Charlotte Smith- Collected Poetical Works

by Charlotte Smith

  How the prudent and guarded Mrs Lennard came to be in his power was never fully understood; but in his power she certainly felt herself: for though they were in habits of frequent squabbling about trifles, which indeed with the lady seemed necessary to break the tedious uniformity of her life, yet whenever she found Mr Pattenson really angry, she, albeit unused to the condescending mood, began to palliate and apologize – and peace was generally made over some nice thing, and some fine old wine, by way of a petit souper in Mr Pattenson’s parlour, after Mrs Rayland was gone to bed.

  The old coachman, who was the other favourite servant, was always a third in these peace-making meetings. He was a man grown unwieldy from excess of good living, and more than seventy years old; but he possessed an infinite deal of cunning, and knew how to get and how to keep money, with which it was his ambition to portion his two daughters, and to marry them to gentlemen; and his dealings in contraband goods, as Rayland Hall was only eight miles from the coast, his having the management of the great farms in hand, and his concern in buying and selling horses, were together supposed to have rendered this object of ambition an easy attainment. Of deeper sagacity than the other two, he foresaw that the time could not be far distant when Rayland Hall, and all the wealth that belonged to it, must change its possessor. It was a plan of Mrs Lennard and Pattenson to enjoy and to secure all they could now, and to be well assured of a very considerable legacy hereafter. But old Snelcraft had further hopes; and for that reason, though he had at first opposed as much as he could the reception of Orlando, and since expressed displeasure towards him, he of late had in his head floating visions of the probability there was that, if Orlando came to the estate, he might marry his favourite daughter, Miss Patty Snelcraft, who would have such a fine fortune, and was, as her father believed, the very extract of all beauty. Ridiculous and chimerical as such a project was, the old man, in the dotage of his purse-proud vanity, believed it not only possible but probable: for, though he knew that Mrs Rayland would have disinherited her own son for entertaining such an idea for a moment, yet he saw that Mr Orlando had no pride at all; and he was pretty sure, from the arrangements that he believed were made as to money, that, great as the sum of ready money would perhaps be that Mrs Rayland might leave behind her, none of it would be suffered to go to Mr Orlando. Miss Patty Snelcraft was, as this precious plan got more entirely the possession of her father’s imagination, taken from a boarding-school at a neighbouring town, and one luckless day brought to church in all the finery which she had there been accustomed to wear. But the effect was very far from that her parents intended, who expected that Madam would have sent for her to the Hall, as she used to do at breaking-up, and have commended her beauty and elegance; instead of which, Mrs Rayland no sooner arrived at home than she sent for Robin, as she still called her old servant, who now was seldom able to mount the box himself, and asked, if it was possible that the tawdry thing she had seen with his wife was his daughter? He answered in all humility that it was his eldest daughter, who, as she had now finished her learning, he had taken home from boarding-school.

  ‘Finished her learning!’ exclaimed the old lady; ‘and is that what she has learned, to dress herself out like a stage-player, like a mountebank’s doxy? Upon my word, Robin, I am sorry for you. I thought you and your wife had more sense. What! is that a dress for a sober girl, who ought to be a help to her mother, and to take care of her father in his old age?’

  ‘She does, Ma’am, do both, I’ll assure you,’ answered Robin, terribly stung by this reproof, ‘and is a very good and dutiful child. And as to her fineries, Ma’am, and such like, you are sensible that I’m not myself no judge of them there things; and my wife I believe thought, that seeing how by your goodness and my long and faithful service we are well to pass, for our condition and circumstances and such like, there would not be no offence whatsumdever in dressing our poor girls, being we have but two, a little dessent and neat, just to shew that one is no beggar after having served in such a good family so many years.’

  The lady, a little softened by this speech, which was made in almost a crying tone of voice, replied, ‘Well well, good Robin, I know how to make allowances; but do you and your wife learn for the future to make a more modest use of the means you are blessed with, and never encourage your girls to vanity and extravagance. Here’s Mary here, Lennard’s niece, whom I give leave to be in the house (Monimia stood waiting all this time with the chocolate, which the old lady always swallowed as soon as she came in from her devotions), she, I assure you, comes of parents that many people would call genteel; and yet you see, as it has pleased Providence to make her a dependent and a servant, I never suffer her to stick herself out in feathers and flowers like a May-day girl.’

