Читать книгу The Greatest Regency Romance Novels - Maria Edgeworth - Страница 75

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Love in death; an example rather to be wondered at than imitated

On Mr. Trueworth's going to Sir Bazil's, he found the two ladies with all the appearance of the most poignant grief in their faces: Mrs. Wellair's eyes were full of tears; but those of her lovely sister seemed to flow from an exhaustless spring.

This was a strange phœnomenon to Mr. Trueworth; it struck a sudden damp on the gaiety of his spirits; and he had but just recovered his surprize enough to ask the meaning, when Mrs. Wellair prevented him, by saying, 'O, Mr. Trueworth, we have a melancholy account to give you—poor Mrs. Blanchfield is no more!'

'Dead!' cried he. 'Dead!' repeated Miss Harriot; 'but the manner of it will affect you most.'—'A much less motive,' replied he, 'if capable of giving pain to you, must certainly affect me: but I beseech you, Madam,' continued he, 'keep me not in suspense.'

'You may remember,' said Miss Harriot, sighing, 'that some time ago we told you that Mrs. Blanchfield had taken leave of us, and was gone down to Windsor. It seems she had not been long there before she was seized with a disorder, which the physicians term a fever on the spirits; whatever it was, she lingered in it for about three weeks, and died yesterday: some days before she sent for a lawyer, and disposed of her effects by will; she also wrote a letter to me, which last she put into the hands of a maid, who has lived with her almost from her infancy, binding her by the most solemn vow to deliver to me as soon as possible after she was dead, and not till then, on any motive whatsoever.

'The good creature,' pursued Miss Harriot, 'hurried up to town this morning, to perform her lady's last injunctions: this is the letter I received from her,' continued she, taking it out of her pocket, and presenting it to him; 'read it, and join with us in lamenting the fatal effects of a passion people take so much pains to inspire.'

The impatience Mr. Trueworth was in for the full explanation of a mystery, which, perhaps, he had some guess into the truth of, hindered him from making any answer to what Miss Harriot had said upon the occasion; he hastily opened the letter, and found in it these lines.

'To Miss Harriot Loveit.

P.S.Dear, happy friend!

As my faithful Lucy, at the same time she delivers this into your hands, brings you also the intelligence of my death, the secret it discovers cannot raise in you any jealous apprehensions: I have been your rival, my dear Harriot; but when I found you were mine, wished you not to lose what I would have given the world, had I been the mistress of it, to have gained. The first moment I saw the too agreeable Mr. Trueworth, something within told me, he was my fate—that according as I appeared in his eyes, I must either be happy, or no more: it has proved the latter; death has seized upon my heart, but cannot drive my passion thence. Whether I shall carry it beyond the grave I shall know before this reaches you; but at present I think it is so incorporated with my immortal part, as not to be separated by the dissolution of my frame.

I will not pretend to have had so much command over myself, as to refrain taking any step for the forwarding my desires: before I was convinced of his attachment to you, I caused a letter to be wrote to him, making him an offer of the heart and fortune of a person, unnamed indeed, but mentioned as one not altogether unworthy of his acceptance. This he answered as requested, and ingenuously confessed, that the whole affections of his soul were already devoted to another. I had then no more to do with hope, nor had any thing to attempt but the concealing my despair: this made me quit London, and all that was valuable to me in it. I flattered myself, alas! that time and absence would restore my reason; but, as I said before, my doom was fixed—irrevocably fixed! and I soon found, by a thousand symptoms of an inward decay, that to be sensible of that angelick man's perfections, and to live without him, are things incompatible in nature: even now, while I am writing, I feel the icy harbingers of death creep through my veins, benumbing as they pass. Soon, very soon, shall I be reduced to a cold lump of senseless clay; indeed, I have now no wish for life, nor business to transact below. I have settled my worldly affairs, and disposed of the effects that Heaven has blessed me with, to those I think most worthy of them. My last will is in the hands of Mr. Markland the lawyer; I hope he is an honest man; but lest he should prove otherwise, let Mr. Trueworth know I have made him master of half that fortune, which once I should have rejoiced to lay wholly at his feet: all my jewels I intreat you to accept; they can add nothing to your beauty, but may serve to ornament your wedding-garments; Lucy has them in her possession, and will deliver them to you.

