracy, though he would rather have mounted a breach, plunged at once into the subject – informed Captain Warwick of his intention to marry, and of the immediate present, as well as future provision he intended for him.

Warwick, who had always feared his uncle's very youthful propensities would, as he advanced in life, betray him into the very folly he was now about to commit, received this intelligence with more concern than surprise. He was himself of the gayest and most inconsiderate disposition. In the height of health, youth, and spirits, the admiration of every woman he saw, and the life of every company he went into, his vanity did not allow him to suppose that he owed any part of that admiration to the prospect he had of being heir to General Tracy's wealth; and, imputing it all to his own merit, he fancied himself superior to the malice of fortune. There were many possibilities which, on a moment's reflection, weakened the blow which this intelligence seemed at first to give to his fairest hopes – His uncle might change his mind a day before it was executed – the young woman might jilt him – or, even if the marriage took place, he would probably have no children; and then he should himself be so little injured by this match, that it was not worth thinking about with any degree of concern. – The thousand pounds too, which his uncle promised him, was a douceur that considerably abated the bitterness of such intelligence; and Warwick, rather through the carelessness of his nature than from motives of prudence or policy, received this intelligence so much more calmly than Tracy expected, that his uncle appeared to be in a better humour with him than ever. This uneasy subject once discussed, Tracy proceeded to inform him, that the brother of his intended bride, for whom he had procured an Ensign's commission in his (Warwick's) regiment, though not in the same company, had accompanied him to London, in order to equip himself for the service, and to join that part of the corps that were in England. While he was thus speaking, Orlando's note was brought in; and on Tracy hinting that such were his wishes, Captain Warwick immediately offered to go himself to the young soldier, and give him every assistance and information that could be useful to him.

Instead, therefore, of a written answer to his note, Orlando heard a gentleman enquiring for him in the coffee-room; and on his appearing, Captain Warwick, whose figure and address immediately prejudiced every body in his favour, introduced himself as the nephew of General Tracy.

If Orlando instantly conceived a favourable opinion of Warwick, he was yet more struck with his new acquaintance. From his uncle's account, and from what his own imagination added to it, he supposed that he was to be a temporary bearleader to a tall straight-haired cub just come from school, who wanted a drill serjeant rather than a fashionable acquaintance: but when he saw, and only for a moment had conversed with Orlando, he perceived that he was one of those beings for whom education can do little, and whom nature has so highly favoured that nothing can be added by art. The two young men, thus highly pleased with each other, soon entered into conversation, with that unguarded familiarity which accompanies generous tempers in the candid days of youth. Orlando spoke his mind very freely on the absurdity of the match meditated by the venerable General; and Warwick as freely ridiculed it, while he could not help expressing some curiosity as to Isabella, whose charms had thus brought about what so many artful women of all descriptions had been trying at for the last thirty years at least. Orlando described his sister as he really thought her – a very handsome girl, full of spirit and vivacity, with a great deal of good humour – a good share of understanding, which did not, however, exempt her from being very vain, and somewhat of a coquette. It was on enquiries relative to her person, which he said must be extaordinary, that Warwick dwelt the most – 'Really,' said Orlando, 'I have seen many women who are as handsome, some handsomer. For example, I think Selina, my third sister, infinitely more beautiful, though I own to you she is not generally reckoned so.' – 'Upon my soul,' replied Warwick, 'your family, Somerive, must be a very dangerous one – I suppose, though, I am pretty secure; for my good old uncle, or young uncle – I cry him mercy! – will not let me have a peep, for the world, at this future aunt of mine!' Orlando was glad to see that Warwick received with so much gaieté de coeur, an event which would have raised in the minds of most other persons, so situated, inveterate enmity against his whole family. Warwick enagaged him to dine at a tavern in Pall-Mall; and they then went out together, that Orlando might know where to find the tradesmen for whom he had occasion.

Chapter VII

FOR a young man of the temper and disposition of Orlando, there could not be a more dangerous companion than Captain Warwick. Indulged from his infancy, by his uncle, in every thing that did not interfere with his own pleasures, and having no parents to restrain him, Warwick never dreamed of checking himself in whatever gratified his passions or flattered his imagination. His spirit and vivacity recommended him to societies of men, where he learned to be an agreeable debauché, to drink without losing his reason, but not always to play without losing his money. His very fine person, and the softness of manners he could occasionally assume, endeared him to the women, among whom he was called the handsome Warwick, and with them lost his time – but hitherto without losing his heart. With all his acquired imperfections, he retained many inherent good qualities – He was humane, generous, and candid: his soldiers adored him; and his friends, amid all that fashionable dissipation in which most of them lived, were more attached to Warwick than fashionable men usually are to any body. Orlando, in the simplicity of his heart, thought him the man in the world most calculated to be his friend. Warwick was recruiting at Barnet; but, however, had obtained leave to be in London: and Orlando, who, after passing a few days with him, could less than ever endure the sort of society he found at Mr Woodford's, took a lodging near Warwick's, and they became almost inseparable. The General, embarrassed between his love for Isabella Somerive, which he could not conquer, and his present connections, which he knew not how to break, passed in a state of mind by no means enviable the first week after his return to London; but the greatest torments he was to experience had not yet overtaken him, for the societies of fashionable women, among which he had been the oracle, were not yet assembled for the winter. He dreaded, when he met them, not only the loss of his consequence, but the scorn and ridicule he should be exposed to. He wished to be once married, when common civility would repress those sarcasms to which he knew he should be otherwise exposed; yet as the preparations necessary for this important event, which he assured Mr Somerive he would hasten, were to be begun, his resolution failed: he wished he had not gone so far, but had adhered to his former cruel plan, of waiting till the death of her father, and the distress and the dispersion of her family, which that event threatened, had thrown her into a situation in which it was likely she might be tempted to accept less honourable proposals. While the mind of the ancient lover thus fluctuated between the fear of losing her quite, and the reluctance he felt to resign his liberty to obtain her, Isabella discovered no impatience for his return; but waited for her promised dignities with tranquillity, which her father was far from sharing. The painful idea of sacrificing his daughter to mercenary considerations, was not more supportable than that of leaving her destitute, together with the rest of his family, of a comfortable subsistence; but, above all, the cruel desertion of his eldest son, of whom he had now heard nothing for many weeks, corroded his heart with unceasing torments; and those torments were increased by the necessity he imposed upon himself, of concealing them as much as possible from his wife.

The letters he received from Orlando were his only consolation; yet even these were embittered, by hearing, in every one of them, that all his enquiries after his brother had hitherto been fruitless. Warwick, who found great pleasure in his company, had, very early in their acquaintance, learned the source of that anxiety which often clouded the open countenance of his friend; and, in hopes of meeting Philip Somerive, they had gone together, not only to public places, and to all parts of them which it was likely he might frequent, but to gaming-houses and taverns of the second class, where, from Orlando's description of his brother's style of conversations, Warwick thought it most likely he would be found: but they gained no intelligence of him; and the very research was not made with impunity by Warwick, who could seldom help engaging in any thing that was going forward. But Orlando's affection for his family, and for Monimia, secured him effectually from the infection of such societies – he had strength of mind enough to consider how much he owed to them and to himself, and to reflect how unpardonable his conduct must appear to his father, if, in undertaking to recover his brother, he should lose himself. These reflections, and an heart almost insensible of all pleasure but what were derived from the hope of passing the summer of his life with Monimia, were antidotes even to the influence of Warwick's example, who often gaily rallied his country prejudices, but never seriously attempted to pervert his principles – and sometimes, in their more serious conversations, was candid enough to own that he should himself be a happier man if he did not, rather than incur the ridicule of those for whose opinion he felt only contempt, plunge into vices for which he had no taste, and call pursuits pleasurable, which, in fact, had no power to bestow pleasure.

Orlando had now been three weeks in London; for the plan of returning to pass his Christmas at Wolverton, which had been once proposed, had been given up. The General, contented with having introduced him to Captain Warwick, had seen no more of him since than common civility required, and was now gone to pass that space of time between the end of the old and the beginning of the new year, when it is very unfashionable to be in London, at the house of his brother, Lord Barhave, who usually remained at his northern residence till the end of January. The General had originally proposed to return to Somerive's house at this time; but not having yet recovered the doubting qualms which he had since felt, he thought a fortnight at his brother's, where he hoped and believed no idea of his intentions could yet have been heard, would give his arguments on both sides fair play, which now were so equally balanced: he should be alike removed from the fascinating charms of the blooming Isabella, and from those rivals who, in London, had established claims on his heart and pocket. – He should not, on one hand, be delighted with the spectacle of family happiness and domestic comfort, which the circle at Somerive's house offered to him; nor, on the other hand, dread the ridiculous light into which the wit of his London friends threw his intended marriage with a beautiful rustic, almost young enough to be his grand-daughter. For these reasons he wrote to Somerive, lamenting the necessity he was under to change his plan; and alleging that it was family engagements alone that impelled him to do so, but that as soon as they were fulfilled he should hasten on the wings of rapture to West Wolverton, he set out for the North.

Orlando continued another month in town without hearing of his return, or wishing to hear it for any other reason than because it would, he thought, be the signal of their going down together to the house of his father. – At the end of that time he became impatient – he had been now above six weeks absent, and the letters he had from his family, but still more those he less frequently received from Monimia, irritated this impatience. The anguish of mind that every week increased, while Mr Somerive had no news of his eldest son, was by his letters forcibly expressed to Orlando, while his mother and his sisters gave him mournful accounts of his father's health. Mrs Rayland's letters were, though very rare, the greatest alleviations to his uneasiness that Orlando received; for they were as expressive of kindness, and of increasing attachment to him, as the reserve of her manner, and the formality of her style, would permit them to be; and it was a great and very unusual degree of favour towards any one, that alone could urge her to write at all. The two letters received from her, therefore, were considered by Orlando as being more unequivocal proofs of her settled affection for him, than any she had yet given.

Still the time that was to intervene before he should be permitted to return to the dear paternal spot, around which were assembled all the future hopes of his life, seemed insupportably long. – He was now in Hertfordshire with his men; and only occasionally obtained a few days to pass with his friend Warwick in London. In the tedious days he passed almost alone in a little country town, his resource was in books, and to such as he could attain he applied himself with more avidity than he had ever done at the Hall. Thus passed the month of February, and part of March. Mr Somerive then believing, with great appearance of reason, that Tracy was trifling with his daughter, wrote to the General in such a way as must bring on a decision. In consequence of this, the General, still wavering, returned to London, from whence, and from his duty in Parliament, he had absented himself since the beginning of the session on pretence of ill health. On his arrival in town a circumstance awaited him, which called him back to his honest resolutions; for the young woman, on whom he had profusely lavished great sums of money, who was established in his house, and whose settlement he had lately increased in consequence of his proposed marriage, had quitted his house the evening before that on which she knew he was to return to it, leaving a letter, in which she turned him, and all her former professions of attachment to him, into ridicule. She took with her all the presents he had made her, to a very considerable amount – gave him the name of a person whom she had authorised to receive the annual sum he was to pay her – informed him she was gone to Italy with a young man of fashion, whom she named to him, and was his most obedient humble servant.

As the excessive vanity of the General had blinded him so far, as to make him believe he was extremely beloved by this young woman, who had always laughed at and imposed upon him, he was thunderstruck by an incident so unexpected, and cruelly mortified to find, that while he was meditating how to soften to her the pain of parting, she was thinking only of flying from him with a younger lover. His resolutions in favour of matrimony, which pride and the dread of ridicule had at least suspended, now returned in all their force. He immediately wrote to Somerive, excusing, as plausibly as he could, his late apparent backwardness, and acquainted him that he only waited for the drafts of the settlements, which, as particular circumstances in his affairs rendered much attention to them necessary, his solicitor had promised to have drawn up, and laid before two of the most eminent counsel – all which he was assured would not take up above a fortnight, at the end of which time he should lay himself and his fortune at the feet of his adorable Isabella.

The General however, though he was now really in earnest, could not prevail on men of law to make a forced march in his favour; and the fortnight elapsed in queries and questions in which there seemed no other end to be obtained than that of increasing the fees of the gentlemen of the long robe, and the bill of attendance to the attorney. Somerive again thought himself trifled with; and the General, in order to convince him he was not, went down on a sudden to West Wolverton, where the charms of Isabella regained at once all their power; and after staying ten days, and renewing, in the most solemn manner, his engagements with Somerive, he returned to London, to make the last preparations for his marriage, which was fixed to be within three weeks. As it had long been settled that Orlando was then to return home to be present at the celebration of these nuptials, he heard that all was at length settled, with a mixture of pleasure and pain. – The delight he felt at the idea of returning to friends so dear to him – above all, of seeing his Monimia, was embittered by reflecting on the sacrifice his sister was about to make in this unequal marriage; nor could he reflect without regret on the injury it would do to the interests of his friend Warwick, who, however, spoke of it himself with philosophic gaiety.

It was near the end of April before the General, who now remained steady to his engagements, could prevail upon the tardy special pleader, the puzzling counsel, and the parchment-loving solicitor, to complete their parts in this intended contract. At last however the General, attended by two of them, set out for West Wolverton, and in a few days was followed by Orlando.

The day after his arrival was occupied till it was almost dark, with the ceremony of hearing these endless settlements read; and, as he was a party to them all, it was impossible to escape, even on pretence of the indisputably necessary visit to Mrs Rayland; but the instant they were signed he flew eagerly to the Hall.

The sight of the many well-known objects on his way – every tree, every shrub, recalled to his mind a thousand pleasing ideas; and as he passed hastily through the fir wood, where in a dreary night of December he had last parted from Monimia, or at least passed a few agitated moments previous to their parting, he compared his present sensations to what he had at that time felt, and laughed at the superstitious impression given him then, and on some former occasions, by the gloom of the winter sky – when he fancied that, in the hollow murmur of the breeze, he heard, 'Orlando will revisit these scenes no more!'

Every object, then wrapped in real and imaginary horrors, was now gay and joyous. It was a lovely glowing evening, towards the end of April. – The sun was set, but his beams still tinged with vivid colours the western clouds, and their reflection gave the water of the lake that warm and roseate hue which painting cannot reach. – The tender green of spring formed to this a lovely contrast; and, where the wood of ancient pines ceased, his path lay through a coppice of low underwood and young self-planted firs – the ground under them thickly strewn with primroses and the earliest wild flowers of the year.

Hope and pleasure seemed to breathe around him – Hope and pleasure filled the heart and flashed in the eyes of Orlando; and perhaps the moment when he reached the door of the old Hall, though he was forced to stop a moment to recover his breath and recollection, was one of the happiest of his life.

It had been the established custom, from his first admission to the Hall, never to enter the apartment of Mrs Rayland but on permission; but now, as he had informed her from London that he intended to be at the Hall in a few days, and had received an answer most cordially inviting him, his impatience would not permit him to wait for this ceremony; and he hardly felt the ground beneath him, as he sprang up the stairs that led to her usual sitting parlour, and opening the door, saw, by the faint light which the old gothic casements afforded at that hour of the evening, Monimia sitting on the opposite window seat alone. He flew towards her, forgetting, at that moment, that the world contained any other being. Surprise and pleasure deprived her as much of her recollection as they had done her lover; but it returned sooner, and she entreated him to forbear those frantic expressions of tenderness which were so dangerous in such a place. – 'Where are the old Ladies then?' cried he. – 'They are only walking in the gallery,' replied Monimia, 'as Mrs Rayland was not well enough to go out to-day – they will be back immediately.' – 'That cannot be,' cried Orlando impatiently, 'for you know how slow their progress is; but let us not lose a moment in talking of them. – Tell me, Monimia, can I see you at night as I used to do? – Are you still in your turret, with the same means of leaving it? – Tell me, Monimia, I must not – I cannot be refused.'

'Ah, Orlando!' answered the faltering Monimia, 'dearest Orlando! how often have I repented of those dangerous, those improper meetings; with how much difficulty we escaped, and how impossible it would have been for any other circumstance than your absence to have quieted the suspicions of my aunt! – And ought we now to renew this hazardous correspondence – ought we to incur again such danger?' – Orlando interrupted her: 'Ought we!' exclaimed he. 'Is that a question, Monimia would have made after so long an absence, if Monimia was not changed?' – 'Changed, Orlando! can you think me changed?' – 'Prove then that you are not,' said he, again impatiently interrupting her: 'let me see you to-night; my leave of absence is only for a few days, till my sister is married and I must not – I will not be trifled with.' – 'Oh, hush! hush!' whispered she, 'there is a noise! they are coming from the gallery! – I had better not be found here with you.' – 'Promise then, Monimia – promise me, and you shall go. – I will hazard every thing, even an immediate discovery, if you refuse me.' Monimia, trembling at his vehemence, then sighed her consent – and hardly knowing what she was about, gathered up the work that lay in the window seat, and softly left the room, while Orlando walked to the other end of it, assuming, as well as he was able, an air of unconcern; but before he had made a second turn Mrs Rayland entered – and started at the sight of him, though she had expected him either that day or the next.

He approached her with all that affection which is inspired by gratitude; and as he respectfully kissed her hand, she expressed her pleasure at seeing him returned. He then paid his compliments to Mrs Lennard, whose eyes he saw were thrown around the room for Monimia; she returned his civilities, however, with great good humour. Candles were ordered, and Mrs Rayland invited him to supper, and to take up his residence at the Hall – favours which, with unfeigned pleasure he accepted. The old Lady, who had now long been accustomed to contemplate Orlando as a creature of her own forming, was pleased to fancy him improved, both in his person and his manners, during his short absence. – He had acquired a military air – he was more easy, but not less respectful; and she fancied that he resembled her grandfather's picture more than he used to do; but she expressed some surprise not to see him in uniform, which she said, in her time, all gentlemen of the army appeared in usually.

Orlando promised he would conform to what she thought right in that respect – not however without some apprehensions, that as he advanced in life she would propose to him, in order that he might be still more like Sir Orlando Rayland, whose portrait she wished him to resemble, to purchase a tie wig, and brandish a sword, of which the guard should be lost in an immense sleeve.

As Mrs Rayland was not very well, having lately had an attack of the gout, to which she was in the spring particularly subject, she dismissed the young soldier early; and it was with inexpressible delight that Orlando took possession once more of his old apartments, which had been carefully prepared for him. It would not be easy to describe the subsequent meeting between him and Monimia, who suffered herself to be persuaded to renew that clandestine intercourse, which they had both so often condemned as wrong, and renounced as dangerous; but when Monimia could prevail upon him to talk less of his present happiness, and to be more reasonable, she related to him all that had passed during his absence. – Her life had, however, afforded very little variety, but was rather amended in regard to Mrs Lennard's treatment of her, who employed her more than usual in attendance on Mrs Rayland, in order to save herself trouble, gave her more liberty, and was rather less harsh towards her than formerly. – She related, that she was now often suffered to go to church, which had afforded her the opportunities she had snatched to meet Selina and correspond with him. Her aunt had apparently forgotten her suspicions and anger when he was no longer near the Hall; and the disappearance of Betty Richards, who was said to have gone off (according to her own assertions) to Philip Somerive, and was reported to be supported by him in London, had been the means of eradicating entirely from the mind of Mrs Rayland all those suspicions which the gossip of the country, collected and repeated by the jealousy of the old butler, had made on her mind; and she now thought better of Orlando than if these doubts had never been raised.

Orlando, in collecting all this from Monimia, saw too clearly the reason why his brother had so carefully avoided him; and amid all the delight of which his heart was sensible in this conference, it felt a sharp pang, when he reflected how great an accession of pain this intelligence, which did not seem to have reached him yet, would give to the already wounded heart of his father.

