FIVE days had now passed, five melancholy days, since the sad victim of unjust suspicion had found no relief from anguish, but in her moments of insensibility. Her lovely face was quite faded and changed; her form emaciated and enfeebled, so that she could hardly support herself in her bed; sometimes she wildly started up, looked round her, and inquired for her child, until some degree of recollection sunk her again into the torpor of despair.
It was on the evening of the last of these days that three gentlemen, attended by servants, stopped in a post chaise at the door of the house, and inquired for Mrs. Montalbert. The landlady, who hoped that their arrival would put an end to her apprehensions of pecuniary loss, eagerly assured them that the lady was there; she was very ill to be sure—"But I will call Mam'selle, her maid, (added the good woman); and, for certain, Madam, will be glad to see her friends."
The three strangers, on this information, left their coach, and entered the parlour. One of them appeared to suffer from ill health; he was pale and sallow, and, though yet in the middle of life, seemed to have been the victim of sorrow or disease. The second had the habit and air of a clergyman; and the last was a young man, apparently of fashion, who might have been taken for the son of the one, and the pupil of the other.
Claudine, who, amidst all her solicitude for her mistress, never lost sight of little personal vanity, stayed to adjust her cap at the glass, to put a little powder in her hair, and a nicer fichu on her shoulders; and then expecting certainly to see Mr. Walsingham, whom she concluded, in some measure, as her master, she fluttered down into the room, where, in his place, she beheld three gentlemen who were entirely strangers to her.
The elder of them began to question her on the situation of her lady; but finding she understood little English, the younger, who spoke like a native of France, took up the inquiry, and heard, with great apparent concern, the sad account of Rosalie's health, which even the warmth and earnestness of Claudine's manner could but little exaggerate. Each of her auditors seemed almost equally affected, and each inquired whether she could conduct them to her mistress. Claudine, not knowing what to do, and having no idea of who these people could be, answered, in visible alarm, that she would go and inquire; forgetting, at that moment, that her poor mistress was probably incapable of attending to any question she might put to her, and certainly incapable of conversing with strangers.
It was in vain she spoke to Rosalie; she attended not to her. At length Claudine thought of a stratagem she had before used with some success, when it was necessary to rouse her unhappy mistress to temporary exertion—she spoke of her child; and Rosalie, who had appeared totally insensible for some moments, raised her languid head on her arm, and fixing her dim eyes on Claudine, faintly bad her repeat what she had been saying.
Claudine then told her, that three gentlemen were below, who, she was sure, were her friends, and who certainly came to tell her some good news about the dear little boy. Rosalie, catching eagerly at the hope these words offered, seemd to make an effort to recall her dissipated and confused senses to a point worthy her attention. Claudine saw that she had gained her notice, and repeated all she had said, enforcing, with her utmost power, the idea that the three gentlemen in question were certainly sent by Montalbert to treat of a reconciliation, and restore her child.
Rosalie by degrees acquired so much power over her scattered and enfeebled spirits, as to attempt recollecting what friends were most likely to be charged with such a commission; but her intellects were not equal to the research; bewildered and confused, she put her hand to her head, and sighing deeply, she appeared to give up the inquiry in despair. There were no friends of hers who answered the minute description Claudine had given of the strangers; nor did she know of any friends of Montalbert's, who were either acquainted with his marriage, or likely to be in his confidence. Hope, however, enabled her to re-assume her powers of reflection, and she became conscious, that, whoever the persons might be who thus interested themselves in her affairs, she ought to see them, if they were Montalbert's friends, on his account; if they were her friends, on their own.
But when it was necessary to make the exertion, which her returning reason told her was necessary, her strength so failed her, that it was more than an hour before she was seated, by the assistance of the landlady, in an arm chair, and half an hour longer before she had, by the aid of hawthorn and water, obtained resolution enough to let Claudine go down with a message, that any one of the gentlemen who were most disposed to take the trouble of visiting a sick room, was desired to walk up.
An interval of some moments passed before a foot was heard on the stairs; but Rosalie, so far from finding her courage strengthened by delay, had become almost senseless and breathless, when the door was opened by Claudine, and the figure which appeared at it she just distinguished to be Charles Vyvian, before her sight and consciousness totally forsook her, and she fell back in the chair, towards which he eagerly flew to support her.