And now, my dear Miss Harriot, I have one favour to beg of you; and that is, that you exert all the influence your merits claim over the heart of Mr. Trueworth, to engage him to accompany you in seeing me laid in the earth. I know your gentle, generous nature, too well, to doubt you will deny me this request; and the very idea that you will ask, and he will grant, gives, methinks, a new vigour to my enfeebled spirits. O if some departed souls are permitted, as some say they are, to look down on what passes beneath the moon, how will mine triumph—how exult to see my poor remains thus honoured! thus attended! I can no more but this—may you make happy the best of men, and may he make you the happiest of women! Farewel—enternally farewel—be assured, that I as lived, so I die, with the greatest sincerity, dear Miss Harriot, yours, &c.

J. Blanchfield.

P.S. Be so good to give my last adieus to Mrs. Wellair; she will find I have not forgot her, nor my little godson, in my bequests.'

How would the vain unthinking sop have exulted on such a proof of his imagined merit! how would the sordid avaricious man, in the pleasure of finding so unexpected an accession to his wealth, have forgot all compassion for the hand that gave it! Mr. Trueworth, on the contrary, blushed at having so much more ascribed to him than he would allow himself to think he deserved, and would gladly have been deprived of the best part of his fortune, rather than have received an addition to it by such fatal means.

The accident, however, was so astonishing to him, that he scarce believed it real; nor could what he read in the letter under her own hand, nor all Mrs. Wellair and Miss Harriot alledged, persuade him to think, at least to acknowledge, that the lady's death was owing to a hopeless flame for him.

While they were speaking, Sir Bazil came in; he had been at home when his sister received the letter, and had heard what Lucy said of her mistress's indisposition, and was therefore no stranger to any part of the affair.

'Well, Trueworth,' said he to that gentleman, 'I have often endeavoured to emulate, and have even envied, the great talents you are master of; but am now reconciled to nature for not bestowing them on me, lest they might prove of the same ill consequences to some women, as yours have been to Mrs. Blanchfield.'

'Dear Sir Bazil,' replied Mr. Trueworth, 'do not attempt to force me into an imagination which would render me at once both vain and wretched. Chance might direct the partial inclination of this lady to have kinder thoughts of me, than I could either merit or return; but I should be loth to believe that they have produced the sad event we now lament.'

'I am of opinion, indeed,' said Sir Bazil, 'that there are many who deceive themselves, as well as the world, in this point. People are apt to mistake that for love, which is only the effect of pride, for a disappointment: but it would be unjust to suppose this was the case with Mrs. Blanchfield; the generous legacy she has bequeathed to you, and the tenderness with which she treats my sister, leaves no room to suspect her soul was tainted with any of those turbulent emotions, which disgrace the name of love, and yet are looked upon as the consequence of that passion; she knew no jealousy, harboured no revenge; the affection she had for you was simple and sincere; and, meeting no return, preyed only upon herself and by degrees consumed the springs of life.'

'I am glad, however,' said the elder sister of Sir Bazil, 'to find that Mr. Trueworth has nothing to reproach himself with on this unhappy score: some men, on receiving a letter of the nature he did, would, through mere curiosity of knowing on whose account it came, have sent an answer of encouragement; it must be owned, therefore, that the command he had over himself in this generosity to his unknown admirer, demanded all the recompense in her power to make.'

Mr. Trueworth, whose modesty had been sufficiently wounded in this conversation, hastily replied, 'Madam, what you by an excess of goodness are pleased to call generosity, was, in effect, no more than a piece of common honesty: the man capable of deceiving a woman who regards him, is no less a villain than he who defrauds his neighbour of the cash intrusted into his hands: the unfortunate Mrs. Blanchfield did me the honour to depend on my sincerity and secrecy: I did but my duty in observing both; and she, in so highly over-rating that act of duty, shewed indeed the magnanimity of her own mind, but adds no merit to mine.'

'I could almost wish it did not,' said Miss Harriot, sighing. 'Madam!' cried Mr. Trueworth, looking earnestly on her, as not able to comprehend what she meant by these words. 'Indeed,' resumed she, 'I could almost wish, that you were a little less deserving than you are, since the esteem you enforce is of so dangerous a kind.' She uttered this with so inexpressible a tenderness in her voice and eyes, that he could not restrain himself from kissing her hand in the most passionate manner, though in the presence of her brother and sister; crying, at the same time, 'I desire no more of the world's esteem, than just so much as may defend my lovely Harriot from all blame for receiving my addresses.'

They afterwards fell into some discourse concerning what was really deserving admiration, and what was so only in appearance; in which many mistakes in judging were detected, and the extreme weakness of giving implicitly into the opinions of others, exposed by examples suitable to the occasion.

But these are inquisitions which it is possible would not be very agreeable to the present age; and it would be madness to risk the displeasure of the multitude for the sake of gratifying a few: so the reader must excuse the repetition of what was said by this agreeable company on that subject.