Day unwelcomely appeared, and it was dangerous for Monimia to stay a moment longer. – Orlando conducted her safely back, extorting from her a promise that they should meet every night during the short time he was to stay. When he left her his spirits would not allow him to sleep. – The morning was delicious, and a thousand birds from the woods, on every side the park, seemed to hail his arrival. Again all the enchanting visions with which youth and hope had formerly soothed his mind re-appeared – never did they seem to him so likely to be realized. His sanguine imagination, no longer repressed by doubts of Mrs Rayland's intentions towards him, which were now every thing but actually declared, represented to him the most bewitching scenes of future happiness. The only alloy was his brother's indiscretions and his father's health; but he believed he should be able to obviate the inconveniencies of the one, and to restore the other, when he should possess, what the course of nature rendered likely to be at no great distance, the property of Mrs Rayland, which he meant to resign to his father for his life.

'Happy pliability of the human spirit!' Happy that period, when youth, and health, and hope, unite to paint in brilliant colours the uncertain future – when no sad experience, no corrosive disappointment, throws dark hues over the animating landscape; or, if they do, are softened into those shades that only add to its beauty! Orlando would not distinguish, in that his fancy was busied in drawing, any but agreeable objects – Monimia infinitely more lovely, and, if possible, more beloved than ever, was the principal figure. – He saw her the adored mistress of that house, where she had been brought up in indigence, in obscurity, almost in servitude; this gem, which he alone had found, was set where nature certainly intended it to have been placed – it was to him, not only its discovery, but its lustre was owing – he saw it sparkle with genuine beauty, and illuminate his future days; and he repressed every thought which seemed to intimate the uncertainty of all he thus fondly anticipated, and even of life itself.

The cool tranquillity of morning, the freshness of the air, the beauty of the country whithersoever he turned his eyes, had not sufficient power to sooth and tranquillize his spirits – he believed a book which should for a moment carry him out of himself would do it more effectually; and returning to the library, he took from the shelves two or three small volumes of poetry which he had purchased, and retiring to an elevated spot in the park, which commanded a view of Monimia's turret, he attempted in vain to read; but the sensations he felt were so much under the influence of fancy, that they suddenly assumed a poetical form in the following verses:

HYMM to LOVE and HOPE

TWIN stars of light! whose blended rays
Illuminate the darkest road
Where fortune's roving exile strays,
When doubt and care the wanderer load,
And drive him far from joy's abode.

Propitious Love and smiling Hope!
Be you my guides, and guardian powers,
If, doom'd with adverse fate to cope,
I quit in Honour's rigid hours
These dear, these bliss-devoted towers.

Yet here, O still, most radiant! here
(Attend this prayer of fond concern)
To beauty's bosom life endear,
Presaging as ye brightly burn
The rapture of my blest return.

Chapter VIII

THREE days, three happy days to Orlando, now passed rapidly away. Divided between his father's house and the Hall, and appearing to constitute the comfort of both, he was himself gay and cheerful, in the certainty that at night he should see Monimia. The charms of the season; the beauty of the country, to which he was attached as well from taste as habit; the tender affection of Monimia, which, though more guarded, was more lively than on their early acquaintance; the delight of knowing that his father's sorrows were soothed and suspended by his presence; and that his mother looked upon his attention to her as overpaying her for every other anxiety; all conspired to give value to his existence, and to blunt the asperity of those reflections in regard to his brother, which now and then would interpose and give him momentary disquiet. He was not quite content about Isabella, who, through the air of gaiety she assumed, did not seem to be really so well pleased as she affected to appear. The fulsome fondness of her ancient military lover sometimes raised her ridicule, but oftener disgust, which Orlando saw with concern. But on these occasions he reflected that nothing in this world is without its alloy; and that so many advantages would accrue to his family by the marriage of Isabella, that as she did not seem herself averse to it, it was folly in him to think of it with concern.

On the morning of the fourth day after his arrival, he had just walked over from the Hall, where Mrs Rayland had detained him to breakfast, and was engaged in conversation in the parlour with his father and the General, when a dark-coloured chariot, drawn by four sleek dock tailed horses that might have matched the set at Rayland Hall, was seen to approach the house, followed by three servants in purple liveries.

Mr Somerive expressed some surprise at this, as he had not the least recollection of the equipage: their enquiry, however who it could be, was immediately answered by the appearance of Doctor Hollybourn; who, waddling out, enquired for Mr Somerive, and was shewn into the room where he was sitting.

Mr Somerive was so little accustomed to receive visits of civility from Doctor Hollybourn, or indeed any visits at all, that he was as much surprised at this as he could be at a matter of so little consequence. The very great condescension of the good Doctor, who bowed as low as his prominent stomach would let him, and whose speeches were interlarded by all kinds of flattery, Mr Somerive accounted for by recollecting that the Doctor was extremely fond of the company of persons of title, and never so happy as when he could introduce some anecdote which related to his 'brother the Bishop', or to some Right honourable or Right Reverend Friend. He had on the occasion of their meeting at Rayland Hall the preceding November, paid his court most assiduously to the General; and enlarged upon the beauty of his brother the Lord Barhaven's seats; all of which, he said, he had visited. Somerive now therefore concluded that it was to the report of his honourable guest, and of his intended alliance with the family, that he owed this very obliging visit; which, however, he began to think very tedious, and dreaded its lasting till the evening: when, at length, the good Doctor, after a pompous preface, said that he had an affair of some consequence to communicate to Mr Somerive, on whose time he begged to trespass alone for ten minutes.

Somerive, who could not imagine what a man with whom he had so slight an acquaintance could have to say to him, immediately applied this unexpected circumstance to the idea always present to his mind. He fancied some ill had befallen his eldest son, and that one of his friends had commissioned this man of the church to break to him the horrid tidings; and then to pour into his wounded mind the consolation his profession enabled him to bestow.

In an agony not to be described, therefore, Somerive led the way into his study; where the Doctor, after another flourishing preface, which Somerive in the confusion of his mind took for a preparatory discourse, offered to him for Orlando his daughter, the fair and accomplished heiress, to whom he declared he would give twenty thousand pounds down, with an engagement that at at his death that sum should be trebled.

Though the proposal gave no great pleasure to Somerive, because he disliked Doctor Hollybourn, and was almost sure Orlando disliked his daughter; yet this conversation, so different from what he expected to hear, gave, while it relieved him from the most dreadful apprehensions, the appearance of joy to his countenance: he thanked the consequential Doctor for the honour he did his family, promised to communicate to Orlando the purport of their conference, and to wait upon him with an answer, or send Orlando on the following day. They then returned to the General and Orlando – the conversation turned on common topics; and the Doctor, though asked to stay dinner, withdrew with his usual dignity.

The General was now considered as part of the family; and before him Somerive, who had hardly yet recovered from his surprise, related to Orlando, as soon as he was gone, the purport of his visit.

Mr Somerive seemed at first but little disposed to listen to proposals of such a nature from a man whom he had always rather disliked, and who now seemed to have made them, only because it was generally understood that Orlando was acknowledged as the intended heir to the great estates of the Rayland family.

Orlando very plainly declared his disinclination to hear of them; while the General, by no means accustomed to consider pecuniary advantages as matters to be slightly thought of, or hastily rejected, asked such questions as led Somerive to explain the particulars of Miss Hollybourn's fortune and expectations; after which he contrived to turn the conversation to indifferent matters for a few moments, and then walked away with Somerive, whom he very seriously advised to reconsider the matter before he suffered Orlando to throw from him this opportunity of becoming a man of fortune and independence.

The Doctor's proposal, however flattering it would have been to many young men, even though they declined accepting it, gave to Orlando no other pleasure than what for a moment arose in reflecting, that, in thus refusing an affluent fortune, he gave to Monimia an additional proof of his affection. His father, however, after his late conversation with the General, and some reflection alone, began to see this offer in a more favourable light than it had as first appeared to him; and notwithstanding the little inclination he felt for the family of Hollybourn, he was now of an age and under circumstances which gave to such a fortune as Orlando was now offered its full value in his opinion. His mind, already accustomed to contemplate the marriage of General Tracy with Isabella as a desirable event, more easily accommodated itself to think with approbation of another match equally dazzling, when opposed to the present uncertain situation of Orlando. After taking, therefore, some turns in his Study alone, he sent for his son, and entreated of him to forbear giving the Doctor an answer at least for two or three days.

Orlando, who had never hesitated himself what answer to give, imagined it impossible to give it too soon. – 'Surely, Sir,' said he, 'as I cannot accept this good Doctor's very obliging proposals, it will be useless and uncivil to delay a moment saying so, which I will say in a letter in the least displeasing manner I can; but which, however, I must beg leave to do this evening.'

'I beg then that you will not,' said Somerive in a more peremptory tone than he was accustomed to use – 'In such an affair I will not act without consulting Mrs Rayland.'

'Mrs Rayland, Sir,' answered Orlando, 'will, I am very sure, either not interfere, or, if she does, it will not be to recommend Miss Hollybourn.'

'We will enquire that,' replied his father coldly; 'in the mean time you have my directions not to write to Dr Hollybourn.'

'Till when, Sir?'

'At least not till after I know Mrs Rayland's opinion.'

'All the opinions upon earth, Sir,' cried Orlando, 'will not make me change my resolutions.'

'I thank you, however, Orlando,' said Somerive, 'for avowing how little deference you pay to mine.'

'Dear Sir, it was only half an hour since you seemed as little disposed to listen to this unexpected overture as I am.'

'I had not then thought of it properly. You are young, and rash enough to determine on the most important matters in ten minutes – I am not; and therefore I again desire you will not write to Dr Hollybourn this afternoon.'

Orlando, a good deal hurt at this change in his father's sentiments, and dreading importunity on an affair of such a nature, then enquired if he might himself wait upon Mrs Rayland? – Somerive answered, 'You may, if you will at the same time deliver a letter from me in explanation, and say nothing yourself till that letter shall be read.'

This Orlando promised, being pretty certain that Mrs Rayland would be much less anxious for this connection than Mr Somerive supposed, who now desired him to send his mother into the Study. – He obeyed; and left them to consult together on this unexpected offer, and write to Mrs Rayland, with whom he proposed dining, and had engaged to return to his father with her answer early in the evening.

Orlando now saw only persecution and trouble preparing for him at home during his short stay, for the tears and tenderness of his mother were infinitely more formidable to him than any other mode of interference. – To Selina, whom he called out to walk with him in the shrubbery, while this conference was holding, and this letter writing, he communicated all he felt. She had only tears to give him; for, to resist her father's commands, or even his wishes, seemed to her impossible. She trembled at the idea of Orlando's withstanding those wishes, yet knew enough of his invincible attachment to Monimia to be assured that he could never yield to them.

A servant at length brought to Orlando the letter to Mrs Rayland for which he had waited, and he took his way to the Hall.

As he had promised his father not to speak upon it before Mrs Rayland had read the contents, he sent it up by one of the footmen, with a message importing that he waited her commands.

In this uneasy interval he dared not go in search of Monimia, nor could he detach his thoughts a moment from the subject of a proposal which threatened to empoisen the few days of delight which he had promised himself. Restless and anxious, he walked backwards and forwards in the Study with uncertain steps, now listening to every noise in hopes of receiving a summons to attend Mrs Rayland; and now believing, from the delay, that she saw the proposal of Dr Hollybourn in a favourable light, and was writing to his father to enforce its acceptance.

At length he was desired to walk up stairs; and, with a fluttering heart, he entered the apartment of Mrs Rayland, who began by saying – 'You know, I suppose, the contents of the letter my kinsman Mr Somerive has taken the trouble to send me?'

Orlando answered, that he certainly did.

'And pray, Sir, have you any wish to accept this offer? An offer! – The world methinks is strangely changed! – For a man to offer his daughter – is such an indecorum – In my time such a proceeding was unheard of – But however we live and learn! – I have heard that the way of these days is to send young women to market like cattle: but there is something perfectly shocking in it to me. – However, I suppose, to people of the world it is nothing new or extraordinary. – Pray, Sir, what are your intentions?'

Orlando immediately saw, and saw with inexpressible pleasure, that Mrs Rayland was averse to the alliance with Dr Hollybourn. He answered therefore – 'My intentions, Madam, are to decline an offer which certainly lays me under great obligation to Dr Hollybourn, but which the profession I have chosen, and my inability to offer Miss Hollybourn an heart such as her fortune and merit give her a right to expect, render it impossible for me to accept.'

Mrs Rayland, pleased to see that Orlando had no desire to become independent of her, or to force her to a positive declaration of her future intentions in regard to him, which she fancied his father wished to do by engaging her to give her sentiments on this proposal, now smiled very graciously upon him, and said, 'I think you right, cousin Orlando. – Dr Hollybourn is to be sure a very worthy man: – his daughter, they say, is a young person well brought up; and the fortune is very large, which first and last he can give her, besides what he is always telling me he is to expect from his brother the bishop. – But, you are yet a very young man, cousin; and in truth it seems to me to be time enough to think of marrying. – The fortune of this young woman is certainly very considerable: but, perhaps, not greater than at some time or other – (she hesitated as if afraid of saying too much) – I say, by the time your settling in life is advisable, perhaps you may not have occasion to make fortune an object in marrying, so much as a good family. – Dr Hollybourn talks of his indeed, which is not well judged; for there are people who recollect both the Doctor and his brother, the bishop, in very humble stations compared to what they are now. God forbid, though, that I should despise them therefore! not at all; that is not my meaning – And to be sure your family, my cousin, has not of itself much pretensions to match with ancient blood – (and again she hesitated as fearing to betray her intentions too far) – I say, if ever you are in a situation to marry, I would advise that you think of a woman of a good family at least.'

Orlando waited with impatience for the conclusion of this speech; and then falteringly and eagerly asked of Mrs Rayland, if she would have the goodness to put into writing her opinion on this subject?

This, however, she refused, as she said she would not appear to interfere in it upon any account. – 'Will you then, Madam, take the trouble to see my father? – Will you allow him to wait upon you? – for he is so anxious for me, and, I believe, thinks this affair likely to be so agreeable to you, that he will be hardly easy unless he hears your sentiments.'

Mrs Rayland, drawing herself up, as was her way, said – 'I shall be glad to see Mr Somerive on any matter that relates to you, cousin, though on this occasion I own it seems very needless. – However, you have my leave to say, that I shall be ready to talk over this business with my kinsman, provided, as I said before, I am not supposed by Dr Hollybourn or his family to interfere.'

Orlando, impatient to have this affair concluded at once and for ever, now asked if his father might wait upon her that afternoon? – 'When he pleased,' was the answer; – and Orlando, fearing that if she was left long to consider of it she might change her mind as his father had done before, now ran to West Wolverton with the utmost speed, quite forgetting that he was to have dined with Mrs Rayland, or that dining at all was necessary.

When he arrived there, he hastened to related to his father and his mother, whom he found together, the purport of his conference with Mrs Rayland; to whom Mr Somerive agreed to go immediately after dinner, though he seemed visibly disappointed; while Mrs Somerive, who had for a moment indulged herself with the hopes that her Orlando, instead of continuing in dependence on the caprice of Mrs Rayland, and of being separated from her by an hazardous profession, might be placed at once in great affluence, and in the immediate neighbourhood, relinquished those hopes with a deep sigh, but said nothing to her son on a point where it would now be useless.

Mr Somerive, finding the General was gone on a visit to Stockton's, from whence it was probable he would not return till half an hour after four, determined to hasten to Mrs Rayland before dinner. He got on horseback, therefore; and, attended by Orlando, on their arrival at the Hall he expressed to his son some apprehensions that the lady of the house might be at dinner: but Orlando, whose impatience could brook no delay, declared, without a very strict enquiry into the hour, that it was not yet time, and that he was sure they might go to the parlour where she usually sat, as she had so positively said they might come at any time.

Somerive, almost as anxious for the conference as his son, though from very different motives, agreed then to proceed. Orlando would have sent up a servant, had he met one; but none happened to appear, and he walked before his father up the stairs, and, opening the door of Mrs Rayland's sitting room, he saw her at the table, with Mrs Lennard on one side of it, and Monimia on the other. He would have retreated, but it was too late. He was already in the room – his father already at the table, apologising to Mrs Rayland for his unreasonable intrusion. She received him with civility, but without any degree of kindness or warmth – desired he would take a chair and sit down, and then said to Monimia, who stood blushing and trembling, and not daring to look up, – 'Mary, you will withdraw, I have business with my kinsman.'

'I beg I may not disturb any body,' cried Mr Somerive turning his eyes towards Monimia, and immediately comprehending who she was – 'I beg I may be allowed to retire till dinner is over.' 'No, Sir,' answered Mrs Rayland; 'I shall be glad to hear your business now, and I will dismiss my people.'

Mr Somerive again looked at Monimia as she left the room, and he saw that Orlando was lost, if his being so depended upon his attachment; for the extreme beauty, sweetness and grace of Monimia, so unlike the cherry-cheeked coarse rustic which his fancy had represented her, amazed and grieved him. He felt at once, that a young man whose heart was devoted to her, could never think of Miss Hollybourn, and that he himself could not blame an attachment to an object so lovely, however imprudent, or however ruinous.

Mrs Lennard now offered to withdraw; but her lady bade her finish her dinner, while poor Orlando cast a melancholy look after Monimia, and then on the seat she had left, which Mrs Rayland desired him to take. The dinner was soon removed; and then Mr Somerive, in a few words, repeated the purport of his letter. Mrs Rayland, even more strongly than she had done to Orlando, expressed her wish that the offer of Dr Hollybourn might be politely declined; and though she evaded giving her reasons for it, Somerive thought he saw them unequivocally, and that, though she studiously avoided declaring it, she had determined to put Orlando into a situation in which it would be not at all necessary that he should marry, for money, a woman to whom he was indifferent.

Mrs Rayland had very little art; yet she fancied herself a profound politician, and never considered that, while she forbore positively or even remotely to give Orlando assurances of possessing her estate, her insisting upon the propriety of his marrying, whenever he did marry, a woman of family, was in effect declaring that she meant she should be the person who was to perpetuate hers, on which she put so high a value, and thus to efface in the illustrious blood of his posterity, that alloy with the inferiority of the Somerives had mingled with that of the Raylands.

Somerive, convinced of this even from the pains she took to conceal it, yielded at once to her wishes, and assured her he would permit Orlando with great politeness to decline Dr Hollybourn's proposal; yet as he continued to listen to hr harangues upon family, he could not help looking significantly at Orlando – looks which his son perfectly understood to say, 'How will this accord with your attachment to the young person who was this moment dismissed by Mrs Rayland, as one of "her people"?'

The old Lady, however, was hardly ever in so good a humour with her relations as she became after this affair was discussed; and Mr Somerive never left the house so full of hopes that his family would be its possessors as he did after this interview, when he returned home in good spirits, though entirely relinquishing the idea of Orlando's becoming the nephew of a bishop.

Orlando himself, though impatient to write and dispatch the letter to Dr Hollybourn, yet staid at the Hall to drink tea, by the desire of Mrs Rayland, who gently chid him for deserting her at dinner. It was with more pain than pleasure that he heard Monimia sent for to make the tea, which had hardly happened twice within the last three years when he was in the house. Mrs Lennard cast a look at him when her Lady ordered her niece to be called; but she could make no objection without raising those suspicions which she ever appeared so solicitous to prevent. Monimia then attended. Orlando treated her as a stranger, whom he was slightly acquainted with; and Mrs Rayland did not appear to have the remotest suspicion that he had any particular regard for her: so friendly to him, as it happened, had been the mistakes and interpretations which the jealousy of Pattenson had put upon those circumstances that had so frequently threatened to betray him.

He had settled with Monimia, the preceding night, to stay supper with his father, and return to their usual rendezvous; and their stolen glances during the half hour that they were together, in the presence of the two old ladies, confirmed this appointment.

Early in the evening, then, Orlando took leave of Mrs Rayland, and went back to the house of his father, whose uncommon good spirits had diffused more than usual gaiety among his family. Mrs Somerive and Selina were particularly cheerful – the mother, because she saw her husband for a moment happy, and forgetting the concern he continually felt about Philip, in looking forward to the prosperity of his brother – while Selina, who had trembled for the teasing persecution she apprehended for Orlando, was delighted to find that her father would forbear to urge him on such a subject, and had acquired new confidence in the future intentions of Mrs Rayland.

