CHAPTER XIX
It is very certain that when Berrendale left England, though he meant to conceal his marriage entirely, he had not even the slightest wish to contract another; and had any one told him that he was capable of such wicked conduct, he would have answered, like Hazael, 'Is thy servant a dog that he should do this thing?' But he was then unassailed by temptations:—and habituated as he was to selfish indulgence, it was impossible that to strong temptation he should not fall an immediate victim.
This strong temptation assailed him soon after his arrival, in the person of a very lovely and rich widow, a relation of his first wife, who, having no children of her own, had long been very fond of his child, then a very fine boy, and with great readiness transferred to the father the affection which she bore the son. For some time conscience and Adeline stood their ground against this new mistress and her immense property; but at length, being pressed by his father-in-law, who wished the match, to assign a sufficient reason for his coldness to so fine a woman, and not daring to give the true one, he returned the lady's fondness: and though he had not yet courage enough to name the marriage day, it was known that it would some time or other take place.
But all his scruples soon yielded to the dominion which the attractions of the lady, who was well versed in the arts of seduction, obtained over his senses, and to the strong power which the sight of the splendour in which she lived, acquired over his avarice; when, just as every thing was on the point of being concluded, the poor mulatto, who had found her husband dead, arrived almost broken-hearted at the place of Berrendale's abode, and delivered to him letters from Adeline.
Terrified and confounded at her presence, he received her with such evident marks of guilty confusion in his face, that Savanna's apprehensive and suspicious attachment to her mistress took the alarm; and, as she had seen a very fine woman leave the room as she entered, she, on pretence of leaving Berrendale alone to read his letters, repaired to the servants' apartments, where she learnt the intended marriage. Immediately forgetting her own distresses in those of Adeline, she returned to Berrendale, not with the languid, mournful pace with which she had first entered, but with the firm, impetuous and intrepid step of conscious integrity going to confound vice in the moment of its triumph.
Berrendale read his doom, the moment he beheld her, in her dark and fiery eye, and awaited in trembling silence the torrent of reproaches that trembled on her lip. But I shall not repeat what passed. Suffice that Berrendale pretended to be moved by what she said, and promised to break off the marriage,—only exacting from Savanna, in return, a promise of not imparting to the servants, or to any one, that he had a wife in England.
In the meanwhile he commended her most affectionately to the care of the steward; and confessing to his intended bride that he had a mistress in England, who had sent the mulatto over to prevent the match if possible, by persuading her he was already married, he conjured her to consent to a private marriage; and to prevent some dreadful scene, occasioned by the revenge of disappointed passion, should his mistress, as she had threatened, come over in person, he entreated her to let every splendid preparation for their nuptials be laid aside, in order to deceive Savanna, and induce her to return quietly to England.
The credulous woman, too much in love to believe what she did not wish, consented to all he proposed: but Berrendale, still fearful of the watchful jealousy of Savanna, contrived to find out the master to whom she belonged before she had escaped, early in life, with her first husband to England; and as she had never been made free, as soon as he arrived, he, on a summons from Berrendale, seized her as his property; and poor Savanna, in spite of her cries and struggles, was conveyed some miles up the country.
At length, however, she found means to escape to the coast; and, having discovered an old acquaintance in an English sailor on board a vessel then ready to sail, and who had great influence with the captain, she was by him concealed on board, with the approbation of the commander, and was on her way to England before Berrendale was informed of her escape.
I will not endeavour to describe Adeline's feelings on hearing this narration, and on finding also that Savanna before she left the island had been assured that Berrendale was really married, though privately, but that the marriage could not long be attempted to be concealed, as the lady even before it took place was likely to become a mother; and, that as a large estate depended on her giving birth to a son, the event of her confinement was looked for with great anxiety.