LETTER VI
FROM THE SAME—TO THE SAME
In continuation
Four and twenty hours longer of fruitless expectation did I endure in that cell. No Sibella appeared. Did she then forget her request? Painting her future delights with Montgomery, has she forgotten the unblessed wretch, who for her sake could sustain hunger and cold, watching and weariness, who to hail the same breeze that had saluted her, quitted every indulgence of luxury for an abode that held comfort at defiance, who stretched himself along the bare stone rather than on a bed of down, because from that sleepless couch he could spring, to gain an indistinct view of her bewitching form?
Ay, pour your contempt upon me, ye whose smiles I have beguiled you of!—View him who bought your unprized tenderness with the empty breath of flattery, view him, stealing slave-like into forbidden paths only to gaze at humble distance, only to catch the echo of a sigh, a sigh breathed to another!——He, Miss Ashburn, who lives without hope—must die for consolation.
Yet, surely this her absence cannot arise from so more than common an instance of insensibility; some accident may have prevented her return; and I am capricious and cruel, while I dare to accuse her of insensibility. John Thomas met me, as I returned to the farm. He was carrying malt to the castle. I will throw myself in his way when he comes home; and probably, amidst the abundance of information he will be eager to communicate, I may find something which will elucidate this strange absence of Miss Valmont.
Little remains, Madam, for me to add to my confessions. Sibella's tender but romantic contract placed an eternal barrier between me and the flattering illusions wherewith fancy fled my flame. I saw she loved as I had wished her to love: had I been the object!—In the first moments of phrenzy, I wrote Montgomery a mad letter; and no sooner recovered a better frame of mind, than I dispatched one of apology, which both made my peace, and quieted his astonishment, for he is not given to look beyond the surface.
Hours, Miss Ashburn, have I spent in wishing Montgomery worthier of his fate. Sometimes, have I calmed my swelling agony by reproaching her for loving him, then have humbled my proud heart to dust, to obtain her ideal pardon. Her seclusion, her enthusiasm, his reducing countenance, his vivacity of spirit, and above all his well expressed vehemence of love! Oh it could not be otherwise! She saw an outline: her imagination formed the rest.
No, not one single instance of self-reproach on Clement's account ever assailed me. When I first discovered that Montgomery's beloved was the selected friend of Miss Ashburn, I then knew they might be paired, but never mated. To rival him with one woman, methought could be little injury, when in her absence twenty others equally could charm.
After Miss Valmont had irrevocably given herself to Clement, I resolved to travel, for to the antipodes would I have journeyed, rather than met Montgomery. Yet I tutored my heart into the supposition that I still had a friendship for him, that Sibella had injured me, and was now not a jot beyond my friend, or my friend's wife. Dwelling on the delusion, it insensibly produced a desire, when Clement went to London, of returning to my hermitage, to her park, in order to behold her with firm composure, with almost indifference.—Self-devoted victim that I am.
'I can do her service,' said I to myself; 'and I can prevent her suspecting aught of the former intruder. Wishes she must have; something to alleviate the tedious uniformity of her existence.' And numberless plans to gratify and amuse her, without my having any apparent concern therein, I quickly resolved upon.
You recollect Madam, (perchance with disdain) my abrupt departure from Bath.—Farmer Richardson rejoiced to see me. John Thomas was yet brimful of Miss Valmont and the ghost. When these industrious labourers of the day retired to early rest, I betook myself to the now bleak and desolate hermitage. No sooner had I deposited my lanthorn and little basket, than I left my cell intending to revisit, not with rapture but regret, her selected paths.
It was I think one of the finest nights I ever beheld; and I must have wanted that fervour of soul which gave birth to my love, had I not been enchanted with the scene. The resplendent moon, now at the summit of her growth, silvered the wide spreading branches of Sibella's oak, the fairest tree of the forest; her steady beam glittered over one half the tomb; the bending bough of a cypress on the other half, shed irregular darkness; the rock cast its pointed shadow up the path-way; light and shade no longer blended but were abruptly contrasted. No cloud glided into motion, no zephyr into sound. On the broken-down porch, I leaned. Imagination was alive. I will not conceal aught from you, Miss Ashburn, an excess of tenderness, even produced tears. And why need I be ashamed of that emotion? 'Tis not a property of guilt. And while I wept, I made a vow at the shrine of reason to abandon my mad enterprise, to quit for ever and ever this seductive rock.
Alas reason and resolution were instantaneously torn from me, by the sweetest sound that ever stole on the listening ear of night. You know the rest. Enraptured, I listened to her effusions; unobserved, was her shadow; scrawled with my pencil that inconsistent address; sighed to her sigh; and was more delirious than ever.
Prudent, cool, and considerate, she came no more. I enticed her fawn into the utmost degree of fondness; and when Nina returned to my cell from the caresses of Sibella, she brought me a pleasure which the universe to me cannot equal.
It must require all your faith, Madam, to believe that I lived thus without the shadow of a motive beyond sometimes seeing and sometimes hearing her: in the strictest sincerity, I assure you I had no other. Although I loved her to dotage, although I feel an internal testimony that I cannot live without her, yet was she, and is to this moment, more effectually banished from my wishes by her contract with Montgomery, than she could have been by age, disease, or any possible deformity, circumstance or accident might inflict.
The sweetly soothing promise of speedy dissolution, produced temporary vigour. It enabled me to quit that vague and idle mode of life, unsatisfactory to myself and cruel to Sibella; to brave the censures of Montgomery; to ask your pity; and finally determined me to retire to a romantic and fit retreat for sorrow I once saw on the banks of the Danube.
