But Isabella, though equally desirous of escaping the unfeeling raillery or cold remonstrances of her uncle, was, without meeting him, constantly with her family, and was, with Monimia and Selina, the support of the unhappy Mrs Somerive, when, after lingering about a fortnight after his removal, her eldest son expired in the arms of Orlando.
There is a degree of folly, and of vice, which gradually dissolves the tenderest affections, weans the friend from the beloved companion of youth, and renders the ties of blood the most galling and insupportable chains. To this point of irreclaimable misconduct Philip Somerive had long since arrived. He had too plainly evinced, that to his own selfish gratifications he would always sacrifice the welfare, and even the subsistence of his family; yet, in his repentance on the bed of pain and languor, his mother forgot and forgave all she had suffered from him; and when he died, she wept for him as the child of her early affection, whose birth and infancy had once formed her greatest felicity. – In shedding tears over an object once so beloved by her husband, she seemed a second time to have lost him; and the first subject to which she attended, was to have his remains deposited with those of his father, in the family vault at West Wolverton.
In this Orlando determined that she should at all events be gratified, whatever inconvenience might in their present narrow circumstances arise from the expence: he gave therefore directions accordingly; when he found that Mr Woodford took upon him to oppose this wish of his mother, in a way so rude and savage, that after very high words had passed between him and his uncle (in which Woodford reproached Orlando with all the pecuniary favours he had bestowed upon his family, and ridiculed his beggarly marriage), Orlando at the last part of his conversation entirely lost his temper, and desired the unfeeling man of consequence to leave the house.
He had then the additional difficulty of concealing this disagreement from his mother, and of finding the means to supply that deficiency which this cruelty of his uncle would create. – The little sum left of his commission, after paying some late expences of his brother’s, and for his own lodgings, was reduced within thirty pounds, in which consisted his whole fortune. His uncle, who had till now contributed yearly to the support of his mother and his sisters, now protested that he would do no more. From his eldest sister married in Ireland, who had a family of her own, very trifling assistance only could be expected; and Warwick could not provide for his own family. Thus Orlando saw, that on an income of hardly an hundred a year, his mother and his two unmarried sisters were to live; and that Monimia and her family, whom he could not think of suffering to be any additional burden to them, could have not other dependence than on his exertions; yet into what way of life to enter, or where to seek the means of providing for them, he knew not.
Sad were his reflections on the past, on the present, and on the future, when he set out with the melancholy procession that was to convey the remains of his deceased brother to the last abode of the Somerive family; and little was the correspondence between his internal feelings and the beauty of the season, which gave peculiar charms to the country through which he passed. – The tears of the family he had left, of which Monimia was during his absence to be a part, seemed to have deprived him of the power of shedding a tear; but with eyes that gloomily surveyed the objects around him, without knowing what he saw, he reached at the close of the second day’s journey West Wolverton, and at a little alehouse, the only one in the village, the funeral stopped that night, while Orlando went out alone to direct what yet remained of the necessary preparations.
It was a beautiful still evening, towards the end of May; but the senses of the unhappy Orlando were shut to all the pleasures external objects could bestow. – When he had visited the church, and spoken to the curate, he walked back towards the house once his father’s. The grass was grown in the court, and half the windows were bricked up: the greater part of the shrubs in the garden were cut; and the gates out of repair; and broken. All wore an appearance of change and of desolation, even more deplorable, in the opinion of Orlando, that the spruce alterations, and air of new-born prosperity, which, on his former visit, he had remarked as the effect of Mr Stockton’s purchase.
Pain, and even horrors, were grown familiar to Orlando; and he seemed to have a gloomy satisfaction in the indulgence of his melancholy. He opened, therefore, the half fallen gate, that led from a sort of lawn, that surrounded the house, to the shrubbery and pleasure ground, and entered the walk which he had so often traversed with his father, and where he had taken his last leave of him on his departure for America. – The moon, not yet at its full, shed a faint light on every object: he looked along a sort of vista of shrubs, which seemed to have been left merely because they were not yet wanted as firing; and the moonlight, at the end of this dark avenue of cypress and gloomy evergreens, seemed partially to illuminate the walk, only to shew him the spectre of departed happiness. He remembered with what pleasure his father used to watch the growth of these trees, which he had planted himself; and with what satisfaction he was accustomed to consider them, as improving for Philip. – Sad reverse! – The father, who thus fondly planned future schemes of felicity for his son, long since mouldered in the grave, whither that son himself, after having been but too accessary to the premature death of this fond parent, was now, in the bloom of life, precipitated by his own headlong folly.
