Beauchamp; or, The Error.

by G. P. R. James

"A Miss Charlotte Hay," continued Beauchamp, with an evident effort, "a very beautiful person, and highly accomplished. She was some four or five years older than myself, I believe, affecting a romantic style of thought, feeling, and language. She was beautiful, I have said; but hers was not the style of beauty I admired, and at first I took but little notice of her. She sang well, however, and before the first evening was over, we had talked a good deal--the more, perhaps, as I found that most of the ladies present, though of no very high station, nor particularly refined manners, did not seem to love her conversation. It appeared to me that she was superior to them; and when I found that, though of good family, her fortune was extremely limited, and that she had resided with old Miss Moreton for some time, as something between a friend and a companion, I fancied I understood the coldness I observed on the part of more wealthy people. Many days passed over, during which she certainly endeavoured to attract and captivate me. I was in general somewhat on my guard; but I was then young, inexperienced, vain, romantic; and though I never dreamed of making her my wife, yet I trifled away many an hour by her side, feeling passion growing upon me--mark, I say passion, not love; for there was much that prevented me from respecting her enough to love her--a display of her person, a carelessness of proprieties, an occasional gleam of perverted principle, that no art could hide. Once or twice, too, I caught a smile passing between her and my cousin Moreton, which I did not like, and whenever that occurred it recalled me to myself; but, with weak facility, I fell back again till the day of my departure approached. Two or three days before the time appointed--on the eleventh of August, which was my twenty-first birth-day--Miss Moreton declared she would have a party of her neighbours to celebrate the event. None of the higher and more respectable gentry were invited, or, if they were, they did not come. There were a good many deep-drinking lairds, and some of their wives and daughters, somewhat stiff in their graver, and hoydenish in their merrier, moments. It is one of those days that the heart longs for years to blot out for ever. I gave way to the high spirits which were then habitual to me. I drank deep--deeper than I had ever before done. I suffered my brain to be troubled--I know not that there were not unfair means used to effect it--but at all events, I was not myself. I recollect personally little that passed; but I have since heard that I was called upon to choose a wife for the afternoon. I was told it was the custom of the country, on such occasions, so to do in sport; and that I fixed, at once, upon this artful girl--in the presence of many witnesses, I called her wife and she called me husband. The evening passed over; I drank more wine at supper, and the next morning I found myself married--for the infamous fraud they called a marriage. In horror and dismay, I burst away from the wretched woman who had lent herself to such a base transaction. I sent off my servant at once for horses to my carriage--I cast Moreton from me, who attempted to stop and reason with me, as he called it, representing that what had taken place was a full and sufficient marriage, according to the code of Scotland, for that public consent was all that was required by their law."

"Or by the law of God either," replied Dr. Miles, "but it must be free and intelligent consent."

"I travelled night and day," continued Beauchamp, rapidly, "till I had reached my father's house and thrown myself at his feet. I told him all--I extenuated, concealed nothing; and I shall never forget either his kindness or his distress of mind. Instant steps were taken to ascertain the exact position in which I stood; and the result was fatal to my hopes of happiness and peace; for not only did he find that I was entangled past recall, but that the character of the woman herself was such as might be expected from her having been a party to so disgraceful a scheme. She had been blighted by scandal before she took up her residence in the house where I found her. Miss Moreton in her dotage, yielded herself blindly to my cousin's guidance; and there was more than a suspicion that he had made his aunt's protection a veil to screen his own paramour."

"What did you do? what did you do?" asked Dr. Miles, with more eagerness than he usually displayed; "it was a hard case, indeed."

"I went abroad immediately," replied Beauchamp, "for my father exacted from me a solemn promise, never to live with or to see if it could be avoided, the woman who had thus become my wife. He used strong and bitter, but just terms in speaking of her. 'He could not survive the thought,' he said, 'that the children of a prostitute should succeed to the title of a family without stain.' My promise was given willingly, for I will confess that hate and indignation and disgust rendered her very idea odious to me. My father remained in England for some months, promising to make such arrangements regarding money--the base object of the whole conspiracy--that I should never be troubled any more. He added tenderly, and sadly, though gravely and firmly, that farther he could do nothing; for that I must bear the consequences of one great error in a solitary and companionless life. In consideration of a promise on the woman's part never to molest me, nor to take my name, he settled upon her the sum of a thousand per annum. During my father's life I heard no more of her; but when he himself joined me in Italy, I could see but too plainly how grief and bitter disappointment had undermined a constitution already shaken. He did not long survive, and all that I have myself undergone has been little, compared with the thought, that the consequences of my own folly served to shorten the days of my kind good parent."

"But what became of the woman?" demanded Dr. Miles. "You surely have had tidings of her since."

"Within a month after my father's death," replied Beauchamp, "I received from her one of the most artful letters that woman ever wrote, claiming to be received as my wife. But I will not trouble you with the details. Threats succeeded to blandishments, and I treated these with contempt as I had the others with coldness. Then commenced a new system of persecution; she followed me, attempted to fix herself upon me. Once she arrived at an inn in the Tyrol as I was getting into my carriage, and declared before the people round that she was my abandoned wife. I answered not a word, but ordered the door to be closed, and the postillions to drive on. Then came applications for an increased annuity, but I would not yield one step, knowing that it would but lead to others, and in the end to free myself from every day annoyance I took the name of Beauchamp, hurried on to the East, directed my agent to conceal my address from every one, and for several years wandered far and wide. At length the tidings reached me that the annuity which had at first been punctually demanded, had not been applied for. A report, too, reached my lawyer's ears that she had died in Paris. Still I would not return to claim my rank lest there should be some deep scheme at work, and I continued in India and Syria for two years longer. The annuity remained unclaimed. I knew that she had expensive habits and no means, and I ventured back. I passed a few months in London without resuming my own name; but the noise and bustle of the great city wearied me, and I came hither. Inquiries in the mean time had been made, somewhat languidly, perhaps, to ascertain the fate of this unhappy woman; but here I saw Isabella Slingsby, and those inquiries have been since pursued rapidly and strictly. Every answer tended to one result, and four days ago I received a letter from my solicitor, informing me that there can be no doubt of her demise. I will show it to you hereafter, but therein he says that her effects in Paris had been publicly sold, as those of a person deceased, to pay the claims of her maid, who had brought forward sufficient proofs to satisfy the police that her mistress had died in Italy. The girl herself could not be found, but the lawyers consider this fact, coupled with the total cessation of claims for the annuity, as proving the death of Charlotte Hay, and removing all doubt that this bitter bond is cancelled for ever."

"That is clear, that is clear," said Dr. Miles, who at this moment was pausing with his companion at a stile, "and now, I suppose, it is hand and heart for Isabella Slingsby."

"Assuredly," said Beauchamp, "but she must be informed of all this; and it is not a tale for me to tell."

"Will you have the kindness, Sir," said a voice from the other side of the hedge, as Beauchamp put his foot upon the first step of the stile, "to keep on that side and go out by the gate at the corner."