Isabella, whose marriage was now within a week to take place, and who had just received from London some of those elegant clothes which her father had ordered for her, as well as some magnificent presents from the General, was the least gay of the party: amidst all her endeavours to persuade herself that she was happy, she had of late, and particularly since she had possessed these fineries, often enquired of herself whether they had really any power to bestow happiness. She had tried on her diamond ear-rings, and a valuable pearl neck-lace; but she could not discover that she looked at all handsomer in them than when she wore nothing but a simple ribband. The General's valet de chambre had dressed her hair; but she thought the mode unbecoming to her face, and the beautiful dark auburn hue, which had been so much admired, was no longer distinguishable. As for her intended husband, he was so far from having made any progress in her affections since he had been received as such, that her contempt was converted into disgust. His servants had been talking among those of Somerive, of his gallantries, and, above all, of the sudden desertion of the lady who lived with him; all of which Isabella had heard from her maid, and the longer she listened to, or thought of the anecdotes thus collected, the greater became her repugnance; and yet she knew not how to retract, and was not always sure that she wished it.

Her gravity was easily accounted for, as the day approached that was to divide her from her family; and she was suffered, after some gentle raillery, to be silent and pensive amidst the cheerful conversation of the rest.

It was a lovely evening in early May. Orlando, having dispatched his letter, dismissed Dr Hollybourn and the disagreeable heiress from his mind, and gave it up only to pleasurable impressions and flattering hopes. In a happier frame of mind than he almost ever was in before, he joined his family in their evening walk. When they reached the house, they stopped in the court before it, to admire the beauty of the moon, and to listen to the nightingale, who seemed to be addressing to that beautiful planet her plaintive orisons. Orlando wished himself with Monimia; and thought with delight that within two hours he should be so, and should relate the unpleasant alarm of the day, only to tell her it was over, and had eventually been fortunate in drawing from Mrs Rayland declarations more than ever favourable to his future hopes.

The whole party sat down to supper in this cheerful disposition. The General, like a happy lover, was particularly animated; and the younger girls were much amused by some anecdotes he was relating, when a servant entered hastily, and said that a gentleman who was just come post from London desired to speak to General Tracy.

'To me!' cried the General, changing countenance: 'Impossible! I know no business any one can have with me that should give him that trouble. Pray, enquire his name, or send my servants to enquire.'

'I will go myself, General,' said Orlando. 'I thank you,' cried Tracy, affecting great unconcern, 'but I dare say it is nothing worth your troubling yourself to go out for.'

Orlando, however, went out, and instantly returned bringing with him Captain Warwick.

Surprise was visible on the faces of all the party, but that of General Tracy expressed consternation - Why Warwick came he could not conjecture; but he felt it to be extremely disagreeable to him that he came at all. Warwick was covered with dust, and had that wild and fatigued look that announces tumult of spirit from an hot and rapid journey. The person, however, that nature had given him, was such as no disadvantageous circumstance could obscure. He looked like a young hero just returned unhurt from the field to recount its triumphs.

After addressing his uncle, and being introduced to Mr and Mrs Somerive, he turned gaily to Orlando, and, shaking him by the hand, said, 'I don't know, my friend, how you can ever forgive the man whose fortune it is to announce to you that you must quit immediately such a circle of friends as I now find you in!'

'Quit them!' exclaimed Mrs Somerive. 'Quit us! leave us!' cried her husband. – 'Yes, indeed!' answered Warwick with less vivacity: 'That part of our regiment which is in England, consisting of two companies, is ordered to join the troops that are going thither, and are to sail from Portsmouth next week. The moment I was sure of this, which was not till late last night, I thought it best to come down myself; because the time is so short that my friend here, the young ancient ^[3], had better proceed immediately from hence to Portsmouth.'

Never was a greater, a more sudden change, than these few words made in the dispositions of all present – except Tracy, whose only distress was the appearance of Warwick, where he so little wished to see him. Mrs Somerive, struck to the heart by the cruel idea of losing Orlando, retired in silent tears; and her daughters, little less affected, followed her. Somerive bore this painful intelligence with more apparent fortitude; but he felt it with even greater severity, and with something like a prepossession that he should never see Orlando again if he left England. He stifled, however, his emotions, and endeavoured to do the honours of his house to his unexpected visitor; but the effort was too painful to be long supported, and in a few moments he left the room, saying to Orlando, that as the General and Captain Warwick might perhaps have some business, they would leave them together.

Chapter IX

MR SOMERIVE threw himself into a chair, and, clasping his hands eagerly together, exclaimed, 'Good God! what is to be done now?'

'Nothing, my dear Sir,' replied Orlando, 'can or ought to be done, but for me to obey the orders I have received; and, I beseech you, do not suffer a matter so much in course, or which might have been so easily forseen, to make you unhappy!'

'What will become of me,' cried Somerville wildly, 'when you, Orlando, are gone? – And your brother, your unhappy brother! is a misery rather than a protection to your sisters, to your mother . . . !'

'They will want no protector, Sir,' said Orlando, much affected by his father's distress, 'while you live – and . . . !'

'That will be but a very little while, my son! the cruelty of your brother has broken my heart! While you were all that could make me amends, the wound, however incurable, was not immediately mortal; but now – !'

He put his hands on his heart, as if he really felt there the incurable wound he described bleed afresh. Orlando, concealing his own concern as well as he could, endeavoured to sooth his father, by representing to him that this was always likely to happen, and that probably a few months would restore him to his family. – Somerive listened to nothing but his own overwhelming apprehensions, and cast his thoughts around to every remedy that might be applied to so great an evil. The assurance General Tracy had given him that there was no likelihood Orlando should be sent abroad, now appeared a cruel deception, which had betrayed him into such folly and rashness as sending into the army that son on whom rested all the dependence of his family. – Bitterly repenting what he could not now recall, he caught at the hope that Mrs Rayland might interpose to prevent her favourite's being exposed to the dangers of an American campaign –

'You cannot go,' cried Somerive, after a moment's pause; 'Mrs Rayland will never suffer it – it will be renouncing all the advantages she offers you.'

'I must then renounce them, Sir,' said Orlando; 'because I must otherwise renounce my honour. – What figure, I beseech you, would a man make, who having in December accepted a commission, should resign it in May because he is ordered abroad? My dear Sir, could you wish such an instance should happen in the person of your Orlando?'

The unhappy father could not but acknowledge the truth of what Orlando said; but his heart, still unable to resist the pain inflicted by the idea of losing him, clung involuntarily to the hope that the attachment of Mrs Rayland might furnish him with an excuse for withdrawing from the army, and the greatness of the object for which he staid justify his doing so to the world. – Orlando in vain contended that this could not be, and besought his father not to give to his mother any expectations that it could – 'Consider, Sir,' said he, 'that my mother will suffer enough; and let us try rather to soften those sufferings than to aggravate them by suspense, and by those fallacious hopes which will serve only to irritate her concern: when my going to whither my duty calls me is known to be inevitable, my mother, with all her tenderness of heart, is too reasonable either fruitlessly to oppose or immeasurably to lament it – she would despise a young man who shrunk from his profession because there was danger in it, and, I am sure, affectionate as she is, would rather see her son dead with honour, than living under the stigma of cowardice!'

'I believe you are right, Orlando,' replied Somerive; 'and I will endeavour, my son, to conquer this selfish weakness. – But Mrs Rayland, it is necessary you immediately see her.' – 'I shall go thither to-night, Sir,' said Orlando, 'that I may wait upon her early in the morning; but do not, I entreat you, harbour an idea that Mrs Rayland will even wish to prevent my departure.'

Somerive now, at the earnest entreaty of Orlando, promised to compose himself before he went to his wife and daughters, and not to encourage their want of fortitude, by shewing himself wholly deficient in it. He then wished him good night, saying, that he would speak a few words to Captain Warwick, and then go to the Hall.

Somerive retired with an oppressed heart; and Orlando entreated Warwick to walk with him part of the way. He then heard that he must go to Portsmouth within two days; and Warwick, who spoke of it with all the indifference of a soldier long used to these sudden orders, proceeded to talk of other matters. – 'Do you know,' said he, 'that I am in love with all your sisters, my friend? but particularly with my future aunt? – Orlando, I shall be a very loving nephew. – What eyes the rogue has! – Egad, I shall be always commending the Portuguese fashion of marrying one's aunt – that is, if our old boy should have the conscience to make an honourable retreat.'

'You are a happy man, Warwick,' answered Orlando: 'How lightly you can talk of what would depress half the young fellows in England – the chance of losing such a fortune as the General's marriage may deprive you of!'

'Oh, hang it!' replied Warwick, ''tis not the fortune I mind, for I suppose I shall have some of it at last, unless some little cousins should have the ill nature to appear against me; but I hate that such a lovely girl as this Isabella of yours should be sacrificed to my poor old uncle, whom, if you could see him in the morning, before he is, like Lord Ogleby, wound up for the day, you would vote to be much fitter for flannels and a good old nurse, than for a husband to a girl of nineteen – and such a girl! upon my soul, she is a little divinity!'

'Not half so interesting in my mind,' said Orlando, 'as the soft, sensible Selina.'

'You are no judge of your sisters – Selina, that is I suppose the second, is a beautiful Madonna; but Isabella, my most respectable aunt, is a Thalia, a Euphrosyne. – I have a great notion, Somerive, that she would prefer the nephew to the uncle – I have half a mind to try.'

'There is hardly time for the experiment, I fear,' answered Orlando; who made an effort to be as unconcerned as his friend.

'Not time!' cried Warwick. 'Yes, there is time enough to a soldier accustomed to carry every point by a coup de main – I own, indeed, for an approach by sap I should be too much limited. – Orlando, shall I try my military skill? have I your leave? – Or should you object to exchange the intended grave Governor for the Soldier of fortune?'

'Not I, indeed,' answered Orlando; 'you have my permission, Warwick – and so now I will wish you good night; for, if I take you any farther, you will not find your way back.'

'Trust that to me, Orlando.' answered his friend; 'I am used to reconnoitre in all lights, from the golden rays of Phoebus to the accommodating beams of the paper lantern of an apple-woman at the corner of a street in a country town. – But whither art going, my friend? for that is a question which I set forth without asking.'

'To the Hall,' replied Orlando.

'To the Hall! – and to the turret of that Hall! – Oh! you happy dog!' –

'Monimia – my angel! – It was not kind
To leave me like a turtle here alone!'

'Hah, my friend! has your sweet nymph of the enchanted tower no para-nymph that you could introduce me to? It will be horribly flat for me to go back, to go to my solitary couch, and envy you here, and my prosperous uncle there – I shall hang myself before morning.'

Orlando, hurt at this light way of naming Monimia, answered rather coldly, 'Your spirits are really enviable, Warwick; but do not let them hurry you into a persuasion that I am happy enough now to be amused with them, pleasant as they are!'

'Why, what the devil's the matter with you?' answered Warwick; 'you are not going to turn parson, I trow? But really so dolorous a tone is fit only for the pulpit of a methodist. – Why what makes you unhappy, when such a girl as you describe Monimia – '

Orlando interrupted him warmly – 'You are determined to mistake me, Captain Warwick! Whatever confidence I have reposed in you in regard to Monimia, surely I have never said any thing that should authorise you to speak thus lightly of her. It is true that I love her passionately, that her heart is mine; but if you suppose – '

'Pooh, pooh! I suppose nothing – Pr'ythee do not be so grave about your little Hero, my dear Leander!' – Then assuming a more serious tone, he added: 'But, upon my soul, I mean nothing offensive, my friend; and rattled as much to disguise my own heaviness as to divert yours, for I have left people with whom I should much rather have remained a little longer, and that without having time to attempt consoling the gentle heart that is breaking for me.' He then communicated to Orlando an intrigue in which he had engaged after he left him. Orlando represented to him all the cruelty and folly of his conduct. – 'Oh! yes,' cried Warwick; 'all that you say is very wise and very true, and it must be owned that it comes with peculiar propriety from you, my most sage friend! – Now that we are within sight of the Hall, for, if I mistake not, that great building which is before us is the abode of the sybil whose rent-roll exceeds in value the famous leaves of antiquity, and of the fair vestal, who – '

'Nay, nay!' cried Orlando, 'you are beginning again; I will not stay to hear you.'

'Only let me go with you to the next rise,' answered Warwick; 'only shew me the light from the turret, and I will be content:

'It is the East – and Juliet is the Sun!'

And then I will go back like a miserable wretch as I am, and try to dream of my future aunt.'

'Rather try not to dream of her,' said Orlando; 'upon my honour, Warwick, this gaieté de coeur of yours excites at once my envy and my fear.'

'Oh! a soldier, and afraid! – What, do you think I shall release the General's fair prisoner, and, like an undutiful nephew, escape from the garrison with the old boy's prize?'

'No, no, Warwick, I have no such apprehensions; but,' – 'But what? Egad, my friend, considered in a political light, it is clear to me that this is the very best thing I could do. – But behold the venerable towers of Rayland Hall!

'Ye distant spires, ye antique towers
That crown the woody glade,
Where fond Orlando still adores
The sweet imprison'd maid!'

Give me a moment's time,' added Warwick, pausing – 'but a moment, and I will make for you a parody on the whole ^[4].'

'You are intolerable, Warwick,' cried Orlando, 'and I positively will endure you no longer!' – 'Yes, a little longer,' said Warwick; 'let me finish my parody; I tell you I am in a fortunate vein. – You, Orlando, who are yourself a poet, would you be tasteless enough to check a man inspired? – Listen, I am going on – '

'Nay, but this is sad trifling, my dear Warwick! and what is worse, you will really be heard from the house, which will not be a trifling inconvenience. Besides, upon my honour, your returning so late across the park is unsafe; for, when the old butler has no reasons of his own to have them kept up, there are three fierce blood-hounds let loose to range over it all night, and they would not fail to seize any stranger.'

'D – n your blood-hounds! – Pr'ythee, Orlando, do you think I am not accustomed to guards of all sorts, and have encountered the mastiff dog, and the dragon aunt, in twenty scrambling adventures?'

'I do not doubt your prowess,' replied Orlando; 'but here, as there is no reward, why should you exert it?'

'Mais seulement pour me tenir en baleine, mon ami, et pour passer le temps – But, however, if it is seriously inconvenient to you, I will go. – Come, now, to be serious – at what time to-morrow shall you be at your father's?'

'Long before you are awake probably, for you know you are never very alert in a morning.'

'Not when I have nothing to do; but, pray, are your family early risers? At what hour may I ask, by anticipation, the blessing of my blooming aunt?'

'That you must discover, for it is very uncertain – and now, Warwick, once more good night!'

'Good night! O most fortunate and valorous Orlando of the enchanted castle!'

Orlando then gave his light-hearted friend directions to find his way back, and when he left him, advanced slowly towards the house, from which he was not above three hundred yards distant.

His mind, which had been at first distracted by the distress of his father, and since harassed by the ill-timed raillery of his friend, now returned to those bitter reflections which arose from the certainty of his being immediately to take a long leave of Monimia, and under the cruel necessity of telling her so. But a few hours since he looked forward to the pleasure of meeting Monimia with only tidings of satisfaction and hope; now, he was to meet her, only to tell her that they were to part so soon, never perhaps to meet again!

He now entered his Study (for one of the servants sat up to let him in), and endeavoured to collect himself enough to communicate what he had to say to Monimia, without too much shocking her. But when he thought that their next meeting might be the last they should ever have, his own courage forsook him, and he dreaded lest he should be quite unable to sustain hers.

The hour soon came when he knew she expected him; and he trembled as he led her down the stairs. At length, since it was impossible to disguise from her those emotions which agitated his mind, he related to her all the occurrences of the eventful day, and the necessity there was for his preparing himself the next day, and taking leave of this part of the country the day following.

Monimia could not shed tears; her heart seemed petrified by the greatness and suddenness of the blow, which fell with more force, because their last interview had been so little embittered by fears or broken by alarms. When, however, Orlando explained to her, that this honour would be irreparably injured if he even expressed any reluctance to enter on the active parts of the profession he had engaged in, and that to attempt disengaging himself now would be a blemish on his character from which he could never recover, her good sense, and her true tenderness for him, gave her some degree of composure, and even of resolution. As he declared that he felt nothing so severely as leaving her – leaving her unprotected, and almost alone in the world, she nobly struggled to conceal her own anguish, that she might not aggravate his; and, since his going was inevitable, endeavoured not to depress, by her fears, that spirit with which it was necessary for him to go.

Orlando, as much charmed by her sense as her affection, became ashamed of betraying less tender resolution than a timid uninformed girl. She taught him how to repress his concern; and this interview, instead of increasing his regret, fortified his mind against it. Monimia remained with him a less time than usual – with faltering lips he entreated her to meet him again the next night, because it would be the last. – Monimia, unable to articulate, assented only by a broken sigh! and Orlando retired to his bed, where sleep absolutely refused to indulge him with a few hours of forgetfulness till towards morning.

When he had told Warwick that he should be at his father's house early in the morning, he forgot that he should be detained by the necessity he was under to attend Mrs Rayland. He sent up for permission to wait upon her at breakfast, which was immediately granted; and he opened to her, as soon as he was admitted, the reason of this early visit, and the necessity he was under to take leave of her the next day, to join his regiment in America.

Mrs Rayland expressed more surprise than concern at this information: accustomed, from early impressions, to high ideas of the military glory of her ancestors, and considering the Americans as rebels and round heads, to conquer them seemed to her to be not only a national cause, but one in which her family were particularly bound to engage. – She had contemplated only the honours, and thought little of the dangers of war. The trophies that surrounded the picture of her warlike grandfather Sir Orlando, and the honourable mention that was made of his prowess in the family annals, seemed to her ample compensation for a wound in his leg, which had made him a little lame for the rest of his life. Of Orlando's personal danger, therefore, she had, as he expected, no apprehensions, and was rather desirous he should justify her partiality to him, by emulating the fame of the heroes of her family, then afraid of what might happen in the experiment.

Mrs Rayland parted from him in high good humour, desired he would give her as much time as he could the next day, and set out from the Hall rather than from West Wolverton when he went to Portsmouth; all which Orlando readily promised, and then, with a heavy heart, went to the house of his father.

That capricious fate which seemed to be weary of the favours she had long been accumulating on the head of General Tracy, appeared now determined to discard him, as she is often said to do her ancient favourites. A more malicious trick than that she now meditated, could hardly befall any of them – The General had long kept off, by art, an attack of the gout, a disease to which he did not allow himself to be supposed liable; but whether it was the long walk of the preceding evening, or the tumult of his spirits on his approaching nuptials, or the sudden sight of his nephew, that occasioned an unlucky revulsion, certain it is that, in the middle of the night, he was awakened by this most inexorable disease peremptorily telling him, in more than one of his joints, that the visit would be more oppressive by having been so long delayed. His valet de chambre was hastily summoned, with such applications as, however dangerous, had sometimes repelled its attacks; but it was to no purpose the unfortunate General would have risked his life to preserve his activity; the morning found him a cripple, compelled to yield, with whatever reluctance, to the old remedies of patience and flannel. This circumstance, so very mal-apropos, appeared yet more terrible to the General, when he reflected that Warwick, the formidable handsome Warwick, had now an opportunity of entertaining Isabella; and the pain of his mind irritating and increasing his bodily sufferings, Mr Somerive, instead of a man of the church, who was within three days to have attended on his guest, thought it more expedient to send for a physician.

Tracy, however, considered of nothing so earnestly as getting Warwick away – It was true, indeed, that he was to go the next day, or at farthest the day after that, which depended upon the letters he received from Portsmouth; but, that he should be almost four-and-twenty hours longer under the same roof with Isabella was not to be endured. After many plans, therefore, adopted and rejected, the General at last determined that he would make some pretence to send Warwick to London which he could not evade, and imagined that he should then be able to say,

'Being gone – I am myself again!'

For this purpose he ordered his nephew to be called to his bedside; and when Orlando arrived at the house, they were in close conference.