A temper so sanguine as that of Orlando, possesses also that sensibility which arms with redoubled poignancy the shafts of affliction and disappointment. He felt, with cruel acuteness, all the calamities which a few short years had brought upon his family: – all their hopes blasted – their fortune gone – their name almost forgotten in the country – and strangers possessing their habitation. He now remembered that he used to think, that, were he once blessed with Monimia, every other circumstance of life would be to him indifferent: yet she was now his – she was more beloved, as his wife, than she had even been as his mistress; and the sweetness of her temper, the excellence of her heart, the clearness of her understanding, and her tender attachment to him, rendered her infinitely dearer to him, than that beauty which had first attracted his early love. But, far from being rendered indifferent to every other circumstance, he felt that much of his present concern arose from the impossibility he found of sheltering this adored creature from the evils of indigence; and that the romantic theory, of sacrificing every consideration to love, produced, in the practice, only the painful consciousness of having injured its object.
It was late before the unhappy wanderer returned to the place where he was to attempt to sleep; but the mournful ceremony of the next day, added to the gloomy thoughts he had been indulging, deprived him of all inclination to repose; and as he saw the sun arise which was to witness the interment of his brother – how different appeared its light now, from what it used to do, when from the same village, in the house of his father, he beheld it over the eastern hills, awakening him to hope and health – to the society of a happy cheerful family – and to the prospect of meeting his little Monimia, then a child, who innocently expressed the delight she felt in seeing him!
But to indulge these painful reflections appeared to him unmanly, while they were likely to disable him from the exercise of the melancholy duties before him. These at length over, he found himself, in despite of all his philosophy, so much depressed that he could not determine to return that night towards London; but sending away the undertaker’s people, and retaining for himself the horse on which one of them had rode, he resolved to pass the rest of the day in gratifying the strange inclination he had long felt, to wander about Rayland Park, to visit the Hall, and take a last leave of that scene of his early happiness, the turret once inhabited by Monimia.
This plan would detain him from her another day; but he felt an invincible inclination to make this farewell visit, which he knew Monimia herself would wish him to indulge. Having therefore disengaged himself from the gloomy duties of the day, and sent a few lines to his mother and Monimia, to account for hi
s absence, if the man who carried it should arrive in town before him, he set out towards evening for the Hall, flattering himself that, as he was now known, and made a better appearance than on his former visit, he should without difficulty obtain admittance to the house. – In this, however, he was mistaken: he found many of the windows bricked up, the economy of the present possessors not allowing them to pay so heavy a window tax: the old servants hall below was entirely deprived of light; and hardly a vestige remained of inhabitants, in the grass-grown courts and silent deserted offices.
Orlando, after waiting for some time at the door, before he could make any one hear, saw at length the same sturdy clown he had before spoken to, who asked him in a surly tone his business. – Orlando replied, that he desired to be allowed to see the house. The man answered, that he had positive orders from Dr Hollybourn to shew the house to nobody; and he shut the door in his face.
Thus repulsed, Orlando only felt a more determined resolution to gratify himself by a visit to the library, the chapel, and the turret; and he went round the house with an intention to enter without permission by the door that opened near the former out of the summer parlour – Here, however, he was again disappointed: this door, as well as the windows in the same line with it, was nailed up, and boarded on the inside; and while Orlando thus baffled was examining the other wing of the house, to see if he could not there obtain entrance, the man who guarded it looked from a window above, and told him, that if any body was seen about the house he should fire at them, for that ‘nobody had no business there.’
From the savage brutality of his manner, Orlando had little doubt but that he would act as he said: yet, far from fearing his fire-arms, he told him that he would see the house at all events, and that opposition would only serve to give more trouble, but not deter him from his purpose. He then attempted to bribe this guardian of the property of the church, and offered him a handful of silver: but his answer was, that he should fetch his blunderbuss.
Orlando now thought that it would be better to return to West Wolverton, and to write to a lawyer in the neighbourhood, employed by Dr Hollybourn in the management of the estate, requesting leave to see the house; though he foresaw that it would be difficult to make such a man comprehend the sort of sensations that urged him to this request – and that it was possible he might impute his desire of visiting the Hall to motives that might make him refuse his permission. – Resolved however to try, he returned slowly and disconsolate through the park; and observed, as he reached the side of it next the lake, that in the copse that clothed the hill many of the large trees were felled, and some others marked for the axe. – His heart became more heavy than before; and when he reached the seat near the boat-house in the fir-wood, which was now indeed broken down, he rested a moment against the old tree it had once surrounded, to recover from the almost insupportable despondence which oppressed him.