One absurdity more, and I have done. By the little fawn I sent my farewel to your friend, and waited only for darkness to revisit farmer Richardson's. Night came and with it rain and such an impervious mist that I could not see my hand when I stretched it out, nor was I so lost to common prudence as not to foresee the danger of attempting my descent under such circumstance. Morning might afford me opportunity. The sword I brought from Valmont's armoury still lay on the floor of my cell; and a temptation arose of bearing it back to its original station: to be a last time under the same roof with Sibella, to offer a farewel prayer as near her as I dared approach.—Things so apparently unsatisfactory of themselves as these acquire an infinity of importance when the heart is assured they never, never can be reacted. The hour of night made me bold. I ventured beyond the armoury. I even intended seeking the room you once spoke of, and stealing from it her portrait. My beard and gown gave me the privilege of spirits, I thought to walk undisturbed; but hardly had I trodden ten paces beyond the armoury door when I met three men, and, what was still worse, considering the imagined security of my disguise, one of them pursued me. Apprehension gave me wings. I flew back; and had secured the pannel before he entered the armoury; then regained my cell with all possible expedition. This accident prevented my quitting the park by day-light, least I should be watched.
On the next morning, when Nina came panting down to my cell, I heard a voice calling her back, to which every nerve vibrated throughout my frame. I went up into the chapel. Sibella was there. I was shocked to see her pale and wan.—She heard me with patience, she looked on me with pity. Above all, she gave me very good advice. In the dusk of that evening, I left Valmont park.
As eager now to quit this place as I had formerly been to seek it, I would not even allow myself to rest one night at the farm; but, although the evening was dark and chilling, I mounted my horse and bade Richardson farewel. My strength failed me, my head became dizzy, and the bridle frequently dropped from my hand. When I reached the first village on my road, I stopped at an inn, and ordered a chaise to be got ready for me. They showed me into a room where three or four other persons were seated at a table drinking. I drew a chair close to the fire and turned my face from them. For a minute after my entrance they remained silent; but observing, I imagine, that I did not appear disposed to give them any attention they resumed their conversation, and little should I have known of their subject had not the name of Miss Valmont struck upon my ear. I turned round involuntarily and found the speaker was a dark young man, smartly dressed; he was evidently in a state of intoxication, and his auditors not more sober than himself were the landlord of the inn and two countrymen.
'If I was to tell you all I know about it,' said the man, 'you would stare sure enough. And it is all true as the gospel—it is. My friend, the nobleman I told you of, knows all the business as well as I do—ay, ay, and he'll marry her too. Such a devilish fine girl deserves a lord for her husband.'
This speech, interlarded with many oaths, had also frequent interruptions from the effects of his inebriety, so that my chaise was announced just as he spoke the last word. I sat still, and called for wine. They again recollected the presence of a stranger; another silence ensued; and, while I lingered over my wine, the young man and one other of the company dropped asleep.
My interest in that name would not suffer me to depart. I grew restless and uneasy, I shifted my chair, stirred the fire; and in so doing doubtless roused the sleeper, for he started up and vociferated a great oath. 'Not see it,' added he, 'why I saw it myself, with my own eyes, the Lord defend us!—no wonder! no wonder! I wouldn't sleep in old Valmont's skin to have twenty fine castles. To cheat his own brother's daughter out of such a fine fortune! 'Tis enough to make the ghosts of all her grandfather's walk out of their graves. Forty thousand is the least penny.—Well, well,' said he rising, 'I shall see the day yet when a certain Lord that I know will have her and her fifty thousand pounds too. Come, landlord, here's a safe deliverance to Miss Valmont and her money out of the claws of her old griping uncle.'
Having swallowed his bumper, he staggered out of the room, and the landlord was instantly summoned to assist him to bed. From one of the remaining guests, I learned that this man had lately come from London; but his name was unknown to them. Finding my intelligence at an end, I stepped into my chaise and proceeded towards Barlowe Hall.
During my journey, I often, almost indeed perpetually, thought of the conversation I had heard in the inn. And when I had arrived at Barlowe Hall, and sat in the same apartment where I first heard you speak of Sibella, I also recollected that colonel Ridson, who had been in habits of intimacy with her father, expressed both doubt and surprise when you said Miss Valmont was dependent on her uncle. This recollection added new force to the assertions of the young man in the village. I became persuaded that some injury was intended to Miss Valmont; and resolved if possible to develop the mystery. I journeyed back again to the village, where my suspicions had first been excited. The young man had departed the day before; and no one could tell me of his route.
I now determined to put it in Sibella's own power to demand an explanation of her uncle. Again, but without my hermit's disguise, I crossed the moat and ascended the rock. When I approached her in the wood, she looked on me sorrowfully; but, Miss Ashburn, there was no welcome in her eye. I had neither power nor inclination to hold her long in conversation. I briefly related to her my suspicions: and as I told you before, she bade me wait her return in the cell.
She returned no more. Have I then seen her for the last time?—I sicken. Never, never, never, to behold her!—Oh for a potion, powerful in its nature, rapid in its effect, that would overwhelm these dregs of existence, giving me but time to know the relief of dying when life has become hateful!
In continuation
The carriage, in which I instantly return to Barlowe Hall, stands waiting before my window. I do not fly through fear; but if Mr. Valmont knows my secret visits, and punishes her for my faults, he may release her when I am gone.
Write to me, I beseech you, Miss Ashburn, and say why Sibella suffers. She is a prisoner, madam. She has quarrelled with her uncle.
It is said he struck her.—Heaven forbid! It is said she attempted suicide!—But she will tell you all; and for pity's sake relieve my suspence, though you cannot quell my anxiety! Respectfully your's
A. MURDEN
P.S. My authority is derived from John Thomas.—He was not, nor is any person but the family, suffered to cross the draw-bridge. All the servants have been interrogated, and some discharged, for the supposed admission of a stranger. Sibella is not allowed to quit her apartment.