The three girls were at work in the parlour when their brother entered it. He observed something very unusual in the manner of Isabella, who spoke little; while all his questions were answered by one of his youngest sisters. He enquired for Warwick; and, in a moment, heard him come down stairs. He went to him in the hall, and Warwick hastily said – 'Orlando, will you come out with me? I have something to say to you.'

They went together into the avenue: Warwick walked fast, but appeared lost in thought; and Orlando, oppressed with his own sorrows, had no inclination to speak first.

At length Warwick, as if he had found the expedient he wanted, exclaimed suddenly - 'By Heaven it will do! – it must do! – it shall do!'

'Indeed!' said Orlando; 'may I know what?'

'Tell me, my friend,' cried Warwick with vehement warmth – 'tell me if you love Monimia – if it is not death to part with her?'

'To what purpose is such a question? You know I exist but for her – you know I should prefer death to this separation, because my mind will be torn to pieces by anxiety for what may befall her in my absence!'

'Well, then, I may trust you – I may ask what you would do for that friend who should not only prevent your parting with her, but give you your Monimia for ever!'

'Do not trifle with me, Warwick,' said Orlando mournfully, 'I cannot bear it!'

'By all that is sacred!' replied Warwick, 'I never was more in earnest in my life; and, if you do not trifle with yourself, Monimia may be yours immediately, and it will be beyond the power of fortune to divide you!'

'Explain yourself then – but it is impossible, and your wild imagination only – '

'Say rather,' retorted Warwick, 'that your cold prudence will destroy what my imagination would realize. – I tell you, it is in your own power to be happy; but before I reveal how, swear to me, upon the honour of a soldier and a gentleman, that if you do not approve my plan you will not betray it.'

'Surely, there is little need,' said Orlando, more and more amazed, 'of my giving you an oath that I will not betray my friend, especially when he meditates how to serve me.'

'Pardon me,' cried Warwick; 'I desire, Orlando, to serve you; but I am not quite so disinterested as not to think a little of myself, at the same time – '

'I may venture to swear, Warwick, that I will never betray you,' said Orlando gravely; 'but put an end to these riddles.'

'You swear then, upon the honour of a soldier and a gentleman, that you will not mar my plan if you will not make yourself a party in it – you have sworn.'

'I have,' answered Orlando, 'sworn; but if it relates – ' At that moment an idea of the truth occurred to him.

'If it relates to your sisters, you were going to say, the oath is not binding – Well, it does relate to Isabella!'

'To Isabella?'

'Yes, to Isabella. It matters not, nor have I time to relate, how I have contrived, even in this short interval, to persuade your lovely sister that a young fellow of three-and-twenty, with only one thousand pounds in the world, and his commission, is more to her taste than an old one of three-and-sixty, who is a General, and worth about an hundred and fifty times that sum. – I told you, I always carried my object by a coup de main. – To be brief, I am madly in love with Isabella, and she is as much in love with me as she dares own on so short an acquaintance. – My uncle is in love with her too; but she is not at all in love with him; and as she prefers the nephew with his knap-sack to the uncle with his money-sack, she shall not be sacrificed to him; but I will marry her, and take her with me to America.'

'Marry her!' cried Orlando in extreme surprise.

'Why, you may well wonder, to be sure, because I believe she is the only girl in the world that could have made me take so extraordinary a resolution.'

'But how is it possible? How is there time to execute it?'

'Oh, my friend! it is a matter that takes up very little time when the parties are agreed.'

'But Isabella is not of age; she cannot be married here.'

'She may in Jersey, though.'

'In Jersey?'

'Yes; and it is very possible to go from Portsmouth to Jersey, and be back again time enough for the sailing of the squadron we must proceed with to America.'

'And has Isabella consented to all this?'

'No, because I have not directly proposed it to her; nor did I, till since the conversation I have had with my uncle, know that I should have the means of performing it, which (I thank him) his anticipating jealousy has put into my hands.' Warwick then took out of his pocketbook a draft of the General's to him for a thousand pounds, payable at sight in London. – 'My grave old uncle,' cried he, 'for whom I think fortune has interfered, to prevent his being ridiculous in his old age, is just now more miserable because I am in the house, than because the gout is in his toe, and he has found out, that instead of staying till to-morrow or next day to go to Portsmouth with you, it will be better for me to set out as soon as I can, to do some business for him in London, which, though he had never thought of it before, he now says admits of no delay; and that I may have no excuse to stay afterwards on my own business, or to return hither, he has given me a bank note of an hundred for my immediate expences, and this draft for a thousand – the douceur he promised me on his marriage.'

'Well!'

'Well! and so we shall not want money, which would have been an almost invincible impediment. I shall now, as soon as I have settled our proceedings with my angelic Isabel, which I have not the least doubt of doing, make the best of my way to London, execute the imaginary business which my most profoundly politic uncle has given me, and then – '

'I do not yet understand you,' said Orlando; 'how is my sister to be of this party, or how . . . '

'Nothing so easy,' answered Warwick; 'I thought, my friend, you were enough in love yourself to suppose every thing possible, and not to hesitate between quitting your mistress, perhaps for ever, and taking her with you as your wife. – I go from London to Portsmouth – Is there any difficulty in your meeting me there with my Isabella and your Monimia? You know there is not; and whatever scruples your sister may have, or as you perhaps think ought to have, to taking such a journey to me on the acquaintance of the day, will be obviated by your going with her, and by her having a female companion. – My purse is yours, and its present condition will enable us to do well enough till something or other happens in our favour. – I am determined, if Isabella consents, which I am now going to try; and so I leave you, Orlando, to consider of my proposal: you must, however, resolve quickly; for I shall set out almost as soon as dinner is over for London, as I have promised my uncle.'

Warwick then walked away towards the house, leaving Orlando in a state of mind difficult to be conceived or described. To have the power of taking with him his adored Monimia, secure of a present support for her, and certain that with him she would be happy in any country, was a temptation it was almost impossible to resist: when he considered on the other hand, the pain of being separated from her, for a long, perhaps an eternal absence, and of leaving her to the mercy of such a woman as Mrs Lennard, who might, either by withdrawing her protection, or rendering it an intolerable bondage, drive the lovely orphan alone and friendless into a cruel world; other means of saving her he had none, and neither the laws of God or man were against those which were now so unexpectedly offered him.

But his father, already broken-hearted by the desertion of one of his children, would be hurried to the grave by thus being deceived by two others. His mother would be rendered wretched, and he should perhaps accuse himself of being accessary to the death of both his parents: – the thought was not to be borne. He determined for a moment to renounce every happiness which must be purchased by their misery, and not only to fly himself from this almost irresistible temptation, but to prevent Isabella from yielding to it. But this resolution was hardly formed, before the image of Monimia weeping in solitude her desolate fate, complaining to him, who was too far off to hear – ill-treated or abandoned by her aunt – exposed to the insults of the profligate, and the contempt of the fortunate – came with all its pathetic interest to win him from his duty; and then, the happiness of calling her his – of knowing that only death could divide them! the contest was dreadful; and he knew that when he saw Monimia it would be worse. – Once or twice he determined to put an end to it, by telling his father; but to this desperate expedient was opposed the honour he had given to Warwick not to betray, if he would not participate, the intended flight of his sister; nor did he imagine that her going off with Warwick would be a very distressing circumstance to his father. – However enraged the General might at first be, his pride would not suffer him finally to abandon his nephew. In every point, but that of present fortune, Warwick must have the preference; and Orlando thought that he had often seen, by his father's countenance as he looked at Isabella, that he regretted the sacrifice he was induced by his own circumstances to promote. – But with himself it was quite otherwise; and the rash step he was thus strongly tempted to take, would blast at once all those hopes his father now so fondly cherished in regard to the Rayland estate (for it was certain Mrs Rayland would never forgive him); and, by acceding to Warwick's proposal, he must deeply aggravate every pang of that separation which his father seemed already unable to endure.

Chapter X

TORN by these distracting contests between love and duty, Orlando continued for some moments to traverse the place where Warwick had left him. His two younger sisters appeared to interrupt without relieving this painful debate. He learned from them that Captain Warwick and Isabella were gone together for a walk, and that the former had sent them to him, as he wanted to speak with them. A new doubt now arose in the mind of Orlando – Ought he to communicate to Selina what was going forward, of which she appeared to be ignorant? or conceal within his own bosom what he could not prevent, or entirely disapprove? After a little consideration he thought it would be best not to make Selina a party: and he endeavoured to dissemble as well as he could the conflict of passions which were preying on his heart. His father pale and dejected, with a slow and languid step, soon after joined them: he bade the two girls go to their mother, and then taking Orlando's arm, they walked together to a greater distance from the house.

'You go then to-morrow, Orlando?' said Somerive: 'there are no hopes of any favourable reverse to this cruel sentence? Mrs Rayland, I find,' – he hesitated – 'does not wish to interfere, Sir,' replied Orlando. 'On the contrary, she seems to think that a young man of my age and profession cannot be so well employed as in the actual service of his country.'

Somerive answered only with a deep sigh; and after a short pause Orlando went on:

'I beseech you, my dearest Sir, not to make yourself thus unhappy. Consider that, notwithstanding this temporary parting, my prospects are infinitely better than I had any right to expect, and – '

'They might, however, have been better,' said his father in his turn interrupting him – 'at least they might have been more permanently assured, if you had listened to the proposals we heard yesterday: instead of quitting your family, you might then have been settled near it in affluence.'

'Let us not, my dear father,' answered Orlando, 'discuss that any more; I would not marry Miss Hollybourn, if she could give me a kingdom.'

'Nor give up your boyish fancy for that girl at the Hall to save your family, to save your father!'

Orlando started as if he had trod on a serpent: this was a string that jarred too much, it threatened to destroy all the virtuous resolutions which he had been labouring to adopt; for it seemed to be cruelty and injustice in his father to reproach him; and, conscious of the sacrifice he hoped to have fortitude enough to make, it appeared too hard that he was at that moment blamed for not making more.

'No, Sir,' he said, 'I will not give up my fancy for the girl at the Hall, as you are pleased to term her; but I see not how my affection for her can injure my family, nor how my resigning her could save them – For God's sake, do not embitter the few hours we are to pass together, either by reproaches which indeed I do not deserve, or by concern which the occasion does not demand. Believe me, your son suffers enough, without the additional misery of seeing you either displeased with him or grieving for him.'

Orlando, then fearful that any farther conversation with his father, in the humour he seemed to be in, would serve only to give pain to them both, and wishing to be alone for a few minutes before he again saw Warwick, went another way; and on his return to the house he found an official letter directing him to repair immediately for Portsmouth, where the captain of his company was assembling his men in order to embark immediately for America.

Thus certain that he must set out the next day, and that he had only a few moments before he must meet Warwick and give his answer, he hid himself in the least frequented part of the shrubbery that adjoined to the house, and again considered of the tempting offer that was made him. Fascinating as it was, and though his excessive affection for Monimia was often on the point of overbalancing every other consideration whatever; his pride and his duty, his affection for his father, and his respect for himself, united at length to conquer his inclination. How could he bear to plunge a dagger into the heart of his father, who had little other hope on earth but in him? or, if he could determine on that, and fortify himself against the reproaches his conscience might make him, how could he submit to be obliged for his support, for the support of Monimia, to Warwick? There was something repugnant to the generous feelings of Orlando, in Warwick's using the very money his uncle had given him, as the means of disappointing his benefactor. But, whatever apology Warwick might make to himself for this, Orlando thought there could be none for him if he were to participate in money thus acquired. He knew that, accustomed to expence and to indulgencies as his friend was, a thousand pounds would be no very permanent resource when Isabella was to share it; and he could not bear that he should be supposed to connive at her flight, only to become with Monimia a burthen to her. On the slender pay of an ensign it were madness to think he could support a wife, however humble might be her wishes; and his marriage would cut him off for ever from all hopes of that assistance from Mrs Rayland, which his father, even though he should forgive, had not the power to afford him. Could he then endure to expose his beloved Monimia to the inconveniences of following a camp, without having the means of procuring her such alleviations as it allowed? He might die in the field, and leave her exposed to hazards infinitely greater than those which could befall her in England. This last consideration determined him – It decided his wavering virtue, and he resolved to give Warwick a positive refusal immediately before he should relapse, and to conceal the almost invincible temptation he had been under from his Monimia, lest, her weaker, softer heart yielding to it, he should again find himself unable to resist it.

He now hastened to find Warwick; and fortunately met him at the entrance of the house, whither they were summoned to dinner.

Warwick enquired with great eagerness on what he had resolved. 'To be miserable,' answered Orlando, 'in abstaining from what is wrong. I should be miserable if I agreed, Warwick, to your proposal; and I have determined, since either way I must be unhappy, to be so with integrity rather than self-reproach.'

'What the devil!' said Warwick, 'you won't go then my way?'

'No, I will not.'

'But you will not, I hope, Sir,' cried Warwick half angry – 'you will not think it necessary to prevent your sister?'

Orlando, who did not greatly relish the peremptory manner in which this was said, answered coldly – 'You have my honour, Captain Warwick, and any other question is an affront.'

'Forgive me, my friend,' replied Warwick, resuming his usual good-humour – 'forgive me for doubting you. I cannot live without Isabella, nor do I intend to try at it – I have prevailed upon her, not without difficulty I assure you, to consent to meet me at Portsmouth. – You know how much happiness your going with Monimia would have given to us all! – but I have not a moment to argue the matter with you. – You say you are determined – So am I; and all I ask of you is, that you will not rob me of my happiness, upon the same false, cold sort of reasoning system to which you are sacrificing your own.'

A servant now coming out to say that dinner waited, they went into the house. A melancholy and silent meal was soon concluded. The General's horse was brought to the door, on which Warwick was to go to the next post town: and he rose to take leave of the family, which he did with a composure that amazed Orlando, who had no idea how a man could so conceal the feelings which must on such an occasion naturally arise. Isabella was far from appearing so tranquil; but all the rest were too much engaged with their own sensations to remark those which her countenance betrayed, though to Orlando her confusion was evident.

Warwick went up to receive the last orders of his uncle, and then prepared to mount his horse; when Orlando took his arm, and begged he would send the servant on with the horses, and give him a few moment's attention as they walked on after them.

Warwick readily agreed, in hopes that he had changed his mind; but Orlando soon put an end to such expectations by asking him in what way Isabella was to meet him. – 'I have given you my honour, Warwick,' said he, 'not to betray you: but I must have yours in return that my sister shall be exposed to no improper adventures. How is she who never was from home in her life, but for a few days with her mother in London, to find her way to Portsmouth?'

'Ridiculous!' exclaimed Warwick, 'to find her way to Portsmouth! One would really think she was to take a flight to the extreme parts of the earth, instead of hardly five-and-thirty miles. – My poor friend, thou hast not been used, I see, to these little adventures – I have an aid de camp, who, in the absence of his commander, can secure a little deserter for him. – Isabella is determined to trust me; and it may suffice you to know that I love her too well not to take every possible precaution for her safety.'

'No,' said Orlando, 'It may not suffice – Though I have promised not to interfere, it is only on condition that I am sure my sister will not suffer either in her person or her reputation. Give me therefore the particulars.'

Warwick then related, that his servant, on whom he could depend, was on the evening they should appoint to be ready with a post-chaise and four at some place they could fix upon; where after supper Isabella, instead of retiring to her room, should meet it – 'Nothing is more easy, I suppose,' said Warwick, 'or less dangerous, than for your sister to do this; and, when she is once off in the chaise, relays of horses being ordered at the two stages between this and Portsmouth, my servant, following on horseback, will escort her thither in less than four hours: there I shall have a vessel ready to carry us to Jersey – Money, my dear boy! Money, my dear boy! Money, contrivance and courage are all that are necessary. – I have found the two first, and have given the last to the only person that wanted it. – I have convinced Isabella that, if she follows my directions, she may be at Portsmouth before she is missed, and married before any one can guess where to look for her. – Well, Orlando, you now have my whole plan; and I trust to your honour not to render it abortive.'

'And I,' replied Orlando, 'trust my sister to yours, not without reluctance and remorse – We shall probably meet at Portsmouth?'

'Probably,' answered Warwick; 'for the two companies are to embark at the same time; and I only trust to some private interest, which I have prevailed upon my uncle to make for me, to procure leave to embark in whatever vessel is most convenient. – the captain of one of the frigates is my particular friend, and I shall probably get a birth with him instead of going in a transport.' Orlando, to whom the whole scheme appeared easily practicable, now again felt all the disposition to join in it which he had before combated: but again his reason came to his aid, and he saw Warwick depart without betraying any symptoms of that struggle which still tore his heart.

Once more, however, he subdued it; and recalled his resolution to go through the trying scene which was to await him on his return to the house, where he was early in the evening to bid adieu to all his family, in order to sup with Mrs Rayland as she had desired; and then! the last cruel parting with Monimia, more dreadful than any of his former sufferings, was to embitter his last moments at Rayland Hall.

The last adieu between a father so affectionate and unhappy and a son so beloved, need not be described – it would indeed be difficult to do it justice. As his mother and sisters hung weeping about him, he could not help addressing some words to Isabella, however unfavourable the time, which she seemed perfectly to understand – though she shrunk from them, and had carefully avoided giving him any opportunity of speaking to her alone. At length Orlando tore himself away; and not daring to look behind him, yet hardly feeling the ground beneath him, he hurried to the Hall.

Mrs Rayland received him with as much calmness as if he only came on a usual visit. Of the violent emotions which agitated him she had no idea. Time and uninterrupted prosperity had so blunted the little sensibility nature had given her, that she was utterly incapable of participating or comprehending the acute feelings of her young favourite: yet in her way she was extremely kind to him; and, after giving him another course of excellent advice, which lasted near two hours, she told him, that as his first equipment might have taken a good part of her former present, she had another note of fifty pounds at his service. This present was extremely acceptable to Orlando, who had not above sixty left of her preceding bounty. Mrs Rayland, detaining Orlando an hour longer than he expected, at length dismissed him with her blessing; and Orlando shed tears of gratitude on her hand, which he kissed, and, without being able to speak, left her.

He then took leave of the servants; but gave to Mrs Lennard, with whom he desired to speak in her own room, more time than to the rest; and desirous of doing what he could to soften the situation of his Monimia, he determined to speak to her aunt on her behalf.

'You know, Madam,' said he, 'that on my last departure you spoke to me of your niece: let me now speak to you of her. My absence may satisfy you as to those suspicions, that I know not why you entertained of me – but let me entreat you to be kind to my lovely young friend, for whom I scruple not to avow to you a very great regard.'

'What!' cried Mrs Lennard, 'has she ever then been such an ungrateful girl as to say I was unkind to her?'

'Never,' said Orlando: – 'in the conversations we have accidentally had, your niece has always spoken of you with gratitude and respect; but, after what you once said to me about her, I should be remiss were I to quit the house without trying to obviate any little lurking prejudice which may at some future time be remembered to her disadvantage: allow me therefore to intercede with you, not only to forget any of these circumstances which may prejudice your mind against her, but to increase that tenderness for her, which does so much honour to your heart.'

'Thank you, Sir,' said Mrs Lennard, 'but I hope I do not want your advice, nor any body's, to do my duty to the girl, since she is left upon my hands.'

Orlando never felt so great an inclination as at that moment, to take Monimia off her hands; and, as he found little was to be hoped for from his solicitations in her favour, he took leave of Mrs Lennard, and endeavoured, when alone, to collect all his resolution for this final adieu with Monimia; to drive from his recollection the offer of Warwick, which still recurred to tantalize and torment him; to conceal from her that it ever had been made, and to fortify her mind for their long separation while he felt his own sinking under it.

Among other things it occurred to him, that if death or caprice deprived Monimia of the cold and reluctant protection her aunt now afforded her, she might be not only desolate but pennyless. He determined, therefore, to leave with her one of the banker's notes he had just received, of five-and-twenty pounds, and to pass these last moments in arming her against every possible contingency, which might happen during his absence, and, as far as he could, instructing her how to act if they occurred.