  The lecture ended, and the old coachman withdrew, extremely discontent that his Patty had been compared to the house-keeper’s niece, who was, as he mutterd to himself, a mere pauper; and Monimia was not at all flattered by being brought forward as a comparison for Miss Snelcraft, whom the servants, and particularly Betty, had been turning into ridicule for her awkward finery and airs of consequence – nor did the expression, that she was born of parents whom some people would call genteel, at all sweeten the bitterness of this comparison. Monimia, who had before in the course of the day received a severe mortification from her aunt, in being refused leave to go to church, now, as soon as her service in waiting on Mrs Rayland with the chocolate was performed, withdrew to her own room, and indulged her tears. At length she recollected that, though all the rest of the world might despise and contemn her, the heart of Orlando was hers; she was secure of his affection; he would repeat it to her at night, when he had promised to fetch her to his room: and these reflections dried her eyes, and dissipated her sorrows: they even lent her force to bear, without betraying her impatience, the intrusion of Betty Richards, who soon after asked leave to come in. ‘Oh, laud! my dear miss,’ cried she, as soon as she entered the room, ‘how we be shut up in this here old place like two little singing-birds in a cage! – I’ve been trying to persuade old Jenny to let me take her turn this a’ternoon to go to church, and have promised to give her two turns for one; but the cross old witch says indeed she chooses to go herself. – Oh lud lud! I’d give a little finger to go.’

  ‘And why are you so eager to go to-day, Betty, more than any other afternoon?’

  ‘Oh gad!’ replied the girl, ‘for five hundred reasons: – first, because it’s so early that I could get away to West Wolverton church with all the ease in the world, and ’tis such a sweet afternoon, and winter will be here now so soon; besides that – but you must not tell for an hundred pounds – my good old fat sweetheart brought me home last night the most beautifullest bonnet, such as the millener told him was worn by the tip-top quality in Lonnon – and I die to wear it, and to go to West Wolverton church in it this very afternoon; for at ours, you know, I dares as well jump into the fire as put it on.’

  ‘But why do your bonnet and your piety conspire to carry you so far just this very evening, Betty,’ said Monimia smiling, ‘when both East Wolverton and Bartonwick have an evening church, and are not much more than half as far?’

  ‘Oh! thereby hangs a tale – What! you han’t heard then, I suppose, of all the great doings at West Wolverton?’

  This was the name of the village in which was situated the house of Mr Somerive. – ‘Great doings!’ repeated Monimia, changing colour; ‘no, I have heard of nothing.’

  ‘Why then you must know, Miss, that Mr Orlando, who was not here last night-’

  (Monimia knew it well, for they had agreed two nights before not to meet till the present evening) –

  ‘Mr Orlando, I say, came over about an hour ago, just as my Lady came from church, and after walking backwards and forwards in his melancholy fashion, with a book in his hand, upon the broad pavement in the chapel court, which really oft-times rives one’s very heart to see him, he went away to his study. For my part, I was sitting in the window upstairs for
a moment, for I had just been making up my Lady’s fire before she came from church – when all of a sudden I saw John Dickman, ‘Squire Somerive’s groom, come riding up; so down I went to speak to him. He gived me a letter, which I carried in to Orlando, who seemed monstrous surprised at it, as he was but that minute as ‘twere come from home; and when I went back to the kitchen John told me, he was ordered to wait for his young master – for that Madam Somerive’s brother, the London merchant, was come down, with some of his family, sons and daughters, and the gentleman from some part beyond sea, who was to marry the eldest Miss Somerive, for he had got his father’s consent, and the wedding was to take place out of hand. And so,’ added Betty, who had almost talked herself out of breath, ‘and so, as Mr Phil. is out, gone as he always is upon a visit to they newcomers up at Castle, the ‘Squire he ordered John to fetch our Orlando out of hand home to entertain all this grand company.’

  ‘And he went!’ said Monimia in a faint voice, who had changed colour a dozen times during this narration.

  ‘Oh, Lord! yes, to be sure he went,’ replied Betty; ‘yet somehow he look’d to me as if he had rather of stay’d, and hung about for some time, as thof unwilling to go. Lord! sir, said I, as I went to shut up his windows before he lock’d the study door – Lord, how strange it is that you are not like other young men, and never cares nothing for company and such like! He only sighed, a sweet creature! – when I’m sure, if all the grand lords and dukes, and even the King, and the Prince of Wales, and the Archbishop of Osnabig, and all his Majesty’s court, were to be collected together, there’s not one of them to be compared to young ‘Squire Orlando. – Lord! what would I give to see all these gentlefolks together at West Wolverton church, and that dear sweet Orlando outshining them all!’

