P.S. Since I wrote the above I have given four hours to deliberation on the chances for and against my design; nor have I found any obstacle which may not be overcome, though I have not yet discovered the means. Do not laugh at me, for I think it no inconsiderable step toward success to have divined all the probabilities which may oppose my success.
To-morrow, I go to the castle. Griffiths shall attend me. He was once your valet too. Need I a more skilful engineer think you? Who knows what opportunities may occur to-morrow? A sigh, a glance, a word—Oh, but I forget! I am not even to look at her, says Don Distance. Well! well! we will talk of that hereafter. Twice have I perambulated around the park; but it is so walled and wooded and moated that the great Mogul's army and elephants might be there invisible.
A propos, in the second of these circuits, which was on yesterday evening, as I was leading my horse down a hill at the bottom of which Valmont's moat forms a sudden angle, I perceived a young man walking hastily up the narrow lane towards the moat. Hearing my horse's feet, he turned towards me; then, wheeling round, he fled out of sight in a moment. In one hand he held a long pole; and in the other a small basket. His figure was uncommonly elegant; and I imagined I had some knowledge of him, but there are no gentlemen's houses in this quarter, except the castle and Monckton Hall. The little valley where I saw him is unfrequented; and scarcely passable, it is so encumbered with brambles and underwood. Woods rise immediately on the other side of the moat, whose shade, with that of the high barren and black, which shows its rugged side to the valley, spreads forbidding gloom over the whole. Who could this youth be, I wonder; and where could he be going?
Adieu, Walter! Think of to-morrow.
LETTER XI
FROM CAROLINE ASHBURN
TO
SIBELLA VALMONT
I charge you, Sibella, by the value you affix to my friendship, that you remain at present passive. It is a term of probation for Clement on which the colouring of your future days depends.—More of this hereafter. I write now with a kind of restless eagerness. Images, apprehensions, and even hopes, all finally resting on you, fill the place of soberer judgment.—This wood wanderer! This spirit—'part mortal and part etherial,'—fascinates my attention. I see him gliding through the paths you had trodden. The tree which screened him from your view cannot conceal him from mine. I see him listen almost breathless to your prayer. The new-born colour on his cheek hangs trembling, daring not then to depart; and the throbbings of his agonized bosom collect themselves while restrained, and give force to that sign whose utterance has echoed a thousand times in my imagination. I see him dart the ball forward to meet your feet; and then he rushes into the thickest gloom to hide himself, if possible, even from himself.
This is no spirit of your uncle's choosing, Sibella. No: it is one who has refined upon romance; who can give, I perceive, as much enthusiasm to the affections, and carve misery for himself as ingeniously, as though he had passed his days under the safeguard of Mr. Valmont's walls and draw-bridges. 'He will protect, but cannot harm thee.' In truth, I believe it. Go to the wood then, Sibella. See him, if possible; and tell me, did symmetry ever mould a statue in finer proportions than his form can boast? His eye in its passive state is a clear grey, its shape long; and the finest eye-brow and eye-lash that ever adorned mortal face, not excepting even your's Sibella, belong to his. Hold him in conversation and you will see that eye almost emit fire; it will dazzle you with its rays; or, if a softer subject engage him, it can speak so submissively to the heart that words become but the secondary medium of his theme. Observe how his hair, bursting from confinement into natural ringlets around his temples, contrasts itself with the fairness of his complexion—fair without effeminacy. His colour is of a doubtful kind; for it retires as you perceive it, or suffuses the whole of his fine countenance, just as you had begun to lament that he was too pale. His nose and mouth, though somewhat large, and perhaps irregular, yet admirably correspond with the harmony of the whole face. You probably will think Clement's glowing face handsomer: I do not. Chase but by one smile and dissatisfaction of your spirit, and there will a radiance, if I may so call it, beam upon you, that my best art fails to delineate.
I shall not underwrite the name till you have judged of my painting. Cease your astonishment, my friend, for I am no sorceress, and the spright is too etherial, too imaginative, to hold counsel with a mere mortal like me. To the means of his being with you I confess I have no clue; but if you read my former letters you will perhaps find mention of some few of the reasons and circumstances which incline me to infer I have discovered him.