Absorbed in the most melancholy thoughts, every object served to increase their bitterness – He listened to sounds once so pleasing with anguish of heart bordering upon despair, and almost wished that he had been drowned in this water when a boy, by the accident of falling from a boat as he was fishing on the lake, from whence his father’s servant had with difficulty saved him.
In such comtemplations he remained for some time, with his eyes fixed on the water, when he saw reflected in its surface the image of some object moving along its bank. – The figure, from the gentle waving of the water as it approached the shore, was not distinct; and its motion so slow and singular, that the curiosity of Orlando was somewhat awaked. As it came nearer to him, therefore, he stepped forward, and saw advancing with difficulty on his crutches the old beggar whom he had met in a barn in Hampshire four months since, when he waited for communication with Mrs Roker.
However surprised Orlando was at the appearance of this person, the man himself seemed to have expected to meet him; for, advancing towards him as speedily as his mutilated frame would allow, he exclaimed, ‘Ah! my dear master! well met: I have found you at last.’
‘Have you been looking for me then, my old friend?’
‘Aye, marry have I – and many a weary mile have my leg and my crutches hopped after your honour – Why, mun, I’ve been up at London after you; and there at the house where you give me a direction to, I met a Neger man, who would not believe, like a smutty-faced son of a b-h as he is, that such a poor cripple as I could have to do to speak with you – and so all I could get of him was telling me that you were come down here – I knows this country well enough; and so I e’en set off, and partly one way, and partly another, I got down and have found you out.’
Orlando, not guessing why this wandering veteran had taken so much trouble – was about, however, to ask what he could do for him, when the old man, putting on an arch look, and feeling in the patched pocket of what had once been a coat, said –
‘And so now, master, since we be met, I hopes with all my heart I brings you good news – There – There’s a letter for you from Madam Roker – A power of trouble, and many a cold night’s waiting I had to get it; but let an old soldier alone – Egad, when once I had got it, I was bent upon putting it into no hands but yours, for fear of more tricks upon travellers.’
Orlando, in greater emotion than a letter from such a lady was likely to produce, took it, and unfolding two or three dirty papers in which it was wrapped, he broke the seal, and read these words:
‘DEAR SIR,
‘I AM sorry to acquaint you that Mr Roker is by no means so grateful to me as I had reason to expect from the good fortune I brought him, and indeed from his assurances when I married him of his great regard and affection for me. I cannot but say that I am cruelly treated at present. As to Mr Roker, he passes all his time in London, and I have too much cause to fear that very wicked persons are enjoying too much of the money which is mine – a thing so wicked, that if it was only for his soul’s sake, I cannot but think it my duty to prevent: but to add to my misfortune herein, his relations give out that I am non compos mentis, which to be sure I might be reckoned when I bestowed my fortune on such an undeserving family, and made such sacrifices for Mr Roker, as I am now heartily sorry for. – Sir, I have read the Scripture, that it is never too late to repent; and I am sure, if I have done you a great injury, I do repent it from the bottom of my soul, and will make you all the reparation in my power: and you may believe I am in earnest in my concern, when I hereby trust you with a secret, whereon perhaps my life may depend: for, besides that I don’t know how far I might be likely to be punished by law for the unjust thing Mr Roker persuaded me to consent to – against my conscience I am sure – I know that he would rather have me dead than to speak the truth; and ’tis for that reason, for fear I should be examined about the will of my late friend, Mrs Rayland, that he insists upon it I am at this time a lunatic, and keeps me under close confinement as such.
‘Oh! Mr Orlando, there is a later will than that which was proved, and which gave away from you all the Rayland estate – and with shame and grief I say, that when my lady died I read that copy of it she gave to me; and finding that I had only half as much as in a former will, I was over-persuaded by Mr Roker, who had too much power over me, to produce only the other, and to destroy in his presence that copy which my lady had given to me to keep, charging me to send it, if any thing happened to her, to your family. – I did not then know the contents, which she had always kept from me: and I am sure I should never have thought of doing as I did but for Mr Roker – I hope the Lord will forgive me! – and that you, dear Sir, will do so likewise, since I have not only been sincerely repentant of the same, but have, luckily for us both, kept it in my power to make you, I hope, reparation.
Complete Poetical Works of Charlotte Smith Page 154