  ‘And that was the reason,’ said Monimia in a still fainter voice, ‘that you are satisfied with no church but West Wolverton? But after all, Betty, pray are you sure these ladies and gentlemen will be there?’

  ‘As sure as five pence – for John Dickman told me so. Oh! that I could but go! – for Orlando, you know, Miss, who is the sweetest temperd good-naturdest cretur in all England, would never tell if he saw one ever so smartly dress: – No, egollys! he’s more like to give one some trifle or other to help one out, than to blab to get one anger.’

  ‘Has he ever given you any thing, Betty?’ said Monimia, in a voice the tremor of which she could not disguise; for, mingled with numberless other sensations, something like a half-formed jealousy and suspicious apprehension now entered her heart – ‘tell me, Betty, what has he ever given you?’

  ‘Why I assure you,’ replied the girl pertly, ‘not above a month ago neither, a’ter he had been here for almost a fortnight, he called me to him as I was a dusting of them there guns and arrows and what d’yecallums, as hangs over the chimney in that parlour as you goes through to get to his study – And so, says he, Betty, you’ve a good deal of trouble in cleaning of my room and making my fire, and perhaps your lady may not recollect it, and so may not make you a consideration for it; and therefore, Betty, I beg you’ll accept this, and I wish I had it in my power to do better. – and if you’ll believe me, Miss, it was a brand new crown, quite new, a crown piece they told me it was. – I would have given any thing not to have changed it, but to have laid it up as a keepsake – But there! – I had not money enough without it to buy my new cotton gown, when Alexander Macgill the Scotchman called here; and so away went my poor dear crown, though I had leverer have parted with one of my fingers.’

  ‘You did right, however,’ said Monimia coldly; ‘the gown you wanted, and the crown, I dare say, Mr Orlando meant you should use.’

  ‘I suppose he did, a dear sweet creature! – Lord a mercy! what would I give to have a peep at his sweet face this afternoon! I’ll tell you what, Miss, though you cannot go to church, nor I neither, we might ten to one see these gentlefolks ride by, if we could but steal up to the upper park, and so through the little common. ’Tis not much better than three miles, and we might not be miss’d.’

  ‘No,’ said Monimia drily, ‘I shall run no such risk indeed of making my aunt angry; and besides, what would Mr Somerive, or Mr Orlando, or any other of them think if they saw us there?’

  ‘Hang their thoughts!’ replied Betty; ‘what would it signify to us what any body thought, if we pleased ourselves? I’ll go and see how the land lays, and if the two old girls have done their dinner, and are set down together to take their afternoon’s dose.’

  ‘Do not come back then, Betty,’ said Monimia; ‘for I certainly will not go out without leave, and you know it nonsense to ask it – therefore, if you like it, go; but I assure you I shall not.’

  Having thus released herself from her importunate visitor, Monimia sat down to consider all she had told her. That Orlando should quit the house without telling her, gave her at first extreme pain; yet a moment’s reflection convinced her that, unless he had made a confidante of Betty, of which she now saw all the danger, there was no possible way of his conveying to her intelligence of the sudden summons he had received from his father; for Mrs Lennard was at home, and had shut herself up in her own room to do twenty little services which she frequently chose to have performed on Sunday mornings. A thousand doubts now arose in the mind of Monimia, whether he would be able to call for her at night; a thousand apprehensions lest the people he was with, particularly his uncle’s daughters, who he said were very pretty women, should estrange his thoughts from her, and rob her of his affections. These fears were so acute, that she was trying to drive them from her, when Betty returned, and, finding the door of her room fastened, tapped softly at it, and cried, ‘Miss, miss! who will refuse to go into the park now?’

  ‘You have not surely got leave!’

  ‘No, nor I have not asked it; but the old ladies are hard set in to their good things. Madam has had a gouty feel in her stomach all day, she says, and that’s always a symptom for a double dose; and as to your aunt, she has been ailing too, and will not flinch her share, you know very well.’