Monimia, with swollen eyes, from which the tears slowly fell notwithstanding her endeavours to restrain them, listened in silence, as with a faltering tone and in disjointed sentences he went through this mournful task. She promised in a voice hardly articulate to attend to all he desired, and to keep a journal of her life; 'though what will it be,' said she, 'but a journal of sufferings and of sorrow?'

'But when that sorrow, those sufferings are over, my Monimia,' cried Orlando, trying to speak cheerfully, 'with what transport shall we look back on this journal, and compare our past anxieties with our actual happiness! – Let that idea encourage you amidst the heavy days that are to intervene before we meet again. Whatever you suffer, remember that your Orlando will return to dry your tears! And take care of your precious health, my Monimia, preserve it for him.'

She could only answer by a deep drawn sigh; while Orlando, cruel as the scene was, could not determine to put an end to it. Day already dawned; and as he did not mean to go to bed, but had ordered the under-keeper to attend him with the horses as soon as it was light, he knew that he should soon be called by Jacob: yet could he not determine to lead Monimia back to her turret till he heard the man at the door, who, tapping at it, informed him the horses were ready, and the hour passed at which he ordered himself to be called.

Monimia then arose and said – 'Farewell then, Orlando!' He had no power to answer her; but led her silently through the chapel, round the court, and to her turret. The moment that tore him from her could not be delayed; he took the last embrace, and hastily bade her shut the door, lest he should fall into such a paroxysm of anguish as might render him unable to leave her at all. Monimia, who could not have supported the pain she endured much longer, with feeble and trembling hands obeyed him; but, as slowly he descended the stairs, he heard her loud sobs and was on the point of returning again to snatch her to his bosom, and declare it impossible to part with her.

The loud noise of a whip, which Jacob impatient of his long delay now sounded around the house, roused him once more. He started from the dangerous reflection he was indulging, that it was yet in his own power to take Monimia with him, or at least to secure her following him with his sister; and again recovering his courage, he descended the stairs, left for the last time the beloved turret, and in a few moments mounted his horse, and rode almost at full speed through the park. He was soon on the high-road to the first post-town towards Portsmouth; and having ascended an high down that afforded him the last view he could have of Rayland Hall, he stopped on the top of it, and, turning his horse's head, fixed his eyes on the seat of all his past happiness, of all his future hopes, and thought how much he probably had to suffer before he should revisit it again, how probable it was that he should never see it more!

Jacob, who had but little notion of all this, yet supposed the captain, as he was now called at the Hall, was sorry to leave all his friend and Miss Monimmy, and hunting and shooting, and such like, to go to the wars, now thought it might be kind to console him: but Orlando heeded not the very eloquent harangue, which had lasted near a quarter of an hour, but suddenly turned his horse, and set out as speedily as before.

He took a post-horse at the town, and put his portmanteau into a Portsmouth diligence that was passing; then dismissing his favourite horse, which he would take no farther, and recommending him particularly to Jacob, who promised to attend to him while he fed at liberty in the park, he made the servant a handsome present, and on the hack which was ready he proceeded as if he was pursued; for the speed with which he rode seemed to give him something like relief. A very short time brought him to Portsmouth; where he found his baggage from London just arrived; and learned that some of the soldiers were already embarked, that the wind was fair, and that new orders for the greatest expedition were arrived that day to the commander of the reinforcement going to America.

Chapter XI

EXHAUSTED by the fatigue of body and mind, Orlando would now probably have lost the painful recollection of what had passed within the last eight-and-forty hours by transient forgetfulness; but even this was not permitted him: the orders for immediate embarkation were so strict, and the commander of the squadron which was to convoy the transports so impatient to execute the directions of Government, that every thing was hurry and confusion; and Orlando, far from being allowed time to think of what he had left, found the care of the company devolve almost entirely upon him: the men were for the most part raw recruits; the captain, the younger son of an illustrious house, already raised to the rank (though not so old as Orlando), was not come down; and the lieutenant, a man near fifty, was almost incapacitated from attending his duty by the agonies of his wife and a family of several children, who, as they had been in lodgings in a neighbouring town ever since his return from America the preceding year, now assembled around him to bid to their only protector and support a last farewell.

The short notice he had received of his departure had prevented his settling many things for them which were now indispensable; the moment therefore Orlando arrived, this officer (whom he had not before seen) related to him his situation; and Orlando, in generously endeavouring to alleviate his troubles by taking as much business from him as he could, found his additional fatigue well repaid by the necessity it laid him under to detach his mind from his own regret and anxiety. At the first dawn of day he was at the Point – embarking the men and baggage; and the scene of distracting hurry that now presented itself, the quarrels and blasphemy with which the beach resounded, the confusion among the soldiers and sailors, the rage of the commanders and the murmurs of the commanded, the eager impatience of those who had articles to buy for their voyage, and the unfeeling avarice of others who had them to sell, formed altogether a scene as extraordinary as it was new to Orlando, who had never been from the neighbourhood of the Hall except for a few weeks, which were either passed in pleasure in London or in a quiet country town: he heard therefore, with a mixture of wonder and disgust, the human tempest roar in which he was now engaged, and for the first time enquired of himself what all this was for?

This was not a place or hour when such a question, however naturally it occurred, could be answered – He was to act, not to speculate; and hardly had he a moment to reflect that, hurried as he was to be, he should not have the satisfaction (if satisfaction it might be called) of seeing Isabella and Warwick before he went himself on board; after which it would be impossible to know what became of them, at least not till his arrival in America. Amid the tumult that surrounded him, this gave him infinite disquiet. A thousand fears for his sister crowded on his mind; he apprehended she might by some accident be prevented in such a place meeting Warwick; he trembled lest, if she did, his conduct towards her, when she was entirely in his power, might be dishonourable. Such were the distressing reflections of Orlando in every momentary pause the confusion of the scene allowed him. But whatever uneasiness he felt, the time permitted him to have no mitigation; and, in the evening of the day after his arrival at Portsmouth, he found himself on board a transport with the greater part of that company to which he belonged, and about an equal number of dragoons with their horses. The wind, though violent, blew down the channel; and at nightfall, all previous orders being given, they obeyed the signal for getting to sea. It was not till they were many miles at sea that Orlando had time to consider his situation: then, the tumult having a little subsided, he saw himself in a little crowded vessel, where nothing could equal the inconvenience to which his soldiers were subjected, but that which the miserable negroes endure in their passage to slavery ^[5]. Indifferent to this, so far as it merely related to himself, he could not see the sufferings to which the men were likely to be exposed without concern. All of them were young and new to the service; and the captain was too attentive to his own delicacy to have time to give the poor fellows all the alleviation their condition allowed them; and, on the second day of their voyage, he found his own situation so unpleasant, that he went in a boat on board one of the frigates, the commander of which was distantly related to him, and obtained of him for the rest of the voyage a birth more suitable to a man of fashion than a crowded transport could afford him.

Orlando, the lieutenant (who was half broken-hearted), and a cornet of horse were left in charge of the men; and it was perhaps fortunate for the former, that he was so incessantly called upon to attend to his duty that he had hardly a moment to command but for repose, and, occupied about others, could think but little of himself.

They had now been so long at sea, that the fresh water sailors had conquered the first uneasy sensations given by that element, except the young cornet, who was the only son of a very opulent family and heir to an immense fortune: during a very long minority his mother had so humoured him, that even his request to enter the army, though extremely opposite to her wishes, could neither be evaded nor denied. The smart uniform of a light horseman appeared to him extremely desirable; and the possibility of danger in such a service never occurred to him, nor would he listen to it when it was represented by others. He had hardly put on this seducing attire, and provided himself with a very beautiful horse, before he was ordered abroad; and now sick and desponding, this unhappy child of foolish affluence wanted a nurse much more than a broad sword – No puling girl just out of the nursery was ever more helpless; and Orlando at once despised and pitied him; but found that, having been friendly enough to offer him his assistance, his new acquaintance soon leaned entirely upon him; and that having been used to have every one around him at his command, he received every friendly attention which compassion extorted from others, as matters of course.

The fleet had now passed Madeira, without however touching at it, and were launched into the great Atlantic Ocean. Hitherto their voyage had been prosperous and quick; and a short time promised to terminate it: but the heat of the weather, operating on the crowds of men and of horses stowed in such a vessel, now began to be severely felt. A fever of the malignant kind broke out; and within a week five men sickened of it, of whom three died; and the other two, more like spectres than living creatures, seemed by their partial recovery only to be reserved for more lingering sufferings.

Nor was that the worst; for the disease, after a cessation of a few days, broke out afresh, and Orlando saw his men depressed and dispirited, sinking around him its easy victims. Contrary winds, or sullen calms which allowed them to make very little way, added to the hopelessness of their situation, and the other transports could afford them little assistance; for in some the same cruel distemper had begun its ravages, and those who were yet free from it dreaded the infection. It was now that Orlando felt the justice of that pathetic description, given by Thomson, of the mortality at sea before Carthagena, where he addresses the admiral, as witnessing

'The deeply racking pang, the ghastly form,
The lip pale quivering, and the beamless eye
No more with ardour bright –
– the groans
Of agonizing ships-'

and as having then heard

'Nightly plunged amid the sullen waves,
The frequent corse.'

From such a scene, whenever the distresses of his men (whom in despite of the danger of infection he attended with paternal kindness) or the terrors of the little effeminate cornet would allow him a moment's respite, he escaped as much as he could by passing the evenings on deck; for the heat below was more dreadful to him than even the want of sleep or any other inconvenience. He frequently took the night watch; and at other times wrapped himself in a great coat, and lay down where he might at least have air. On these occasions sleep would not always befriend him; and then all he had left, his Monimia, his family, the Hall, the rural happiness he had enjoyed in his native country, forcibly presented themselves in contrast to the wretchedness around him; and when he considered a number of men thus packed together in a little vessel, perishing by disease; such of them as survived going to another hemisphere to avenge on a branch of their own nation a quarrel, of the justice of which they knew little, and were never suffered to enquire, he felt disposed to wonder at the folly of mankind, and to enquire again what all this was for?

He sometimes, however, endeavoured to persuade himself that it was for glory: he had been taught to love glory – What so sacred as the glory of his country? To purchase it no exertion could be too great – to revenge any insult on it, no sacrifice should be regretted. If, for a moment, his good sense arose in despite of this prejudice, and induced him to enquire if it was not from a mistaken point of honour, from the wickedness of governments, or the sanguinary ambition or revenge of monarchs, that so much misery was owing as wars of every description must necessarily occasion; he quieted these doubts by recurring to history – our Henries and our Edwards, heroes whose names children are taught to lisp with delight, as they are bid to execrate the cruel Uncle ^[6] and the bloody Queen Mary; and he tried to believe that what these English Kings had so gloriously done, was in their descendants equally glorious, because it went to support the honour of the British name. – Then Alexander, Caesar, and all the crowned murderers of antiquity – they were heroes too whom his school-studies had taught him to admire, and whom his maturer reflection had not yet enabled him to see divested of the meteor glare which surrounded them. There was something great in their personal valour, in their contempt of death; and he did not recollect that their being themselves so indifferent to life was no reason why, to satisfy their own vanity, they should deluge the world with human blood. There were, indeed, times when the modern directors of war appeared to him in a less favourable light – who incurred no personal danger, nor gave themselves any other trouble than to raise money from one part of their subjects, in order to enable them to destroy another, or the subjects of some neighbouring potentate. Nor had he, after a while, great reason to admire the integrity of the subordinate departments, to whom the care of providing for troops thus sent out to support the glory of their master was entrusted. The provisions on board were universally bad; and the sickness of the soldiers was as much owing to that cause as to the heat of climate. Musty oatmeal, half-dried pease, and meat half spoiled before it had been salted down, would in any situation have occasioned diseases; and when to such defective food, their being so closely stowed and so long on board was added, those diseases increased rapidly, and generally ended fatally. But it was all for glory. And that the ministry should, in thus purchasing glory, put a little more than was requisite into the pockets of contractors, and destroy as many men by sickness as by the sword, made but little difference in an object so infinitely important; especially when it was known (which, however, Orlando did not know) that messieurs the contractors were for the most part members of parliament, who under other names enjoyed the profits of a war, which, disregarding the voices of the people in general, or even of their own constituents, they voted for pursuing. Merciful God! can it be thy will that mankind should thus tear each other to pieces with more ferocity than the beasts of the wilderness? Can it be thy dispensation that kings are entrusted with power only to deform thy works – and in learning politics to forget humanity?

Orlando, embarked in a cause of which he had hardly ever thought till he was called upon to maintain it, was insensibly visited by reflections like these; but whenever they recurred he drove them from him as much as he could, and endeavoured to cherish the fond hope that all might yet be well; that Isabella, about whom he was haunted with a thousand fears, was in some of the vessels which were now all assembled in one fleet – for the slowness of their progress had enabled those ships which last sailed to overtake them; and that on his landing he should meet Warwick and his sister, and anticipate with them the fortunate hour of his return to England.

As the perilous situation of Isabella occupied his thoughts, whenever he could a moment detach them from the scene before him, he made several efforts to learn, if she was in any of the vessels near which he often found himself; but in none of them could he gain information of an officer of the name of Warwick. He then contrived to send a message to the captain of the frigate, one of the convoy, with whom Warwick had told him he was acquainted; but this officer, to the infinite disappointment of Orlando, told him in answer to his letter, that it was true his friend Warwick had sent some of his baggage on board, and a negro servant; but that, after waiting for him till the last moment, it became absolutely necessary for him to sail without him. This account only served, therefore, to increase the uneasiness of Orlando, who now feared that, instead of being able on his landing in America to write instantly to his father with an account both of himself and his sister, he should only add to the disquiet which he believed her flight must have occasioned to her family: nor was he at all satisfied that Warwick's dishonourable conduct towards her was not the cause of their not being in the fleet, which he was now almost persuaded they were not.

If at any time he had obtained a short interval of repose, these cruel images haunted him; but, as the voyage was prolonged, and the discomforts of his condition became more severe, he found abundant reason to rejoice that he had resisted the alluring temptation offered to him by Warwick, and had not exposed his Monimia to difficulties and distresses, under which many around him had sunk: and in this self-congratulation he found the first reward of virtue; a sensation which soothed all his sorrows, and enabled him to support the accumulated evils which now pressed upon him.

The fleet was now within four days sail of New-York; or at least the sailors, though it was a dead calm, declared that they had no doubt but before the end of that time they should get in thither. The sick men revived a little with the intelligence; and the rest bore with less dejection the funeral of the dead (for two days had not for some time passed without a funeral) and the loss of the horses, of which a third had already perished. Orlando, to escape the intolerable smells below, now always passed the night on deck, and was sleeping on it when the noise occasioned by a sudden change of the weather awakened him: he got up, as well to be out of the way as to assist the sailors, who were soon all busily employed; for in a few moments it blew a hurricane. The darkness of the night and the violence of the storm were horrors greatly increased by the apprehension the seamen expressed, that they should be driven against some of the other vessels and sunk: and this appeared extremely probable; for, by the flashes of lightning, the transports in company were seen driven about, sometimes within a few yards of each other – guns of distress were heard, but none were in a condition to assist the rest; nor was it possible for a boat to live in a sea that ran mountains high, and threatened to overwhelm even the men of war which formed the convoy.

Orlando, to whom as a novice in maritime adventures the danger seemed even greater than it was, imagined that death was inevitable, because it had never appeared to him so near before. He thought, however, not so much of the event, as of the effect the intelligence of it would have on those infinitely dearer to him than himself – He heard the agonising shrieks of his mother, the more silent but more destructive anguish of his father, the tears of his sisters, unable to suppress their own grief while they attempted to administer comfort to their parents, and above all the sufferings of his gentle Monimia, sufferings more acute because she dared not complain. Yet, when the vessel strained so much that the seamen declared they every moment expected the timbers to part, Orlando again thanked God that Monimia was not with him. The despair of the lieutenant was solemn and silent: – he believed that the hour was come when he was to leave his family destitute in a world where, with all his exertions, his want of interest had not afforded him the means of supporting them by that perilous profession to which he had dedicated his life. But he bore this certainty (for there seemed not the least hope of escape) like a soldier and a man: he assisted the sailors; he encouraged the soldiers; and endeavoured, with a calmness of mind which gave Orlando an exalted opinion of him, to inspire others with that hope he did not himself feel. To Orlando only he declared his opinion that they must perish; and he spoke in approbation of the fortitude with which so young a man, and one so unaccustomed to look on danger and death, bore this intelligence: but with the little cornet he could not keep his temper, who, half dead with terror, lamented himself aloud in terms unmanly and ridiculous; and who, though he declared himself too much affected by the violent heaving of the ship to keep the deck a moment, ran up continually to ask puerile questions of the seamen, and to distract their attention by his complaints and clamours.

Morning at length appeared, but the wind rather increased than abated; and the light of day served only to shew the horrors of their situation, and of some of their companions in distress, who were still in sight, for the men of war were no longer visible; and of the three transports who were near them, one was dismasted, and another without her rudder was driven about a wreck upon the waves, under bare poles. From this vessel, which the first dawn of day discovered close to them, they heard repeated signals of distress. Whenever the mountainous waves afforded them a view of her, they saw the people, among whom were two or three women, appearing on her deck, apparently in all the agonies of despair. Orlando was suddenly struck with the idea that this vessel might contain his sister; and with dreadful solicitude he watched it, till, in the confusion of his thoughts, he fancied he really discerned her – All care for his own safety was then at an end; and he entreated the commander of the ship he was in to allow him to attempt in a boat to go on board, in the hopes of administering some help; but this the man positively refused, giving very loud and short reasons, in terms which Orlando did not understand, why such an attempt would be fatal to whoever undertook it, without being of the least use to those for whom it was undertaken. More and more impressed with the idea that Isabella was among the women, whose terrors he saw distinctly on the deck of the other vessel, he now hardly possessed his senses, and was on the point of plunging into the waves, tremendous as they were – when, as his eyes were fixed wildly and eagerly on it, he saw it sink, and the sea bury all it contained! – There was hardly time to utter an exclamation of horror, when some of the unhappy people appeared so near the ship, that the sailors, though so likely to share the same fate, endeavoured to save them; but two only, stout men who swam strongly, were snatched from the raging element. The rest soon disappeared, never to rise again!

The force of the wind was now somewhat lessened, and the men were inspired by some degree of hope to greater exertions. About ten o'clock the storm was so much abated that the master was able to take an observation; and he found himself many leagues out of his course. No ship remained in sight but one transport at a great distance, and the vessel yet drove too much to allow them to attempt altering her course. Their immediate danger, however, gradually diminished; and every man on board, who was able to work, laboured, in despite of the fatigue they had undergone, to repair their rigging, and remedy the damages the hull had sustained. The sick, who had for many hours been neglected, were now visited; and one soldier was found dead. As to the horses that remained, they had all been thrown overboard during the most imminent peril, as their weight occasioned the ship to labour so much more than she would do without them. The dead soldier was committed to the waves; and as Orlando, with glazed eyes, saw him deposited in his watery grave, and recollected all the horrors of the preceding night, he again involuntarily enquired of himself, whether such things were to be accounted the dispensations of Heaven – or, if they were the works of man, why they were permitted? The terrible idea that Isabella had perished in that ship he saw sink still haunted him, and redoubled by imaginary sorrow all that he saw or suffered. The poor fellows who had been taken up were so terribly bruised, and had swallowed so much water, that they were not yet sensible. As soon as they were, however, Orlando eagerly questioned them as to the females whom he had, through the obscurity of the dark and dashing waves, discovered on the deck; and he learned, to increase his misery, that one of them was a young lady, whose husband was an officer of foot, and who was himself either in the fleet, or coming with the next convoy. The sailor who gave him this information knew not which, nor did he know the lady's name, or to what regiment her husband belonged. The other women, he said, were, one of them the lady's servant, and the other the wife of a sergeant in Orlando's regiment; which seemed to add to the probability that the young person who had perished was Isabella. There hardly needed this sad conjecture to add to the despondency which, in despite of all his steady courage, now took possession of Orlando – despondency which he found it extremely difficult to conceal. Strong as his constitution was, it yielded, at length, to the united power of malignant infection, uneasiness, and fatigue; and when, after beating about above ten days, the vessel at length reached the harbour of New York, he was taken on shore in a state of insensibility, from the fever which had attacked him; and his friend, the old lieutenant, saw him accommodated as well as the circumstances the place was under would admit; and, feeling for him the affection of a father, shed over the blasted hopes of a youth so promising tears which his own misfortunes had never extorted from him.