"My sister! (cried he)—my dear, dear Rosalie!—But is it, indeed, my Rosalie!—Good God! how changed!—how altered!——Where is Montalbert?—what has happened?—and why are you reduced to this situation?"
Rosalie heard him not; but Claudine, amidst her efforts to recover her mistress, related all she knew. It appeared from the surprize Vyvian expressed, that, so far from knowing any reason for the conduct of Montalbert, he was not certain of his being in England, and that all the intelligence he had gained, as to the residence of Rosalie, came from Mrs. Lessington.
Claudine, who saw her mistress incapable of listening to this discourse, renewed her lamentations; while Vyvian, eager and impatient, and not considering the consequences, bade her call up the gentlemen below: an injunction which Claudine, as inconsiderate as himself, immediately obeyed.
Rosalie, therefore, hardly opened her eyes after so unexpected an appearance as that of Charles Vyvian, before they were struck with the figure of William Lessington, who, though greatly altered since she saw him last, she immediately knew: but the suddenness of his appearance, the distress visible in his countenance, and still more in that of the stranger who stood by him, with clasped hands, and an expression of mingled terror, pity, and affection, silently gazing on her, amazed her so much, that she was incapable of asking either who he was, or why he seemed to interested in her fate?—She was incapable, indeed, of speaking at all, but held out her hand to Mr. Lessington, in a manner which forcibly expressed—"Oh! friend and guide of my youth! why have you so long deserted your unhappy Rosalie?"
Lessington now spoke to her.—"My dearest friend! (said he), my sweet Rosalie, you are ill!—you are unhappy!"
"I am, indeed," she would have answered, but she could not articulate the words. Her attempt, however, had something so affecting in it, that the stranger could no longer restraint the emotions which arose in his breast; he burst into an agony of tears, and, turning from her, exclaimed—
"She too is destroyed—destroyed as her mother was, by the accursed house of Montalbert!——Yes!—the nephew resembles the uncle—he has murdered my daughter!"
These strange exclamations served entirely to overcome the feeble spirits of Rosalie; she no longer comprehended, and but indistinctly heard, what passed.—Lessington hung over her with the tenderest concern, while Vyvian walked about the room in great agitation; yet attempted to appease that of the stranger, and now and then spoke a broken sentence to Rosalie. It was evident, that far from relieving the sweet sufferer, for whom they were all interested, by a continuation of this scene, they did but increase her anguish, yet none of them had sufficient presence of mind to remark this; and there was no woman about her, who had sense or observation enough, to advise them to withdraw till she could acquire more composure.
The agitation of the stranger became more violent. It was Ormsby, the unfortunate father of Rosalie, who, having returned with an ample fortune from India, had been informed, on his first inquiries, that Mrs. Vyvian was dead. From Mrs. Lessington he had learned, that young Vyvian, her son, was, by a paper she wrote to him before her death, acquainted with the real relationship in which Rosalie stood to him, and with the circumstances that had rendered her marriage with his father a source of continual unhappiness.
Charles Vyvian, who had always loved his mother much better than his father, whose sole attachment to him originated in family pride, no sooner knew this history, than, with every attention that delicacy and duty required towards the character and memory of his mother, he sought, as soon has he returned to England, the family of Lessington. The eldest son, who was settled near Oxford, was more easily applied to than any other part of it. To him, therefore, Vyvian addressed himself, and thither also Mr. Ormsby was directed, when, on application to Mrs. Lessington, he found she was herself settled in the north. After an explanation between these gentlemen, they determined to seek Rosalie together; and set out for Eastbourne, without suspecting that she was suffering under any other unhappiness than that which arose from a temporary separation from her husband; they arrived at Eastbourne, and found her emaciated by illness, injured in intellects by grief, and incapable of feeling that portion of happiness and prosperity, which, they hoped, it would have been in their power to offer her.
