Ormond; Or, The Secret Witness. Volume 3 (of 3)

by Charles Brockden Brown

  CHAPTER VIII.

  These incidents and reflections were speedily transmitted to me. I hadalways believed the character and machinations of Ormond to be worthy ofcaution and fear. His means of information I did not pretend, andthought it useless, to investigate. We cannot hide our actions andthoughts from one of powerful sagacity, whom the detection sufficientlyinterests to make him use all the methods of detection in his power. Thestudy of concealment is, in all cases, fruitless or hurtful. All thatduty enjoins is to design and to execute nothing which may not beapproved by a divine and omniscient Observer. Human scrutiny is neitherto be solicited nor shunned. Human approbation or censure can never beexempt from injustice, because our limited perceptions debar us from athorough knowledge of any actions and motives but our own.

  On reviewing what had passed between Constantia and me, I recollectednothing incompatible with purity and rectitude. That Ormond was apprizedof all that had passed, I by no means inferred from the tenor of hisconversation with Constantia; nor, if this had been incontestablyproved, should I have experienced any trepidation or anxiety on thataccount.

  His obscure and indirect menaces of evil were of more importance. Hisdiscourse on this topic seemed susceptible only of two constructions.Either he intended some fatal mischief, and was willing to torment herby fears, while he concealed from her the nature of her danger, that hemight hinder her from guarding her safety by suitable precautions; or,being hopeless of rendering her propitious to his wishes, his malice wassatisfied with leaving her a legacy of apprehension and doubt.Constantia's unacquaintance with the doctrines of that school in whichOrmond was probably instructed led her to regard the conduct of this manwith more curiosity and wonder than fear. She saw nothing but adisposition to sport with her ignorance and bewilder her with doubts.

  I do not believe myself destitute of courage. Rightly to estimate thedanger and encounter it with firmness are worthy of a rational being;but to place our security in thoughtlessness and blindness is only lessignoble than cowardice. I could not forget the proofs of violence whichaccompanied the death of Mr. Dudley. I could not overlook, in the recentconversation with Constantia, Ormond's allusion to her murdered father.It was possible that the nature of this death had been accidentallyimparted to him; but it was likewise possible that his was the knowledgeof one who performed the act.

  The enormity of this deed appeared by no means incongruous with thesentiments of Ormond. Human life is momentous or trivial in our eyes,according to the course which our habits and opinions have taken.Passion greedily accepts, and habit readily offers, the sacrifice ofanother's life, and reason obeys the impulse of education and desire.

  A youth of eighteen, a volunteer in a Russian army encamped inBessarabia, made prey of a Tartar girl, found in the field of a recentbattle. Conducting her to his quarters, he met a friend, who, on somepretence, claimed the victim. From angry words they betook themselves toswords. A combat ensued, in which the first claimant ran his antagonistthrough the body. He then bore his prize unmolested away, and, havingexercised brutality of one kind upon the helpless victim, stabbed her tothe heart, as an offering to the _manes_ of Sarsefield, the friend whomhe had slain. Next morning, willing more signally to expiate his guilt,he rushed alone upon a troop of Turkish foragers, and brought away fiveheads, suspended, by their gory locks, to his horse's mane. These hecast upon the grave of Sarsefield, and conceived himself fully to haveexpiated yesterday's offence. In reward for his prowess, the generalgave him a commission in the Cossack troops. This youth was Ormond; andsuch is a specimen of his exploits during a military career of eightyears, in a warfare the most savage and implacable, and, at the sametime, the most iniquitous and wanton, which history records.

  With passions and habits like these, the life of another was a triflingsacrifice to vengeance or impatience. How Mr. Dudley had excited theresentment of Ormond, by what means the assassin had accomplished hisintention without awakening alarm or incurring suspicion, it was not forme to discover. The inextricability of human events, the imperviousnessof cunning, and the obduracy of malice, I had frequent occasions toremark.

  I did not labour to vanquish the security of my friend. As toprecautions, they were useless. There was no fortress, guarded bybarriers of stone and iron and watched by sentinels that never slept, towhich she might retire from his stratagems. If there were such aretreat, it would scarcely avail her against a foe circumspect andsubtle as Ormond.

  I pondered on the condition of my friend. I reviewed the incidents ofher life. I compared her lot with that of others. I could not butdiscover a sort of incurable malignity in her fate. I felt as if it weredenied to her to enjoy a long life or permanent tranquillity. I askedmyself what she had done, entitling her to this incessant persecution.Impatience and murmuring took place of sorrow and fear in my heart. WhenI reflected that all human agency was merely subservient to a divinepurpose, I fell into fits of accusation and impiety.