Chapter XII

BY the care of this excellent man, aided by the medical skill of the surgeon of the regiment, Orlando in about a fortnight arose as it were from the grave. His senses returned long before his strength, and with them all the sad recollection of his disastrous voyage: – almost the first use he made of his returning reason, was to implore the lieutenant to enquire for Captain Warwick, of whom he found, with inexpressible sorrow, that no intelligence had been received, and that he was believed by his brother officers to be in one of those transports that had gone to the bottom. In a few days a negro servant enquired for Ensign Somerive, and Orlando in a moment recollected that it was Perseus, the man who had served Warwick some years. – He now hoped to have heard some account of his sister and his friend that might have quieted his extreme uneasiness; but the sight of Perseus only served to increase it; for he learned from him that Captain Warwick arrived at Portsmouth the evening the first transports sailed, and that, by his interest with the captain of the frigate in which the negro embarked, and some persons still higher in power, that ship was delayed for some days, at the end of which Warwick promised to appear; but as he did not, nor even at the end of some hours longer than the time he required, the captain would have incurred too great a risk by waiting longer; and therefore got under weigh with so strong and favourable a wind, that they overtook the rest of the fleet two days before they made the Pike of Teneriffe. This circumstance, however, Perseus said, was the only one that gave him hope; for he knew his master, thus missing his passage, would hire a vessel to convey him, which would probably not only take up some days, but hardly sail as they did; and therefore there was reason to hope that he might have escaped the storm in which they suffered, and it was improbable that the lady whom Orlando had seen perish, and afterwards heard was the wife of an officer of foot, was his sister.

On being questioned farther, the negro, who was very intelligent, said, that Captain Warwick had ordered him, with a great part of his baggage, on board; and that he knew his master expected a lady to go with him – but he knew not whom. The baggage was landed, and put into Orlando's lodging, where Perseus desired leave to wait upon him; and where the attention of this faithful fellow, and the hopes he gave him that Isabella and her husband were safe, contributed greatly to his recovery.

A fortnight had now elapsed since his landing, and no news of his sister reached him, nor had he a single line from England as he had been taught to expect. The sad scene at home, where he feared Isabella's elopement had created insupportable sorrow, cruelly tormented him; and the image of Monimia in continual tears and hopeless solitude, pursued him incessantly. A thousand times during the paroxysms of his fever he had insisted upon having pen and ink to write to her and to his family; and he began many letters to his father, recommending Monimia to his protection, and apologising for his conduct in regard to his sister; but the Lieutenant, Mr Fleming, had never sent any of these incoherent letters. – Orlando had now strength of body and of mind enough to look them over; but, circumstanced as he was about Isabella, he now hardly knew better than he did then, what to say that should not aggravate all the pain he lamented: something, however, it was necessary to write, as ships were now daily returning to England; and not to send some intelligence of himself would be more distressing to his friends, than the ignorance he must avow as to the fate of his sister.

Another idea however struck him, that some discovery, or even her own fears, as the moment arrived when she was to leave her father's house, might have prevented the departure of Isabella from home; and that even her intention of doing so might be unknown. – this made him hesitate whether to name her at all; and at length he determined he would not, since it would be only giving to his father an exchange, but not an alleviation of uneasiness.

He wrote then these unsatisfactory letters to his family; and afterwards one to Monimia. – He gave in all of them the best account he could of himself, described his voyage as tedious and stormy; and said, slightly, that he had been ill on his first landing; but was now recovered, and should soon proceed to join the body of his regiment with the northern army under Burgoyne. – But such was the agitation of his spirits while he was writing, from the lively idea he had of the sensations his letters would give to those to whom they were addressed, that it brought on an access of fever, and he was confined for a few days: nor had he quite recovered his usual health, when the commander of the two companies, despairing of seeing the men who were missing arrive, was ordered to muster all that remained of the two companies; and, with a party of dismounted dragoons, to find their way to the army, which was now on its march from Canada to Albany, in order to form a junction, or at least open a communication between that army and New York. The whole body, thus destined to force its way through an enemy's country, consisted, including American volunteers, of about two hundred and fifty men; but they were not incumbered with artillery, and were almost all young men, eager for actual service, and in haste to join an army, of whose brilliant success they formed the greatest expectations.

It was on the sixth of August that this small party left New York; and now Orlando, who had hitherto been in garrison, began to perceive all the horrors and devastations of war. The country, lately so flourishing, and rising so rapidly into opulence, presented nothing but the ruins of houses, from whence their miserable inhabitants had either been driven entirely, or murdered! – or had, of the burnt rafters and sad relics of their former comfortable dwellings, constructed huts on their lands, merely because they had nowhere else to go. – Even from these wretched temporary abodes they were often driven, to make way for the English soldiers; and their women and children exposed to the tempest of the night, or, what was infinitely more dreadful, to the brutality of the military. In a war so protracted, and carried on with such various success, these scenes of devastation had occurred so often, that the country appeared almost depopulated, or the few stragglers, who yet lingered round the places most eagerly contended for, had been habituated to suffer till they had almost lost the semblance of humanity. The party had now marched about seventy miles; and as they carried their provisions with them, which it was not possible to do in a great quantity, it became necessary for them to encamp, and send out foraging parties to obtain a supply before it was actually wanted. It was on the edge of one of those morasses which are called by the natives savannahs, encircled on all sides by woods, that they formed this small camp; where the Colonel, to whom the conduct of this expedition was entrusted, fortified it as well as such a situation would admit; but Lieutenant Fleming, whose attachment to Orlando a long intercourse of mutual kindness had now greatly strengthened, pointed out to him, in confidence, the defects of the station thus chosen; and declared that if any body of American troops, or rebels as they were then called, was in the country, they must be surrounded, and either compelled to surrender or fight their way through. It happened, however, that for many days they remained unmolested – some recruit of provisions was obtained, and the plan of their future march settled. The parties who went out saw no enemies to oppose them; and Orlando had now an opportunity of observing this wonderful country, so extremely unlike England, that it appeared to him to be indeed a new world. .

Every object seemed formed upon a larger scale. The rivers, more frequent than in England, were broader than the most boasted of ours, even on their approach to the sea; and the woods, larger than the oldest European forests, even those that Kings have reserved for their pleasure in France or England, consisted often of trees of such magnitude and beauty as must be seen before a perfect idea can be formed of them. What Orlando had often seen cherished in English gardens as beautiful shrubs, here rose into plants of such majestic size and foliage as made the British oak poor in comparison; and under them innumerable shrubs, of many of which he knew not the names, grew in profusion. These woods, however, had in many places suffered like the rest of the country; and in some had been set on fire – in others the trees had been felled, as means of temporary defence. – And Orlando, whose early and ingenuous philanthropy had of late been often injured by a painful sensation of disgust, could not help remarking with a sigh, that man seemed not only a creature born to consume the fruits of the earth, but to wound and deform the bosom of that earth! and he found himself almost involuntarily assenting to some of the most gloomy aphorisms of Rousseau.

But he was yet a novice; and had only of late understood, as well as a partial representation of the cause by his otherwise candid friend Fleming would let him understand, the origin of the quarrel in which he had drawn his sword.

The scenes however he had already been witness to, were, he thought, not to be justified by any cause: but his fellow soldiers seemed to see them in a very different light; and to consider the English Americans as men of an inferior species, whose resistance to the measures, whatever those might be, of the mother country, deserved every punishment that the most ferocious mode of warfare could inflict; and even the brave and generally humane Fleming endeavoured to convert Orlando, whose scruples as to the justice of the war became greater the more he heard of its origin. – He assured him that a soldier never thought of examining into such matters – 'It is,' said he, 'our business to fight; never to ask for what – for if every man, or even every officer in the service were to set about thinking, it is ten to one if any two of them agreed as to the merits of the cause. A man who takes the King's money is to do as he is bid, and never debate the matter. For my part, I have heard while I was in England a great deal of clamour upon the subject; and it has been called a war upon the people, and therefore an unpopular war. – I am no politician, nor do I desire to enter into a discussion about taxation and representation, which these fellows have made the ground for their resistance. There is no end of the nonsense that may be talked in favour of their rebellion, nor the pleas of the ministerial party. For myself, as I was brought up in the army, I have always cut the matter very short – the sword is my argument; and I have sold that to my King, and therefore must use it in his service, whatever and wherever it may be pointed out to me.'

This way of settling the matter was, however, so far from being convincing to Orlando, that it gave him new cause for reflection. He had always been told, that the will of the people was the great resort in the British Government; and that no public measure of magnitude and importance could be decided upon, but by the agreement of the Three Estates. Yet the present war, carried on against a part of their own body, and in direct contradiction of the rights universally claimed, was not only pursued at a ruinous expence, but in absolute contradiction to the wishes of the people who were taxed to support it. Orlando did not comprehend how this could be – he could not, however, though so often assured that it was no part of his business, help thinking about it; and an American prisoner, who was brought to their little camp by a scouting party just before it broke up, assisted very much to clear up his ideas on this subject. He was a man in middling life, and had kept a store at New York; but, having taken part with his own countrymen, had been sent by them to Congress, where, being a man of strong plain understanding, he had joined heartily in all the measures of resistance, and afterwards gone into the field for the same purpose: but hearing that his wife, an English woman, whom he passionately loved, and his only son, a boy of seven years old, were arrived at New York from England, whither they had gone two years before, he had obtained leave to quit his command for a short time, and had set out alone, and in disguise, in the intention of reaching the neighbourhood of New York; where, at the house of one of his temporising friends, he had appointed his wife and child to meet him – in the hope of conveying them himself, through a country abounding in perils, to a place of present safety.

But when he was within an hundred miles of the place he wished to reach (a distance that in America is reckoned a trifle), he had been met by a party of Indians, whom the British commanders had lately let loose upon the Americans; and having narrowly escaped being scalped, by promises, and some deceptions very allowable in such a situation, he was brought by the red warriors to the small camp of their allies the English, of which they had just received intelligence. As this unfortunate American immediately disclosed to the commanding officer who he really was, and for what purpose going to New York, he was deemed of consequence enough to be sent thither a prisoner; and, till this could be done, he was alternately guarded by the British officers: – a circumstance that gave Orlando an opportunity he never before had, of hearing the American party tell their own story, which served only to excite his pity for them, and a pity not unmixed with respect; while his astonishment increased as he considered the infatuation of the British Cabinet, or rather the easy acquiescence of the British People.

If his concern was called forth by witnessing the anguish of mind endured by his new acquaintance when he thought of his wife and child – anguish with which Orlando well knew how to sympathise – his surprise and curiosity were not less awakened by the appearance of the native American auxiliaries who had been called to the aid of the English. They consisted of a party of near forty, most of them young men; and headed by a celebrated veteran warrior, who was distinguished by a name which expressed, in their language, 'The bloody Captain!' Their savage appearance, and the more savage thirst of blood which they avowed – that base avidity for plunder, with an heroic contempt of danger, pain, and death, made them altogether objects of abhorrence, mingled with something like veneration: but the former sentiment altogether predominated when Mr Jamieson (the prisoner) informed him, that among all the unfair advantages which the Colonists complained of in the manner of carrying on the war, there was none that seemed so unjustifiable at that of sending forth the Indians ^[7] against them. And when Orlando saw in the hands of the Bloody Captain eleven scalps, some of them evidently those of women and children, others of very old, and consequently defenceless men; many of them fresh, which he said, with an air of triumph, he had taken from the enemies of the King of England within three weeks – the young unhardened Englishman shuddered with horror, and blushed for his country!

He could not help speaking warmly on this subject to Fleming, who answered calmly, it was very true that arming the Indians was a very severe measure – 'and their cruelty what we ourselves,' said he, 'so loudly complained of in the last war: – but after all, my friend, in war every advantage is taken by both sides; and our Government has considered, that if by this dreadful sort of warfare they can the sooner conquer the rebels and reduce them to obedience, it is in fact best for them ^[8].' Orlando, still unable to digest or approve such doctrine, could never hear of the ferocity with which these red warriors treated their prisoners, without disgust. With some of the younger among them, however, who were less inured to blood, he formed some kind of acquaintance, and learned some of their words. One of these he had distinguished from the rest, by remarking his more open countenance – his more gentle manners; and by hearing that he had, at the risk of his own life, saved a woman from the fury of his relation the Bloody Captain, when he was on the point of killing her with his tomahawk. This woman, whom they had found wandering in the woods, whither she had been driven by the British troops, who had burned her little farm and killed her husband, the young Indian, who was known by the name of the Wolf-hunter, had conducted in safety to a fort garrisoned by her own countrymen – again hazarding his own life to preserve hers.

The secret sympathy between generous minds seems to exist throughout the whole human kind; for this young warrior became soon as much attached to Orlando as his nature allowed him to be to any body; and when they left their camp, and continued their march (after having dispatched their prisoner to New York with as strong an escort as they could spare), the Wolf-hunter constantly marched by the side of his new friend; and between the little English he had picked up, and Orlando's unusual aptness to learn languages, which had however been little exercised till now, he contrived to acquire a good deal of the customs of the Indians of North America, of which he hitherto had known but little: but in regard to their wars, the more he heard of them, the more unpardonable it seemed to him to be in the managers of the war at home, to authorise them to take up the hatchet.

After a very fatiguing march of many days, during which their Indian associates were eminently useful to them in guiding their way through woods and morasses, where they were least likely to meet parties of the Colonists superior to their own, they reached the place of rendezvous, where there was a probability of their finding the army they were to join; but it had pushed forward with so much celerity, that they found themselves three days behind it: its track, however, was sufficiently marked by smoking ruins – by the corn destroyed on the ground – and by the bodies of the dead, with whom they could not either encumber themselves, or always stay to bury. The heart of Orlando sickened at the sight; but he had little time for contemplation – for a strong detachment of Americans, who had harassed the rear of the British army, were now returning northward; and meeting this body of British, an engagement ensued, in which the Provincials were repulsed with some loss – but at the expence of nine men killed and eleven wounded – among the latter was Lieutenant Fleming: his wound, however, was not dangerous, and Orlando had the satisfaction of shewing, by his unwearied attendance on him, some part of the gratitude he felt for his former friendship. But the care necessary to the wounded, and the difficulties that their own people, in order to prevent their being followed by the enemy, had every where thrown in the way of their march, made it so tedious and so dangerous, that they often despaired of effecting their purpose; and when they at length arrived, quite worn down with fatigue, had the mortification to find the forces they joined in a situation very different from what they had been taught to expect – while the main body was equally disappointed that a stronger reinforcement was not sent them from New York, and a supply of provisions, of which they began to apprehend the want. At the same time the march of such a small body of men, for so many hundred miles, through a country every where in arms against them, was a matter of wonder; and in the detail of their expedition given by the commanding officer to the General, the conduct of Orlando was spoken of in such high terms, that he was desired to make him a compliment on the occasion. Orlando, from his ignorance of the country, had entertained a faint hope that he might find Warwick already arrived in the northern army; but he had the mortification not only to discover that this hope was groundless, but his brother officers, who knew him best, were unanimously of opinion that he had perished at sea, from Orlando's account – They were sure, they said, that nothing but some such disaster would have prevented their friend Warwick from coming back with his company; and Orlando, with increased anguish of heart, assented apparently to this, and forbore to say the reasons he had to feel, that though this might not be exactly the truth, the absence of Warwick was every way to him a subject of uneasy conjecture and bitter regret.

Chapter XIII

THE increasing difficulties to which the British army, under the command of General Burgoyne, were at this period exposed, have been so often described, and so largely insisted upon, that they need not here be repeated. Deserted by the Canadians and other Americans, who were discouraged by their perilous situation – in want of necessary provisions, and seeing themselves likely to be surrounded – it was determined that, if the assistance they had been taught to expect from New York did not arrive before the expiration of another fortnight, they must give up all hopes of defence. In the mean time, however, a movement was resolved upon by a chosen body of fifteen hundred men, which brought on a general attack from the Americans, who carried part of the British lines, and night only put an end to the combat, in which a great number of brave men fell, as well English as Germans. Among the slain was Orlando's respectable friend Fleming, who, though hardly recovered of his former wound, had hurried without orders to defend the lines, and was shot through the lungs as he was leading on his men to repulse a party of the enemy with the bayonet. – Orlando, who was only a few paces from him, saw him fall; and, amid the impetuosity of the action, he ran towards him, exhorting the men to proceed. – Fleming, as he lifted him up, knew him, and, wringing his hand, said – 'Go, my dear boy – don't waste a moment upon me – I am killed! but I die contented if those scoundrels are driven off. – If you return to England, be a friend to my poor wife – to my poor little ones!' He spoke these last words with extreme difficulty, as the blood choked him. Orlando saw his noble spirit depart, and hastily ordering the black servant (who had belonged to Warwick, and now attended on him) to carry off the body, he plunged with a degree of desperation into the thickest of the battle; which lasted, however, only a few moments longer, because, as it was by that time too dark to distinguish friends from foes, each party found it necessary to retreat. The British passed the rest of the night in the melancholy employment of ascertaining their loss, which was very considerable in killed and prisoners, particularly in officers, of whom some that had been brought off the field were mortally wounded. Orlando, with concern that superseded every thought for himself, made it his first care to visit the body of his gallant friend, in a sort of lingering hope that he might yet live: but this hope was immediately at an end; and Orlando had no other comfort than in recollecting that he died gloriously, and shared an honourable grave with many other brave officers who ended a career of honour in this fatal field. The interval between this action and the removal of the British camp by night, from a situation no longer tenable, was short, but dreadful. Fatigue and famine, great as those evils were, seemed less terrible to the minds of the English, than the certainty that they must very soon surrender to an enemy whom they at once abhorred and contemned. The officers still endeavoured to encourage their men, and keep up the spirits of each other – they recollected other occasions in which armies, in a condition equally desperate, had broken through their enemies, and conquered those who hoped to have destroyed them: but the commander himself knew the fallacy of these hopes, and saw that, unless succours arrived in a very few days, the surrender of his army was inevitable.

They had now, however, a messenger from New York, with information that three thousand men were advancing to their assistance up Hudson's River; but this expedition had been so delayed, or was, after it was undertaken, so managed, that there appeared not the least probability of their arriving in time to save from the necessity of a surrender the devoted army. The same messenger, however, who had with infinite difficulty made his way to the English camp from New York, brought a few letters to the British officers – and among them, Orlando, with a beating heart, and with hands so tremulous that he could hardly break the seal, opened a packet from his sister Selina. It contained a short letter from her, the comfortless purport of which, in regard to his family, was repeated in what follows from Monimia herself, whose letter Selina had inclosed:

Rayland Hall, 28th June 1777.

'Though I know it is yet impossible for me to hear from you, every moment now seems to me an age. – Alas! Orlando, how little satisfactory was the short letter I received from Portsmouth! yet I know you could not write more, hurried as you were. You have now been gone six long – long weeks, and that is only a very small portion of the time you are to be absent, though to me it seems already a thousand years.