Ormsby, from the moment he had learned that he had a daughter living, who was worthy, for her own sake, of the tenderness he was disposed to feel towards the representative of the woman he adored, he cherished the most flattering hopes of happiness with a lovely being, who would recall continually to his mind the hours of his early felicity, and gild the evening of his life. He now found all visionary bliss vanished at once, and the bitterness of his disappointment was aggravated, when he remembered that the blow, which had murdered his happiness a second time, came from the same family that had destroyed it before. The injuries, the deceptions, the tyranny, of Old Montalbert, which had driven him from the bosom of his first Rosalie to exile and to sorrow, now seemd to be revived in the nephew to rob him of all he had left; and, in the anguish of heart, which these thoughts gave him, he forgot, that, by his unguarded transports, he was deepening the wounds he deplored. Such, however, were the unhappy effects of his expressions on the bewildered mind of his daughter, who catching from them some vague ideas about her mother, (whose name he often repeated), though unable to follow the chain of circumstances to which these expressions alluded, that her spirits were entirely overcome; and, when he fondly called her his daughter, his only hope on earth, his poor unfortunate child! she was so far from understanding it was her father who spoke to her, that she wildly fancied it was the same person who had been sent by Montalbert to take her child from her. She shuddered, therefore, as he approached her; withdrew her hand from him, as he attempted to take it, and looking with wild and eager eyes towards Lessington, who engaged her notice more than Vyvian, she appeared silently to entreat that he would deliver her from the presence of a person, of whom, was evident from her manner, she had conceived some unfavourable impression.
Shocked by this conviction, and assured that her intellects were entirely gone, the unhappy father hastily left the room, and threw himself into a chair in the parlour below, where he gave way to the anguish of his soul.
The sight of Rosalie, though she resembled her mother more by her air and voice than by any positive likeness of features, had brought to his mind a thousand tender recollections; and, in believing her irreparable hurt both in her understanding and constitution, he felt as if the wounds that had been so long healing, after his separation from her mother, were now torn open afresh; and the happiness which he had fondly hoped might gild the evening of his life seemed now vanished for ever.—Why Montalbert had left Rosalie, or why he had so cruelly taken her child from her, he could not imagine. Vyvian had learned these particulars from Claudine, and had unguardedly communicated them to the rest; but as Claudine was herself ignorant of his motives, she could only relate the facts, and Mr. Ormsby, never disposed to think favourably of the family of Montalbert, could see nothing in such actions but an hereditary depravity and malignity, which he execrated. It was not long before Vyvian joined him in the parlour. Ormsby said little to him of the resolution he was silently forming, while Vyvian, who was extremely hurt at the situation of Rosalie, whom he had ever tenderly loved, believing it impossible that Montalbert could act, as he was represented to have done, without some very strange misunderstanding, determined to set out immediately in quest of him, and, representing the situation of his wife, endeavour to develope the cause of his having thrown her into it by his rash and unkind conduct.
Mr. Lessington, in the mean time, was attempting to sooth and appease the troubled mind of his ever-beloved Rosalie, in hopes of learning and alleviating her distress. He at length succeeded so far, as to procure from her the words "Yes!" or "No!" to some of the questions he put to her; but to others she remained silent, or answered only by a deep sigh. Finding he could gain, therefore, but little information, though he stayed with her near half an hour longer than the other two gentlemen, he left her, saying he would return to her immediately, and rejoined his distressed friends below.
Some conversation there passed between them, in which the calmness of Mr. Lessington was happily opposed to the agitation of the father oppressed with sorrow, and the natural vivacity of Vyvian, who now felt disposed to quarrel with his cousin, and now to account for conduct which seemed to him unpardonable, if some reason could not be given for it.
Lessington, whose attachment to Rosalie had grown up with him, listened to each of them with patience, but acquiesced in neither of their plans. That of Mr. Ormsby, though he did not openly avow it, was to seek Montalbert, demand an explanation of his conduct, and, if he could not give some very good reason for measures so harsh and violent as he had adopted, to demand of him the satisfaction due to the injured honour and peace of the unfortunate Rosalie. Lessington perfectly understood this by the half sentences and angry expressions of Ormsby, and he saw the necessity of preventing a measure which must involve the object of his solicitude in yet deeper calamity. It was not easy, in the present agitated state of his mind, to say any thing that would not rather irritate than sooth, and, therefore, Lessington affected to attend rather to the project of Vyvian, who proposed setting out immediately to find Montalbert, and endeavour to clear up whatever mistake had given rise to proceedings so unlike the usual tenor of his conduct.