  This injustice was transient, and soberer views convinced me that everyscheme, comprising the whole, must be productive of partial andtemporary evil. The sufferings of Constantia were limited to a moment;they were the unavoidable appendages of terrestrial existence; theyformed the only avenue to wisdom, and the only claim to uninterruptedfruition and eternal repose in an after-scene.

  The course of my reflections, and the issue to which they led, wereunforeseen by myself. Fondly as I doted upon this woman, methought Icould resign her to the grave without a murmur or a tear. While mythoughts were calmed by resignation, and my fancy occupied with nothingbut the briefness of that space and evanescence of that time whichsevers the living from the dead, I contemplated, almost withcomplacency, a violent or untimely close to her existence.

  This loftiness of mind could not always be accomplished or constantlymaintained. One effect of my fears was to hasten my departure to Europe.There existed no impediment but the want of a suitable conveyance. Inthe first packet that should leave America, it was determined to securea passage. Mr. Melbourne consented to take charge of Constantia'sproperty, and, after the sale of it, to transmit to her the money thatshould thence arise.

  Meanwhile, I was anxious that Constantia should leave her present abodeand join me in New York. She willingly adopted this arrangement, butconceived it necessary to spend a few days at her house in Jersey. Shecould reach the latter place without much deviation from the straightroad, and she was desirous of resurveying a spot where many of herinfantile days had been spent.

  This house and domain I have already mentioned to have once belonged toMr. Dudley. It was selected with the judgement and adorned with the tasteof a disciple of the schools of Florence and Vicenza. In his view,cultivation was subservient to the picturesque, and a mansion waserected, eminent for nothing but chastity of ornaments and simplicity ofstructure. The massive parts were of stone; the outer surfaces weresmooth, snow-white, and diversified by apertures and cornices, in whicha cement uncommonly tenacious was wrought into proportions the mostcorrect and forms the most graceful. The floors, walls, and ceilings,consisted of a still more exquisitely-tempered substance, and werepainted by Mr. Dudley's own hand. All appendages of this building, asseats, tables, and cabinets, were modelled by the owner's particulardirection, and in a manner scrupulously classical.

  He had scarcely entered on the enjoyment of this splendid possession,when it was ravished away. No privation was endured with more impatiencethan this; but, happily, it was purchased by one who left Mr. Dudley'sarrangements unmolested, and who shortly after conveyed it entire toOrmond. By him it was finally appropriated to the use of Helena Cleves,and now, by a singular contexture of events, it had reverted to thosehands in which the death of the original proprietor, if no other changehad been made in his condition, would have left it. The farm stillremained in the tenure of a German emigrant, who held it partly oncondition of preserving the garden and mansion in safety and in perfectorder.

  This retreat was now revisited by Constantia, after an interval of fouryears. Autumn had
made some progress, but the aspect of nature was, soto speak, more significant than at any other season. She was agreeablyaccommodated under the tenant's roof, and found a nameless pleasure intraversing spaces in which every object prompted an endless train ofrecollections.

  Her sensations were not foreseen. They led to a state of mindinconsistent, in some degree, with the projects adopted in obedience tothe suggestions of a friend. Every thing in this scene had been createdand modelled by the genius of her father. It was a kind of fane,sanctified by his imaginary presence.

  To consign the fruits of his industry and invention to foreign andunsparing hands seemed a kind of sacrilege, for which she almost fearedthat the dead would rise to upbraid her. Those images which bind us toour natal soil, to the abode of our innocent and careless youth, wererecalled to her fancy by the scenes which she now beheld. These wereenforced by considerations of the dangers which attended her voyage fromstorms and from enemies, and from the tendency to revolution and warwhich seemed to actuate all the nations of Europe. Her native countrywas by no means exempt from similar tendencies, but these evils wereless imminent, and its manners and government, in their presentmodifications, were unspeakably more favourable to the dignity andimprovement of the human race than those which prevailed in any part ofthe ancient world.

  My solicitations and my obligation to repair to England overweighed herobjections, but her new reflections led her to form new determinationswith regard to this part of her property. She concluded to retainpossession, and hoped that some future event would allow her to returnto this favourite spot without forfeiture of my society. An abode ofsome years in Europe would more eminently qualify her for the enjoymentof retirement and safety in her native country. The time that shouldelapse before her embarkation, she was desirous of passing among theshades of this romantic retreat.