'I do not love, Orlando, to say much of myself, unless I could tell you any thing that would make you happy, which Heaven knows I cannot! unless it is merely that I am as well as so unhappy a being can be. It would be some comfort to me, if what I cannot tell you of myself, I could relate of your dear family: but Selina will tell you, if I do not, that your father's health is still in a very precarious state, and that all your friends have suffered greatly by Isabella's going from them, and by their not knowing what is become of her; for though she wrote to them from Portsmouth, desiring their forgiveness, and informing them that she had gone off to be married to Captain Warwick, and that her unconquerable aversion to General Tracy was partly the reason of her doing so; yet they have never heard that she was really married, nor have any of Captain Warwick's friends, of whom your father has made constant enquiries, had any intelligence of him. It is concluded that he is gone with your sister to America; but not knowing it certainly, is a continual source of distress both to Mr and Mrs Somerive; sadly aggravated, I fear, by their hearing but too much of your brother, who is known to be living in London in great splendour, which it is said he supports by gaming. Your poor mother went up with Selina about ten days since, in hopes of seeing him, and persuading him to return to his family. Selina described the meeting to me, and half broke my heart by the description. All your mother could obtain was, a sort of half promise that he would come down to West Wolverton in August or September, with which she had endeavoured to console your father; and I find has kept to herself the greatest part of what passed, and has no hope of his changing his conduct.

'The poor old General has never recovered the shock and mortification of Isabella's defection. He left West Wolverton as soon afterwards as the gout allowed him to move; and, it is said, has disinherited Captain Warwick, and given his whole fortune to his brother's son, whose title I cannot now recollect – However, he does not seem to resent Isabella's desertion of him towards the rest of your family; for I understand that it was by his means your mother procured an interview with your brother; and that he was very obliging to her and Selina while they were in London. I have, though with a heavy heart, Heaven knows! rallied my dear Selina upon this; and told her, that perhaps the gallant General, who always admired her, may have an intention of transferring his affections to her; but she assures me, and I easily believe it, that were he emperor of the world she would not accept them.

'And now, Orlando, must I talk to you of your poor Monimia – Ah! it is reluctantly I do it; for I can tell you nothing but what will make you unhappy. Mrs Rayland seems to regret your absence very much; she speaks of you every day, and appears to me to be sorry she ever suffered you to depart. Judge, dear Orlando! whether I do not execute the little offices about her, which now she will suffer no other person to do, with redoubled pleasure, when I hear her thus speaking of you like a tender mother! I wonder how I ever disliked her, and thought her severe. Ah! I wish Mrs Lennard had half as much kindness; yet has her Lady had much to disturb her lately, and my aunt reason to be in good humour. Mr Harbourne, the gentleman who has so long managed the business of the Rayland estate, is dead; and within these last ten days my aunt has prevailed upon Mrs Rayland to replace him with a Mr Roker, who she tells me is a relation of hers, and a relation of mine, which may be; but of all the disagreeable men I ever beheld, he is to me the most disagreeable – He has, however, got every thing into his hands through the influence of my aunt; and his nephew, a creature as odious as himself, is put into the house at North Park End, where Mr Harbourne used to be for a month or two; which is fitting up quite in an elegant style, as to new papering, painting, &c. I hope when it is done he will be less at this house than he is now; for, at present, he passes every day here, and very often the night; though I never could observe that his hateful cringing manners pleased Mrs Rayland, who does not know, I believe, that he has taken possession of your room. – Oh! how different a possessor from what it ought to have! I meant, Orlando, to have said as little of this disagreeable change as I could; but my unconquerable aversion to these two men has betrayed me into saying more about them than I intended: yet I find from Selina, that your father is uneasy at their introduction to the management of the Rayland estate, and says that Roker is a man of the worst character of any attorney in the country.

'Perhaps you will impatiently exclaim, Why does Monimia talk to me about these attorneys when she began with saying she would mention herself? It is, Orlando, because they have had more influence already in injuring my peace than you would suppose likely. This Roker (the nephew), were he not young enough almost to be her grandson, I should really fancy was a lover of my aunt Lennard's. He is a great raw-boned fright of a man, I think, with two eyes that look I know not how, but particularly horrible to me – a wide mouth, full of great teeth, that are only the more hideous for being white, because his face is so red that, when he grins, the contrast makes him seem ready to devour one; then he has a red beard, and a great bushy head of carroty hair: but all this my aunt says is handsome; and that this giant-looking monster, who is not, I think, above eight-and-twenty, is a fine manly figure. The man returns, or rather earns, this her good opinion of him, by flattery so fulsome that really I blush for my aunt when I hear it; which, however, she takes care I shall do as little as possible, for she is almost always out of humour with me on some pretence or other when he comes into the room where I am, and generally contrives some excuse to send me away; and before her the disagreeable monster affects not to notice me: but if ever I meet him by accident in the house, which I avoid as much as I can, he speaks to me so impertinently that I have often been provoked to tears; indeed I am convinced he would be more insolent if I did not threaten that I would acquaint my aunt.

'I pass almost every moment of the time that Mrs Rayland does not want me, in my own room; and you know how little I should regret never leaving it, if I could there possess quiet, and read the books you left me directions to go through. But even these comforts are denied your poor girl! and while my very soul sickens to tell you how, because you will in one respect fancy yourself the cause of it, it is necessary that I adhere to my promise, Orlando, and conceal nothing from you.

'You recollect, my dear friend, the pain we both endured, and the risk you incurred (of which I cannot now think without trembling), in consequence of that unlucky meeting with Sir John Belgrave. – This person, you know, left the country soon after, and went into Scotland with your brother; and I remember you telling me afterwards, that he was gone abroad for his health – Would to Heaven he had staid there, that I might never have heard again a name I could never hear without terror!

'It is to-day a week since, Mrs Rayland being extremely well, which she had not been for some days before, my aunt desired leave to go out to dinner with Mr Roker's family, who were on a visit at Great Wolverton, at farmer Stepney's. – She accordingly had the coach, and set out in great form, leaving me strict orders not to quit her mistress. After tea the evening was so warm, and Mrs Rayland felt herself so well, that she had an inclination to get into the park chair; and for Pattenson to lead the old pony in it round the park slowly, that she might see the alterations and repairs which she had been persuaded to order for the accommodation of the nephew and deputy of her new steward at North Park; and after she was seated by the footman safely in this low carriage, which you know she has not been in for almost two years, she said she found it very pleasant, and was sure she could bear to go quite up to the lodge; but, lest she should be faint, she ordered me to walk by the side of the chair with her drops. Pattenson did all he could to persuade her that the distance would be too much for her; but she spoke to him more sharply than ever I heard her do before – saying, that she was the best judge of that; and we set out, the carriage being drawn only a foot pace, so that I found no difficulty in keeping up with it. As we went along, we saw your horse lying under the chesnut trees in the long walk; for it was a very hot evening, and he had gone there for shade. Mrs Rayland called to me, and pointed him out to me – 'Poor creature!' said she, 'he looks melancholy, as if he missed his master; and he is quite solitary too in the park.' Then speaking to Pattenson, she asked if he was well taken care of? – While I, with a sigh, could have answered her remark, by saying – Ah, Madam! there are other beings who miss Orlando yet more than that beloved animal, and who are more solitary and undone than he is. – But I affected to be at ease; and hope my countenance did not betray how much my heart was otherwise. – Indeed there was the less danger of this, because Pattenson's answer, which was very surly, and signified that she had better ask about your horse of Jacob, with whom it was left in charge, if she had any doubts about it, diverted Mrs Rayland's attention from me, and fixed it upon Pattenson, towards whom she expressed her displeasure. Indeed he has seemed to me for some time to be losing ground in her favour. At length we reached the north lodge; and as the workmen were putting up a new door, which you know is next the high road from Carloraine Castle to Wolverton and other villages, and putting on a new coat of stucco on that side, Mrs Rayland ordered Pattenson to lead the chaise round thither, and stopped some moments there, while she talked to the carpenter and plasterer, who were just going from their work. She kindly said to me 'If you are tired, Mary, sit down at my feet and rest yourself.' – I assured her I was not; but she bade me get her a glass of water out of the house, and give her a few drops, lest she should find the ride too much before she got home. There was not a glass in the house; so I ran across the way to James Carter's cottage, which is, you know, about fifty yards beyond the lodge, on the opposite side. His wife went out with the water, and I followed her; when a gentleman, attended by two servants, rode up so very fast, that his horse almost trampled on me before I could cross the road. He checked it, however, when he saw me, and exclaiming: with a great oath – 'My lovely little wood-nymph! By all that's sacred she shall not now escape me!' He then alighted from his horse, and (as I conclude, not seeing Mrs Rayland and her servants, who were concealed partly by the projection of the lodge on that side, and partly by the slight turning in the road) rudely seized me. – I shrieked aloud; and the woman, who was but a few paces before me, began to remonstrate with him – I hardly knew, so great was my terror and confusion, what either of them said; but upon Pattenson's advancing with Robert, who had also accompanied the chaise, he let me go, saying, 'You are still at the Hall then; I shall see you again, for I find your gallant defender has resigned his post.' He said this as he mounted his horse, and as I, almost senseless, was led by Carter's wife towards Mrs Rayland, who, hearing from her how the gentleman had behaved, expressed great indignation; and as he was by this time past her, she ordered Pattenson to follow him, and let him know that she desired to speak to him. I would have prevented this if I had retained breath or recollection enough to speak; but I sat down on the foot-stool of the chaise, unable to utter a word to prevent Pattenson's waddling away after Sir John, to whom, as there were no hopes of his overtaking him, he hollaed – Sir John stopped his horse, and Pattenson, puffing and blowing with hurry and anger, delivered, and I suppose in no very complaisant terms, his Lady's message – I did not hear it, but I distinguished Sir John's answer, which was –

'Come to your Lady, good fellow? No; she will excuse me – my business is with young ladies; I have too much respect for the old ones to intrude upon them. My service to the ancient gentlewoman of the Hall, good Mr favourite butler, and tell her, if she has any commands for me, she must employ one of her pretty handmaids (that I saw just now, if she pleases); and she will not fail to find for her embassy a more favourable reception than I think it necessary to give your worship.' Sir John then laughing aloud at his own wit, in which his two servants accompanied him, put his horse into a gallop, and was out of sight in an instant; long before Pattenson, whom rage and indignation did not render more active, had reached Mrs Rayland, and repeated this message, not without some additions of his own, to his Lady. I think I never saw Mrs Rayland so much disturbed as at the general brutality of this rude stranger. I however soon recovered of my alarm, when I found that this very disagreeable scene had ended without bringing on any conversation as to what had formerly passed; and I hoped and believed I should hear no more of Sir John Belgrave. Mrs Rayland, from the agitation of spirits this insult had thrown her into, was quite ill when she got back to the Hall; but the next day, after she had given vent to her displeasure, by talking about it to my aunt Lennard, and every one who approached her, she seemed to recover; and the bustle that this ridiculous man had occasioned gradually died away. It happened on Friday, and on the following Sunday I had promised to meet Selina, whom I had never had an opportunity of seeing after her return from London till now. We were equally eager to meet each other; and as I have now no difficulty in obtaining leave to walk in the park when my aunt is with her Lady, I got her permission to go out on this evening, and passed with our dearest Selina an hour, the most delightful and yet the most melancholy that I have known since your departure. Selina was afraid of being missed, as she told me her father was never easy when she was out of his sight; and now only stole out while he was asleep after dinner. She left me therefore sooner than either of us wished; but after she was gone I sat some time weeping where she had left me. It was the bench, Orlando, in the fir grove, by the boat-house, where we sat all together when you made us promise to meet there, and talk of you when you should be gone. All your sister had told me of what passed in London between your mother and your brother, and of your father's dejected spirits and declining health, had affected me more than I can describe: but after I had indulged my tears some time, I recollected your charge to me to keep up my spirits, and I endeavoured to conquer this depression. The sun was nearly set, and I went over the pond-head by the great cascade, in order to go home the nearest way. I had just passed through the high plantation, and was entering the park, when I saw this hateful Sir John Belgrave approaching me. – Had I met him in the path of the plantation, it would have been impossible for me to have escaped him; but now, as the park was open before me, I ran the instant I observed him the opposite way. He pursued me for some time, intreating me to stop, and assuring me that he meant only to beg my pardon for his behaviour two days before, with a great deal of other nonsense; which I did not, however, hear much of, for I was almost in a moment within sight of the house, and I saw him turn back. I arrived quite out of breath, and sadly terrified, but I dared not complain. After I recovered myself, my greatest concern was to think that I could never meet Selina without fearing a repetition of this disagreeable adventure; but I had now nobody to listen to my complaints, or to relieve me from my sorrows. I thought the sermon of that evening the most tedious and uninteresting I had ever read and both the old ladies were certainly particularly ill humoured, my aunt more especially, who was snappish and peevish to such a degree that she almost quarrelled with Mrs Rayland: but, as she could not vent all her spleen on her, it fell upon me; and I went to bed in more than usual wretchedness, and for the first time wished that the younger Roker might return to the Hall – for to his having been two days absent I imputed the irritability of my poor aunt's temper.

'Ah! Orlando, how dreary now seemed my own room, to which when you were here, I used to retire with so much delight from all the discomforts of my lot! It was a lovely moonlight night, and yet early when I went to the turret. From the window I looked into the park, with sensations how different from those I used to feel when I expected to see you cross it! I was restless and wretched, and knew I could not sleep if I went to bed; or, if I did, I feared I should dream of Sir John Belgrave's pursuing me. I wished for some book I never had read, for you have often told me that nothing so soon quieted the mind, and led the troubled spirit away from its own sad reflections, as some amusing or instructive author; but I had none in my room but those books of your own that you gave me, which I had read over and over again; and since this Mr Roker has occasionally been in possession of your apartment next the study, and I once met him as I was going thither, I have never had the courage to venture down after the books as I used to do. Some of the poems however, Orlando, that you gave me, I am never, never weary of reading, though I can say them almost by heart; and therefore, when I was tired of looking at the moon, I took up that little volume of Gray, and read that beautiful ode to Adversity which you have so often bade me admire; and indeed I thought, Orlando that we, though suffering under its 'iron scourge and torturing hour, 'were yet in a situation more really happy than the prosperous worthless Sir John Belgrave, who was able to enjoy every luxury of life, while you were wandering about the world in danger and in sorrow. Alas! these thoughts, however consoling at first, brought on a train of others, and fears, the most terrible fears for your precious life assailed me. My fancy conjured up a thousand horrid visions, and dwelt on a thousand terrible possibilities, till at length I found myself unable to bear the wretchedness I had thus created for myself, and I determined to attempt at least to lose it in sleep and was, from mere fatigue of spirits, beginning to doze, when I was startled by a rap at the door at the back of the bed. I believed it to be a dream, too well recollecting that you were not there. When I listened a moment, and the noise was repeated, never, among all the terrors I have suffered, did I feel any alarm like this – I had not courage to speak, nor to move: my first idea was to run into my aunt's room; but then I must have discovered to her what we have so anxiously concealed; and of which, I believe, she never had the least notion; for whatever might be her suspicions of our meeting, she never seemed to guess how. While I deliberated in the most fearful agitation what it would be best to do, the noise was made a third time, louder than before; and a voice called, in a half whisper, Miss! Miss!

'For God's sake, who is there?' cried I, hastening to dress myself. 'You cannot have any business there, whoever you are, and I will call my aunt and the servants.'

'No, no, Miss!' cried a man's voice aloud; 'don't do that, for you will only betray yourself; I mean you no harm, but, on the contrary, good. – Lord, Miss, 'tis only me; and I would not have frighted you so at this time o'night if I could have met you by day. I have got a letter for you.'

'I now knew, by the voice, that it was Jacob, the under game-keeper; and though I trembled still with fear, it was mixed with a sensation of joy, for I hoped the letter was from you. 'A letter!' said I. 'Oh, pray give it me instantly.' Yet I recollected, as instantly, that it was foolish to open the door. The man said, eagerly, 'But make haste then, Miss, and take it.' – 'No,' answered I; 'leave it at the door, or put it under it; I cannot open the door, for it is nailed up.' – 'Ah! Miss, Miss!' cried the man; 'it did not used to be nailed up when I know who was here.' This speech, though I know not why, increased again the terror which had a little subsided; and his manner of speaking of you gave me a confused idea that the letter was not from you. 'Where did you get the letter, Jacob?' said I; 'and who is it from?' – 'Never mind that,' replied he, 'it is a letter that will please you, I can tell you.' – 'I will not receive it,' answered I, 'unless I know whom it is from.' – 'Pooh pooh! what a to-do here!' said the man, in a very impertinent manner – 'Well then, if you are so squeamish all of a sudden, I'll leave the letter, and come to-morrow up the stairs the same way for an answer.'

'Jacob then seemed to go down; and I thought I heard him shut the door of the lower turret room after him; but, for the world, I could not have opened that of my room. Oh, Orlando! consider what I must have suffered, from supposing there might be a letter lying without it; and that only a few pieces of half-decayed board were between me and the first intelligence I had received of you! Yet it was also possible that it might be from some other person, though I could not conjecture who should write to me: but there was something of impertinent assurance in the manner of the game-keeper that shocked me; and I well recollected that you once thought of our corresponding through his means, yet afterwards determined not to hazard it, and seemed sorry that you had entrusted him so far. I will not attempt to describe the state of mind in which I passed the night. It was not, luckily for me, very long; but the sun had risen some time before I could acquire courage enough to open the door, and even then I trembled. But my hopes vanished, or rather were exchanged for the most alarming fears; the moment I saw that if the letter contained any news of you it was not from yourself. I know not how I opened it, for I expected now nothing but tidings of despair; when, casting my eyes on the name that concluded it, for I could not read the contents at that moment, I saw that of Sir John Berkely Belgrave; and though I instantly comprehended the insult it contained, I was relieved find that it was not written by some friend of yours, to tell me what you were unable to write yourself.

'I will not, Orlando, copy this ridiculous billet; but as I determined neither to answer it, nor to give the officious Jacob excuse to come up the stairs to my room, I thought, after some consideration, that the best thing I could do would be to speak to this letter-carrier, though nothing could be more disagreeable to me, unless it was his coming for an answer. As soon as breakfast was over, I summoned all the courage I could, and went out to the stable yard, where I knew it was most likely I should meet him. As soon as he saw me, he came eagerly towards me; and none of the other men being within hearing, he said, 'I hope you have got an answer for Sir John to give me, Miss?'

'No,' I answered; 'I neither have an answer, nor ever intend to give one to so impertinent a letter; and I beg you, Mr Jacob, not to disturb me any more with messages so very improper; for, if you do, it will oblige me to complain to Mrs Lennard.'

'The fellow had the impertinence to say, that if I would not give him an answer, Sir John would come for one himself; but I hope and believe I shall hear no more of it, as it is now Thursday, and I have had no more visits. I have fastened the door as well as I am able, and would secure that below if I knew how: but it is not possible for me to do it myself; and were I to ask any other person, it would put whoever it was in possession of the secret which we have so much reason to regret was ever divulged.

'But do not, ever dear Orlando, be uneasy – I am persuaded Sir John is satisfied with his frolic, and that I shall hear no more of it; indeed I believe he has left the country; but I own I am uncomfortable at being so much in the power of such a man as this game-keeper – However, I now leave half open the door into the passage that leads to my aunt's room; and, upon the least alarm, I would fly to her, and rather own the truth, than subject myself to a repetition of such visits, either from this worthless servant or his employer. Do not therefore, I again entreat you, my dear friend, be uneasy.

'What a letter have I written, Orlando! and how little pleasure will any one sentence in it give to you! I, who would die to procure you the smallest satisfaction, am destined to be the cause of your unhappiness. Sometimes I am so wretched when I think of this, that I wish we had never met, or resisted, in its beginning, an attachment likely to make all your days uneasy; yet I feel that were I without this tender affection my life would be a blank, and my existence not worth having.

'I will not conjure you to remember your poor Monimia! I must indeed end a letter which I have made so very long, that I am afraid Selina will not be able to send it in her packet. Oh! how hard it is to say adieu! yet my tears fall so fast that it is quite time – God bless you, my dear, dear friend!'