Though Lessington was clearly of opinion that Vyvian was not the properest person to engage in this explanation, yet, as he hoped to obtain Ormsby's patience while he was about it, and that something might happen in the mean time to clear up the darkness in which they were involved, he seemed to agree to Vyvian's departure, still, however, with coldness and reluctance, and as if he meditated on some scheme which he thought more eligible. At this instant Lady Llancarrick and Miss Gillman appeared; the former having heard of the arrival of the strangers, introducing herself to them as the dear friend of Mrs. Sheffield, and, as such, it seemed probable that she could give them information as to the cause of the appearances which had so greatly distressed them. The change of name, which, though Mrs. Lessington had mentioned it, had been hardly attended before, now seemed to strike Mr. Ormsby as if it were entirely now to him——Why should his daughter have changed her name?—An appearance of concealment is always injurious. It might, however, be at the desire of her husband, since their marriage was clandestine. This reflection satisfied his mind for a moment as to the circumstance, but, as Mr. Lessington and Mr. Vyvian continued to converse one with Lady Llancarrick and the other with Miss Gillman, Mr. Ormsby, who listened to them alternately, found so many obscure hints, or evasive answers in their conversation, and thought them women whose acquaintance seemed so little creditable to his daughter, that his uneasiness became unsupportable.
He dreaded lest in the conduct of Rosalie he should find but too strong a justification of that of Montalbert. This idea was infinitely more painful to him than to believe her innocent and suffering only from misapprehension or injustice, and unable to bear the distress of mind, which every moment increased, he started up, and, leaving the room, walked up a lane near the house, which he traversed with hasty and uncertain steps while the conference lasted, which had already given him so much uneasiness.
Before that conference ended, the conviction that both Lessington and Vyvian had entertained of the perfect and unimpeachable discretion of Rosalie was very cruelly shaken. They had learned from Lady Llancarrick, who either could not or would not conceal any thing she knew, that, under a feigned name herself, and under the protection of a young man of the name of Walsingham, she had appeared at the village, where she had lived since in a retired way, but frequently receiving him at her house, and, as it was generally understood, supported by him.
To two young men, who knew nothing of the extraordinary chain of events which had separated Rosalie from Montalbert, (for Vyvian had passed eighteen months in the German Courts, from whence he had come to England only three months before this period), these circumstances could not fail of having a very unfavorable appearance. Vyvian, as soon as the ladies from whom they had gathered this intelligence were gone, talked of seeking this Mr. Walsingham, and demanding an explanation of him; a scheme which appeared to Lessington to be more pregnant with mischief than even that proposed by Ormsby. They now went in search of the latter, and found him overwhelmed with sorrow and anxiety. The state in which his daughter was, gave him the most acute pain, which was infinitely increased by the dread he now entertained as to her conduct.—What Lessington and Vyvian had to say, though the former softened it all he could, was but ill calculated to appease these fears; and a conflict now arose in the breast of the unhappy father, between his wish to return to, and, if possible, comfort his afflicted child, and his reluctance even to see her, if it could be true that she had deserted her husband, and disgraced herself.
He determined, however, once more to see her, and to see her alone. He found, on entering her apartment, that all the symptoms that seemed to have a little subsided, while she had been flattered with hopes of hearing news of her child, had since returned with renewed violence; a deadly paleness overspread her countenance, and a fever seemed to devour her. If Claudine spoke to her, she answered only by a deep sigh, and when she became sensible that a stranger was in the room, and opening her eyes saw Ormsby, she cast a reproaching look towards Claudine, waved with her hand for him to leave her, and then, covering her face with her handkerchief, sunk into silence, from which not even the voice of Lessington could rouse her:—he, at the desire of Mr. Ormsby, went to her, spoke to her, and entreated her to attend to her own health, to the anxiety of her friends; he even named her father to her, but he could obtain no other answer, than a faint entreaty that he would leave to her destiny a creature born only to be miserable. At length, she said, "My father!—alas! I have no father!—Do not mock me! I never saw a father!—I had a husband—indeed I had a child, but now both are gone, and I am now a wretched outcast?"
"Have you no friends, Rosalie?—(Lessington then ventured to say)—Surely there are some in whom you place confidence and friendship, though you deny it to him whom you once loved to call by the tender name of brother?"
To this it seemed as if she was either unable or unwilling to answer directly; for again, with a deep-drawn sigh, and in a half-stifled voice, she said, "You—you are my brother still, William, if you do not disdain the title—and then I shall not be——as, indeed, I think myself now—quite—quite friendless!"