  I was by no means reconciled to this proceeding. I loved my friend toowell to endure any needless separation without repining. In addition tothis, the image of Ormond haunted my thoughts, and gave birth toincessant but indefinable fears. I believed that her safety would verylittle depend upon the nature of her abode, or the number orwatchfulness of her companions. My nearness to her person wouldfrustrate no stratagem, nor promote any other end than my ownentanglement in the same fold. Still, that I was not apprized each hourof her condition, that her state was lonely and sequestered, weresources of disquiet, the obvious remedy to which was her coming to NewYork. Preparations for departure were assigned to me, and these requiredmy continuance in the city.

  Once a week, Laffert, her tenant, visited, for purposes of traffic, thecity. He was the medium of our correspondence. To him I intrusted aletter, in which my dissatisfaction at her absence, and the causes whichgave it birth, were freely confessed.

  The confidence of safety seldom deserted my friend. Since her mysteriousconversation with Ormond, he had utterly vanished. Previous to thatinterview, his visits or his letters were incessant and punctual; butsince, no token was given that he existed. Two months had elapsed. Hegave her no reason to expect a cessation of intercourse. He had partedfrom her with his usual abruptness and informality. She did not conceiveit incumbent on her to search him out, but she would not have beendispleased with an opportunity to discuss with him more fully themotives of her conduct. This opportunity had been hitherto denied.

  Her occupations in her present retreat were, for the most part, dictatedby caprice or by chance. The mildness of autumn permitted her to ramble,during the day, from one rock and one grove to another. There was aluxury in musing, and in the sensations which the scenery and silenceproduced, which, in consequence of her long estrangement from them, wereaccompanied with all the attractions of novelty, and from which shewould not consent to withdraw.

  In the evening she usually retired to the mansion, and shut herself upin that apartment which, in the original structure of the house, hadbeen designed for study, and no part of whose furniture had been removedor displaced. It was a kind of closet on the second floor, illuminatedby a spacious window, through which a landscape of uncommon amplitudeand beauty was presented to the view. Here the pleasures of the day wererevived, by recalling and enumerating them in letters to her friend. Shealways quitted this recess with reluctance, and seldom till the nightwas half spent.

  One evening she retired hither when the sun had just dipped beneath thehorizon. Her implements of writing were prepared; but, before the penwas assumed, her eyes rested for a moment on the variegated hues whichwere poured out upon the western sky and upon the scene of intermingledwaters, copses, and fields. The view comprised a part of the road whichled to this dwelling. It was partially and distantly seen, and thepassage of horses or men was betokened chiefly by the dust which wasraised by their footsteps.

  A token of this kind now caught her attention. It fixed her eye chieflyby the picturesque effect produced by interposing its obscurity betweenher and the splendours which the sun had left. Presently she gained afaint view of a man and horse. This circumstance laid no claim toattention, and she was withdrawing her eye, when the traveller'sstopping and dismounting at the gate made her renew her scrutiny. Thiswas reinforced by something in the figure and movements of the horsemanwhich reminded her of Ormond.

  She started from her seat with some degree of palpitation. Whence thisarose, whether from fear or from joy, or from intermixed emotions, itwould not be easy to ascertain. Having entered the gate, the visitant,remounting his horse, set the animal on full speed. Every moment broughthim nearer, and added to her first belief. He stopped not till hereached the mansion. The person of Ormond was distinctly recognised.

  An interview at this dusky and lonely hour, in circumstances so abruptand unexpected, could not fail to surprise, and, in some degree, toalarm. The substance of his last conversation was recalled. The evilswhich were darkly and ambiguously predicted thronged to her memory. Itseemed as if the present moment was to be, in some way, decisive of herfate. This visit she did not hesitate to suppose designed for her, butsomewhat uncommonly momentous must have prompted him to take so long ajourney.

  The rooms on the lower floor were dark, the windows and doors beingfastened. She had entered the house by the principal door, and this wasthe only one at present unlocked. The room in which she sat was over thehall, and the massive door beneath could not be opened without noisysignals. The question that occurred to her, by what means Ormond wouldgain admittance to her presence, she supposed would be instantlydecided. She listened to hear his footsteps on the pavement, or thecreaking of hinges. The silence, however, continued profound as before.

  After a minute's pause, she approached the window more nearly andendeavoured to gain a view of the space before the house. She sawnothing but the horse, whose bridle was thrown over his neck, and whowas left at liberty to pick up what scanty herbage the lawn afforded tohis hunger. The rider had disappeared.

  It now occurred to her that this visit had a purpose different from thatwhich she at first conjectured. It was easily conceived that Ormond wasunacquainted with her residence at this spot. The knowledge could onlybe imparted to him by indirect or illicit means. That these means hadbeen employed by him, she was by no means authorized to infer from thesilence and distance he had lately maintained. But if an interview withher were not the purpose of his coming, how should she interpret it?