  Monimia, alarmed at the loud whisper, had opened the door before the end of this speech, and let in her unwelcome companion, who now repeated, that every body was safely bestowed who could interrupt them; and that, as it was still very early, they might have a good chance of seeing some of these comers, and above all Orlando, in their evening ride. But Monimia, who was displeased with the familiar way in which the girl named Orlando, and knew that he would object to her walking with her, assumed a virtue when she had it not; and though she believed they might safely go the way she proposed, and return before the hour when it was likely her aunt would want her; though she would have given half the world only for the chance of seeing Orlando at a distance, she positively refused – and had the resolution to see Betty set out by herself, with her new ‘most beautifullest’ bonnet pinned under her petticoat, which she proposed putting on when she got clear of the house; and then Monimia, forcing her attention from what had the last few hours engaged it, sat down to the sort of lesson which Orlando had last marked for her, and which she had promised to make herself mistress of before she saw him again; – though, alas! while she read, the idea of the superior advantages enjoyed by the Miss Woodfords, his cousins, their beauty, and the probability there was that one of them might be intended for him, too frequently distracted her thoughts, and impeded her good intentions.

  CHAPTER VII

  THE day had been unusually warm; but towards evening a thunderstorm came on, and, as it grew later, a tempest of wind, with heavy and continual rain.

  Betty, sulky that Monimia refused, and still more sulky that she had got nothing by her long walk, but nearly spoiling all her finery, had not come to Monimia’s room any more; but she received, at the usual hour, the usual summons for tea. She thought both Mrs Rayland and her aunt uncommonly peevish and tedious, and that the sermon one was reading, while the other fell asleep, was most unreasonably long. At length she was dismissed, and, retiring to her turret, b
egan to listen to the wind, that howled in tremendous gusts among the trees, and to the rain falling in torrents, the rushing of which was redoubled by the leaden pipes that, from the roof of her turret, threw the water in columns on the pavement below. Would Orlando come? Through such a tempest it were hardly to be wished he should. Having been absent all day, there would be no fire in his room, he would be drenched with rain, and half dead with cold. Monimia then could not desire he should come; yet she felt, in despite of her reason, that she should be very unhappy if he did not; for, though so many causes might combine to detain him, her humble ideas of herself, and the pictures she had made of the beauty and attractions of the Miss Woodfords, added another which rendered her wretched. ‘Alas!’ cried she, ‘Orlando, among them, will be too happy to think of me; and it is quite ridiculous to suppose, that he will quit these ladies to come through the storm almost five miles to poor Monimia. No, no! Orlando will not come.’

  Still however she could not determine to go to bed, at least till the hour was past for which he had made the appointment. At the usual time her aunt, who now frequently omitted to come herself, sent Betty for her candle, and her door was locked as usual, for that was a ceremony which either in person or proxy was always performed. But Monimia now no longer passed the long interval, between half after nine o’clock and the hour when Orlando usually called her, in darkness; for he had furnished her with the means of procuring a light, and with small wax candles. One of these she now lit, and endeavoured to sit down to read – but the violence of the wind, which she fancied every moment increased, and the flashes of lightning which she saw through her narrow casement, to which there was no shutter, distracted her attention; and she could only sit in miserable anxiety, listening to the various noises which in such a tempestuous night are heard around an old building, and especially such a part of it as she inhabited; where, around the octagon tower or turret, the wind roared with violence from every point; while, in the long passages which led from thence to her aunt’s apartments, it seemed yet more enraged, from being confined. She now traversed her small room with fearful steps; now sat down on her bed, near the door, that she might the more readily hear Orlando if he should come; and now got on a chair, and opened her casement to observe if there seemed any probability of the storm’s abating: but still, though the thunder had ceased, the clouds, driven against each other by violent and varying gusts of wind, produced vivid flashes of lightning, which suddenly illuminated the whole park. But Orlando came not, and it was now near an hour past his usual time. Again the poor anxious Monimia, now half despairing of his coming, and trying to persuade herself that she did not wish he should come, traversed her room, again went to her window. Another and another hour passed: amidst the heavy gusts and. mournful howlings of the wind, she had counted the clock, that, with a more than usually hollow sound, told twelve, one, two! – Orlando certainly did not mean to come – no! it was unreasonable to suppose he would; unreasonable to flatter herself that he would quit a cheerful circle of his relations, to traverse the extensive commons and lanes, and all the park, that lay between West Wolverton and the Hall, in such a night, when no person would think of going out but on life and death. Yet, while she thus argued with herself, a few tears involuntarily stole from her eyes; and as she gave up all hopes of his coming, and lay down in her clothes on her bed (for she had not the resolution to undress herself), she sighed deeply, and said to herself: ‘And yet, if it had been me who was expected, I do not believe any storm could have hindered me from trying to see Orlando! and I am sure no company would. – Yet he is quite in the right, I know, and I do not blame him.’