Orlando, during the perusal of this letter, was so entirely occupied by it, that he forgot where he was. The Hall and all its inhabitants were present to him; and he started up to demand instant satisfaction of Sir John Belgrave, and to chastise the mercenary and insolent servant, when he found himself, by the distance of many thousand miles, deprived of all power of protecting his Monimia, under marching orders to remove he knew not whither, and cut off from all communications with her. He stamped about the tent in a turbulence of mind little short of phrensy – cursed with ineffectual vengeance the objects of his indignation, whom he could not reach; and was awakened from this dreadful state, only by a message from his Colonel that he must that moment attend him. – Hardly knowing what he did or said, he followed the serjeant who brought these orders; and was directed, instead of preparing to go with the camp, to make himself ready, with another officer, the negro Perseus, and three rank and file, for an expedition to New York, where it was hoped so small a party might arrive unobserved; and as the men were chosen who were the fittest for so perilous an exploit, Orlando was named, from the experience his commanding officer had in his first march of his patience, prudence, and resolution. Orlando cared not whither he went or what became of him – he obeyed, as soon as possible, the orders he had received; and that night, at eleven o'clock, began his excursion with his five companions, and crossed Hudson's River.

Chapter XIV

THE small party dispatched on this hazardous adventure, having crossed the river, penetrated a wood near it, where they rested till the light of the morning should afford them assistance to pass through it. One of the soldiers, who had a knowledge of the country, made light of the difficulties of their undertaking; and the whole party were in some degree cheerful, except Orlando, who, far from attending to the perils that surrounded himself, was lost in thinking of those to which Monimia was exposed; and in meditating schemes of vengeance against her persecutors, which he forgot that it was impossible for him to accomplish. In the midst of an immense American forest, surrounded with almost every species of danger, and suffering, if not actual hunger, a great deficiency of nourishment (for the whole army had been some days on short allowance), he felt nothing but that Monimia was liable to the insults of Sir John Belgrave; perhaps already the victim of his infamous designs – an idea that stung him almost to madness. The painful news he had heard from his father's house added to the anguish of his spirit; and perhaps never was a mind more distracted with a variety of tormenting apprehensions, not one of which he had the means of alleviating. As soon as it was light the party renewed their journey, but had not proceeded half a quarter of a mile towards the thickest part of the wood before the war-whoop burst forth; and a shower of bullets fell among them, wounding some, and killing one of their small party. The Indians rushed forward the moment the English had at random fired among the trees, and Orlando saw no more; a violent blow on the head deprived him of his senses, and to all appearance of his life.

When he recovered his recollection, he found himself lying on the ground in one of those temporary huts which the Indians erect in their hunting parties. It was night, and he heard them in loud conversation near him – He found he was their prisoner, and concluded he was reserved for those horrid tortures of which he had heard so many terrific descriptions. Death appeared to him most desirable; and his great hope was that he should by death escape them – for the pain from the wound in his head was so excessive, that he doubted not but that his scull was fractured, and of course his dissolution near.

He attempted to rise; not with any hope of escape, for that was impossible, but with a sort of confused desire to accelerate his fate; when an Indian entered the hut with a light, in whom Orlando discovered his former acquaintance the Wolf-hunter.

This young savage approached and spoke kindly to him, telling him, that though his brothers had killed and scalped the rest of the party, he had saved him, and that the chief had promised him his life.

Orlando in a faint voice thanked him for his kindness, which he said was too late, as he felt the wound in his head to be mortal. He then enquired why the Indian warriors had fallen upon a party of their allies and brethren, the soldiers of the king of England?

The Wolf-hunter replied, that the English had not dealt fairly with them – that they were promised provisions, rum, and plunder, instead of which they got nothing in the English camp, but had lost some of their best men in defending the lines; and that, the English having thus deceived them, they were no longer their allies, but were going home to their own lands, determined to plunder the stragglers of whatever party they might meet in their way, to make themselves amends for the loss of time, and the heavier loss of brave warriors that had perished by believing the promises of the great English captain.

Orlando's generous heart bled for his comrades thus inhumanly sacrificed; and he lamented that they, as well as himself, had not fallen like his friend Fleming in the field. He asked if all the men who were with him had perished. His Indian friend answered, All but two – a white man and a negro – who had escaped while they were plundering the rest.

Orlando heard this with a sigh of deeper concern; for he knew that, unless these unfortunate men could again cross the river and regain the camp, they would probably die in the woods of hunger and fatigue. The Wolf-hunter then enquired of Orlando, if he thought he could march with them in the morning? – To which he answered, he hoped so; but at the same time imagined that he should long before that time be released from all his sufferings. He knew, however, that to complain would not only be fruitless, but injure him in the opinion of his host, who made light of the wound he had received; and telling Orlando he would cure it, he cut off the hair, washed it with rum, and then laid on it a pledget of chewed leaves. An Indian blanket was thrown over him, for his own clothes were taken away; and the young savage giving him a drink, such as they had themselves been merry over, of rum, water and honey, desired him to sleep, and in a few moments set him the example.

Giddy and disturbed as was the unhappy Orlando from the effects of the blow, he now began to awaken to a sense of his condition; and in believing that the injury he had received was not of so fatal a nature as he had on the first sensation of pain imagined, he felt infinitely more miserable in supposing that he should live in such insupportable anguish as his fears for Monimia and his family would inflict upon him – condemned probably as long as his life lasted, to drag on a wretched existence among the savage tribes of the American wilderness, and cut off from all communication with his country.

In such reflections on his own wretchedness he passed this miserable night, his Indian protector soundly sleeping in the same hut. Before the dawn of the day they began to move; as the chief, or leader of the party, was anxious to escape, with the plunder they had already got, to the Iroquois country, from which they came. Orlando, contrary to his expectations, found he could walk; and his friend the Wolf-hunter, pleased with the resolution he exerted, sometimes assisted him when he appeared on the point of failing in this rapid and difficult march, through a country known and accessible only to Indians. His shoes and stockings had been taken from him, and his feet bled at every step: but he went on in a sort of desperation, hoping that the more severe his sufferings were, the sooner they would end; nor was it the least of these, that, on the first dawn of morning, he saw the scalps of his unfortunate comrades triumphantly carried by the chief of the party, whose title was the Wild Elk.

New scenes of horror awaited him on his way. As plunder was now the avowed purpose of this party of Iroquois, which consisted of near forty men, they attacked the defenceless villages of the English Americans, whose men were out with the army; and destroyed the women and children, or led them away to captivity infinitely worse than death. Some few the Wolf-hunter, who was the second in power, was influenced by the entreaties of Orlando to spare; but even these were, he feared, reserved only for a more lingering and deplorable fate; and in fact many hundreds of the unhappy people, thus driven from their dwellings in the course of the war, perished by famine in the woods and gullies.

Orlando was now nearly recovered of the wound in his head, notwithstanding so rude a method of cure; but, in fact, the skull had not been injured. The blow was given with the butt end of a musket, and not with a tomahawk, whose wounds are almost always mortal. His friend the Wolf-hunter had equipped him like an Indian warrior. His fine hair was cut off, all but a long lock on the crown of his head – and he was distinguished from an Iroquois by nothing but his English complexion. In these circumstances, after a long and fatiguing march of eleven days, he arrived with his protector at the camp or rendezvous of those Indians who had taken up the hatchet as allies to the king of England, where they halted, and held a general council. A party, who had just arrived before them, brought intelligence of the convention of Saratoga, so fatal to the British, and their German allies: in consequence of this, one body of the Indians returned again towards the seat of war, on a scheme of general depredation; and the other, in which was the Wolf-hunter, who carried every where with him his English friend, went to the town of their district, with an intention of recruiting their numbers, and falling upon the back settlements while they were in their present defenceless state.

The ground was now every where frozen; and their way seemed to lay over sharpened flints – so impenetrable it was become. Orlando was enured to every personal suffering: but those of the unhappy victims of this war – victims that every day seemed to multiply around him, and very few of whom he could save, were a continual source of torment to him; while, at every pause of these horrors, the fears of what might happen, perhaps had already happened at home, were even more dreadful than his actual miseries. He found that Perseus, Warwick's black servant that had attended him, was among those who escaped from his unfortunate party: if he did not fall a victim to hunger, or failed of being destroyed by some other wandering horde of savages, he might, as he was a stout man, enured to hardship, and of good courage, find his way to New-York, and from thence to England, where he would undoubtedly report to Mr Somerive and his distracted family, that he saw Orlando die under the hands of an Indian. The wretchedness that such news would inflict on his friends, on his Monimia, there was no likelihood of his being able to remove; for, in his present situation, there was no means of conveying a letter with any hope of its ever reaching the place of its destination. He tried to prevail on his savage friend to let him go with the party who were returning towards Boston, in hopes that he might escape from them, and find his way alone to some fort either of English Americans or English but this, for reasons which Orlando did not altogether comprehend, the Wolf-hunter refused, and even expressed some resentment that it was proposed.

By the time they had reached the Indian village, it was the end of November; and the winter set in with such severity that the Indians, however eager after plunder, felt but little disposed to encounter its rigour. Orlando then saw that the dreary months between November and April he must be condemned to pass among these barbarians, deprived of all human intercourse, and in a kind of living death. Even if he could have forced his mind from the consideration of his own disastrous situation, to contemplate the wonderful variety which Nature exhibits, and to have explored these wild scenes, this resource was denied him; for the whole country was a wide waste of snow, and every thing around him seemed cold and hopeless as his own destiny.

The booty which the Indians had divided at their camp comprised, among other articles, a small port-folio of his, a memorandum book, his pocket book, and a writing case: these had fallen to the share of his friend the Wolf-hunter, who was very willing to restore to Orlando things of so little use to himself. This was the only alleviation the unhappy Orlando found to his sorrows; yet it was a melancholy one, to write letters which he could hardly expect would ever be read, to make for his father a journal of occurrences so mournful, and to feel, while he wrote it, that it was too probable the eye for which it was intended was closed for ever.

The sufferings of Orlando were such as time, the great softener of most affliction, served only to aggravate. What would he have given for even a hope of hearing from England! and how many conjectures were continually passing through his mind, each more distressing than another! In his dreams, he often saw his Monimia pursued by Sir John Belgrave entreating his protection, and he started up to chastise the inhuman persecutor of her innocence. At other times fancy, more favourable, represented her as she used to appear in the early days of their attachment – cheerful, because unconscious of having erred – and tenderly trusting to him, even when she discovered that their clandestine meetings, were contrary to the strict line of duty and propriety. He heard her voice ~ he admired her simple beauty, her innocent tenderness, the strength and candour of her uncultivated understanding – and supposed himself engaged, as he used to be, in the delightful task of improving it. Dreary was the contrast between his real situation and these soothing visions; and he often preferred such as gave him sleeping torment, to such as by flattering with happiness rendered more insupportable the despair which consumed him.

Five weeks, five miserable and dreary weeks had now crept away; when something like a change of ideas was offered by the arrival of two French Canadians and a party of Indians from that country, who had travelled across the snows and frozen lakes to the Indian village.

It was some comfort to the desolate Orlando to hear a European language; and though he could speak but little French, he could read it extremely well. But with these men he now constantly conversed, and soon found himself able to speak it fluently; from whence he was encouraged to hope that he might contrive to get to Quebec, and that from thence a passage to Europe might easily be obtained. –

'The miserable have no other medicine
But only hope' –
MEASURE FOR MEASURE.

– and of this the young soldier of late had so little, that the least glimpse of more restored his dejected spirits; which, when all the evils he felt or feared are remembered, it will be acknowledged that nothing but a temper naturally sanguine, and a constitution unusually strong, could have enabled him so long to support.

On sounding his savage protector, who was extremely attached to him, he found it seemed not very unlikely that he might go himself with five or six young warriors to Quebec to trade early in the spring, hunting or fighting on their way as occasion might offer. His Canadian friends encouraged this plan; and Orlando ventured to promise a considerable present of spirits from the governor of Quebec, as an acknowledgement for the restoration of an English officer; and made many promises to the Wolf-hunter, of sending him from England what should give him a great superiority over all his countrymen, if he would release him, and promote his return to Europe. The means of conciliating this his Indian master, and procuring his consent to a scheme that he formerly seemed so averse to, were suggested to him by his new Canadian friends, and promised to be successful.

Thus relieved by hope, the months of January, February, and March, passed less heavily. The Spring, which in America approaches not gradually as it does in England, but; appears at once, surprised him by the sudden change which it produced. The snow was gone; and, in a very few days, the whole country was covered with verdure and burst into bloom. A thousand birds filled the extensive forests, as gay in their plumage, as exquisite in their song; and, whichever way Orlando looked, a new Eden seemed to be opening around him.

On the 20th of April 1778, Orlando, the French Canadians, and the Wolf-hunter leading a party of five-and-twenty Indian warriors, set out for Quebec – the Indians carrying great quantities of furs, the spoils of the animals they had taken during the Winter. Of these Orlando carried his share; and now, re-animated by the soothing expectation of being restored to his country, he endeavoured to conform himself to the modes of his savage hosts, and was indeed become almost as expert as hunter, in their own methods, as the most active among them.

They had travelled some hundred miles, and were within a few days journey of Quebec, when it was resolved by the Wolf-hunter to encamp for some days, in a spot particularly favourable to hunting. This determination, however unpleasing to Orlando, he knew was not to be disputed; and, though every delay was death to him, he was compelled to submit to what no remonstrance would avert.

The camp, therefore, was formed; and if any local circumstance could have reconciled him to the procrastination of a journey on which all the hopes of his deliverance from his wretched and tedious captivity depended, it was the very uncommon beauty of the scenery amid which these huts were raised.

This was on the banks of the river St Lawrence, at a spot where it was about a mile and a quarter over. The banks where they encamped were of an immense height, composed of limestone and calcined shells; and an area of about an hundred yards was between the edge of this precipice, which hung over the river, and a fine forest of trees, so magnificent and stately as to sink the woods of Norway into insignificance. On the opposite side of the river lay an extensive savannah, alive with cattle, and coloured with such a variety of swamp plants, that their colour, even at that distance, detracted something from the vivid green of the new sprung grass: beyond this the eye was lost in a rich and various landscape, quite unlike any thing that European prospects offer; and the acclivity on which the tents stood sinking very suddenly on the left, the high cliffs there gave place to a cypress swamp, or low ground, entirely filled with these trees; while on the right the rocks, rising suddenly and sharply, were clothed with wood of various species; the ever-green oak, the scarlet oak, the tulip tree, and magnolia, seemed bound together by festoons of flowers, some resembling the convolvuluses of our gardens, and others the various sorts of clematis, with vignenias, and the Virginian creeper; some of these already in bloom, others only in the first tender foliage of spring: beneath these fragrant wreaths that wound about the trees, tufts of rhododendron and azalea, of andromedas and calmias, grew in the most luxuriant beauty; and strawberries already ripening, or even ripe, peeped forth among the rich vegetation of grass and flowers. On this side all was cheerful and lovely – on the other mournful and gloomy: the latter suited better with the disposition Orlando was in; and he reared his little hut on that side next the cypress swamp, and under the covert of the dark fir trees that waved over it. They had been here three days, when, with the usual capriciousness of his country, the Wolf-hunter determined to recommence their journey – a circumstance that gave Orlando some satisfaction; and he went to his couch of bear-skin with more disposition to sleep than he had felt for some time, and, contrary to his usual custom, soon sunk to repose; and his dreams were of his Monimia, soothing and consolatory.

There is in America a night hawk^[9], whose cry is believed by the Indians always to portend some evil to those who hear it. In war, they affirm that if a chief falls, the funeral cry of this bird announces it to his distant survivors. Ignorance, the mother of superstition, has so deeply impressed this on the minds of the Indians, that it is an article of their faith, and Orlando had seen some of the most courageous and fierce among them depressed and discouraged by hearing the shriek of this bird of woe near their tents.

From the most delicious dream of Rayland Hall, and of Monimia given to him by the united consent of Mrs Rayland and his father, he was suddenly awakened by the loud shriek of this messenger of supposed ill tidings; piercing, and often repeated, it was echoed back from the woods; and Orlando, once roused to a comparison between his visionary and his real situation, was alive to the keenest sensations of sorrow. The hateful noise still continued, and he went out of his tent, for he knew any further attempt to sleep would be vain – Alas! the turrets of Rayland Hall were no longer painted on his imagination – instead of them he looked perpendicularly down on a hollow, where the dark knots of cypress seemed, by the dim light of early morning, which threatened storms, to represent groups of supernatural beings in funereal habits; and over them he saw, slowly sailing amid the mist that arose from the swamp, two or three of the birds which had so disturbed him. Great volumes of heavy fog seemed to be rolling from the river, and the sun appeared red and lurid through the loaded atmosphere. Orlando endeavoured to shake off the uncomfortable sensations, which, in despite of his reason, hung about him; but he rather indulged than checked them, in throwing upon paper the following

SONNET

ILL omen'd bird! whose cries portentous float
O'er yon savannah with the mournful wind,
While as the Indian hears your piercing note
Dark dread of future evil fills his mind –
Wherefore with early lamentations break
The dear delusive visions of repose?
Why, from so short felicity awake
My wounded senses to substantial woes?
O'er my sick soul, thus rous'd from transient rest,
Pale Superstition sheds her influence drear,
And to my shuddering fancy would suggest,
Thou com'st to speak of every woe I fear –
But aid me, Heaven! my real ills to bear,
Nor let my spirit yield to phantoms of despair.

Footnotes

[Chapter IV]

↑  So admirably described in the exquisite poem of the Task, where he speaks of the alcove.

– 'Impress'd
By rural carvers, who with knives deface
The pannels, leaving an obscure, rude name,
In characters uncouth, and spelt amiss.'

↑  THOMSON.

[Chapter VIII]

↑  Ensign.

[Chapter IX]

↑  Gray's Ode on a distant prospect of Eton College.

[Chapter XI]

↑  It has lately been alleged in defence of the Slave Trade, that Negroes on board Guineamen are allowed almost as much room as a Soldier in a Transport. – Excellent reasoning!

↑  Richard the Third.

[Chapter XII]

↑  'Several nations of savages were inducted to take up arms as allies to his Britannic Majesty. Not only the humanity, but the policy of employing them was questioned in Great Britain. The opposers of it contended, that Indians were capricious, inconstant, and intractable; their rapacity insatiate, and their actions cruel and barbarous. At the same time their services were represented as uncertain, and that no dependence could be placed on their engagements. On the other hand, the zeal of the British Minister for reducing the revolted Colonies was so violent as to make them, in their excessive wrath, forget that their adversaries were men. They contended that, in their circumstances, every appearance of lenity, by inciting to disobedience, and thereby increasing the objects of punishment, was eventual cruelty. In their opinion, partial severity was general mercy; and the only method of speedily crushing the rebellion was to envelop its abettors in such complicated distress, as, by rendering their situation intolerable, would make them willing to accept the proffered blessings of peace.' Ramsay's History of the American Revolution. – The happy effects of this barbarous policy never appeared. Of the tragical scenes it occasioned, the reader, if he or she delight in studying circumstances in this war redounding to the honour of British humanity, is referred to the Annual Register for 1779, where an account is given of the expedition of sixteen hundred men, among whom one fourth were Indians, the rest British Americans in the interest and service of Government (these Americans were then called Tories), to the forts Kingston and Wilkesborough, in the settlement of Wyoming on the Susquehanna. Those who have so loudly exclaimed against a whole nation struggling for its freedom, on account of the events of the past summer (events terrible enough, God knows!), are entreated to recollect how much the exploits of this expedition (even as related by our own historian) exceed any thing that happened on the 10th of August, the 2nd of September, or at any one period of the execrated Revolution in France – and own, that there are savages of all countries – even of our own!

↑  'The same sort of sophistry was used by the monster Catharine de Medicis to urge her son, the infamous Charles the Ninth, to the massacre of the Protestants in 1572. – 'What pity,' said she, 'do we not shew in being cruel! – What cruelty would it not be to have pity!'

[Chapter XIV]

↑  Supposed to be the Caprimulgus Americanus: the bird that is called by the Anglo-Americans 'Whip poor Will,' because his notes or cry seem to express those words.