She was now again sensible, yet Lessington doubted whether it was a proper hour to speak to her of her father, since every time he had either spoken to her, or been named to her, her ideas seemed to have taken a confused flight, from whence it was not very easy to recall them; and though Mr. Ormsby earnestly wished she might be made to understand that he was her father, yet Lessington saw her mind so shaken by trying to impress on it what her mother had, he believed, never fully related to her, that he dreaded lest such an attempt now might be the worst of consequences.
All he judged prudent to do, therefore, was to sooth her mind as much as he could for that night, and persuade her father to leave her. This, though not without difficulty, he effected. Ormsby went again with him to the parlour, whither the landlady was now summoned to give information where the best physician in the neighbourhood was to be obtained.
A messenger was dispatched for one, but hardly was he gone, and Lessington entering into conversation with his two friends on what he thought was properest to be done, when a servant on horseback brought a letter, directed to Mrs. Sheffield, which, he said required an immediate answer.—On being questioned by Mr. Vyvian who it was from, the man answered insolently enough, "That he had no orders to tell that, unless to the lady herself; but that, for his part, he was never ashamed of his master's name—it came from Squire Walsingham."
Ormsby, who saw in the name of Walsingham, and in such a correspondence, a confirmation of all the fears that had assailed him for the reputation and peace of his daughter, determined to open the letter. Lessington at first doubted how far this might be justifiable; but yielding at length to the authority of a father, the letter was opened, and, to the astonishment and indignation of the parties, was found to contain these words——
"MADAM,:
"A gentleman of the name of Montalbert has taken the trouble to write to me, on a supposition of my being a much more fortunate man than I have ever suspected myself to be. He wishes me to meet him at my own time and place, to explain to him my pretensions to the very great favour which he assures me you have honoured me with, as well in a certain long voyage, which it seems we made together, as since our return to England, where he affirms you have remained under my protection.
"Having hinted to him that I am perfectly unconscious of all this, I have received a second letter, couched in terms which do not generally pass unnoticed between gentlemen. Now, Madam, if I must risk the penalty, it is but just that I should be made conscious of the happy trespass by which I have incurred it; when I am persuaded I shall meet with exultation whatever may happen; or if it hitherto exists only in the imagination of my correspondent, I am, nevertheless, ready to meet him as he desires, provided that before I become his adversary, you will permit me to assume the pleasing and honourable title of your champion.
"But, as no time is to be lost, I await your answer with extreme impatience, flattering myself it will bring permission to throw himself at your feet, one who is,
Dear Madam,
Your most devoted servant,
S. WALSINGHAM."
Vyvian had no sooner heard the contents of this extraordinary billet, than he flew out of the room to find the servant that had brought it, for it appeared as if the writer of it was waiting somewhere in the neighbourhood, and he was at all event resolved to find him.
Of Mr. Walsingham, neither Ormsby, Vyvian, nor Lessington knew any thing but the name; and this letter, of whatever nature might have been his acquaintance with Rosalie, having certainly the air of an insult, was not calculated to give them a favourable opinion of him. None of them could help seeing, that a meeting between him and Montalbert must be attended with fatal consequences, if not to the life of either, at least to the honour of the unfortunate young woman, who was the cause of their quarrel. Vyvian, breathing nothing but vengeance against a man capable of writing such a letter, would listen to nothing that Lessington could say; and Ormsby, lost in bewildering conjectures, but more uneasy than ever, determined at length to pursue his original plan of finding Montalbert; and, having learned the cause of his conduct, and of the present extraordinary letter, to take Rosalie and conceal her in some obscure retreat if she was guilty; or, if she was innocent, to vindicate that innocence in the face of the world. It was, however, necessary for him to await the arrival of the physician who was sent for, as it was certain the personal sufferings of his unhappy daughter became every hour more alarming. Lessington, with the most patient pity both for Ormsby and his child, remained with him; but his arguments had no longer any effect on the impetuosity of Vyvian, who having learned, from the servant he questioned, that Mr. Walsingham was at Brighthelmstone, set off thither in a post chaise, attended only by his servant, assuring his friends that he had no design of taking the resentment of Montalbert out of his hands; but that he was determined to clear up this extraordinary business in some way or other, and that they should hear of him in a very few hours.
With these assurances, since he would hear nothing Ormsby or Lessington could say to urge remaining with them, they were compelled to suffer him to depart.