The History of Emily Montague Part 65

I tremble lest her story, for she certainly has one, should be such as, however it may ent.i.tle her to compa.s.sion, may make it impossible for Emily to shew it in the manner she seems to wish.

Adieu!

Your faithful Ed. Rivers.

LETTER 207.

To Captain Fitzgerald.

Bellfield, Oct. 24.

We have been again at the cottage; and are more convinced than ever, that this amiable girl is not in the station in which she was born; we staid two hours, and varied the conversation in a manner which, in spite of her extreme modesty, made it impossible for her to avoid shewing she had been educated with uncommon care: her style is correct and elegant; her sentiments n.o.ble, yet unaffected; we talked of books, she said little on the subject; but that little shewed a taste which astonished us.

Anxious as we are to know her true situation, in order, if she merits it, to endeavor to serve her, yet delicacy made it impossible for us to give the least hint of a curiosity which might make her suppose we entertained ideas to her prejudice.

She seemed greatly affected with the humane concern Emily expressed for the child's danger yesterday, as well as with the polite and even affectionate manner in which she appeared to interest herself in all which related to her; Emily made her general offers of service with a timid kind of softness in her air, which seemed to speak rather a person asking a favor than wis.h.i.+ng to confer an obligation.

She thanked my sweet Emily with a look of surprize and grat.i.tude to which it is not easy to do justice; there was, however, an embarra.s.sment in her countenance at those offers, which a little alarms me; she absolutely declined coming to Bellfield: I know not what to think.

Emily, who has taken a strong prejudice in her favor, will answer for her conduct with her life; but I will own to you, I am not without my doubts.

When I consider the inhuman arts of the abandoned part of one s.e.x, and the romantic generosity and too unguarded confidence, of the most amiable of the other; when I reflect that where women love, they love without reserve; that they fondly imagine the man who is dear to them possessed of every virtue; that their very integrity of mind prevents their suspicions; when I think of her present retirement, so apparently ill suited to her education; when I see her beauty, her elegance of person, with that tender and melancholy air, so strongly expressive of the most exquisite sensibility; when, in short, I see the child, and observe her fondness for him, I have fears for her, which I cannot conquer.

I am as firmly convinced as Emily of the goodness of her heart; but I am not so certain that even that very goodness may not have been, from an unhappy concurrence of circ.u.mstances, her misfortune.

We have company to dine.

Adieu! till the evening.

Ten at night.

About three hours ago, Emily received the inclosed, from our fair cottager.

Adieu!

Your affectionate Ed. Rivers.

"To Mrs. Rivers.

"Madam,

"Though I have every reason to wish the melancholy event which brought me here, might continue unknown; yet your generous concern for a stranger, who had no recommendation to your notice but her appearing unhappy, and whose suspicious situation would have injured her in a mind less n.o.ble than yours, has determined me to lay before you a story, which it was my resolution to conceal for ever.

"I saw, Madam, in your countenance, when you honored me by calling at my house this morning, and I saw with an admiration no words can speak, the amiable struggle between the desire of knowing the nature of my distress in order to soften it, and the delicacy which forbad your enquiries, lest they should wound my sensibility and self-love.

"To such a heart I run no hazard in relating what in the world would, perhaps, draw on me a thousand reproaches; reproaches, however, I flatter myself, undeserved.

"You have had the politeness to say, there is something in my appearance which speaks my birth above my present situation: in this, Madam, I am so happy as not to deceive your generous partiality.

"My father, who was an officer of family and merit, had the misfortune to lose my mother whilst I was an infant.

"He had the goodness to take on himself the care of directing my education, and to have me taught whatever he thought becoming my s.e.x, though at an expence much too great for his income.

"As he had little more than his commission, his parental tenderness got so far the better of his love for his profession, that, when I was about fifteen, he determined on quitting the army, in order to provide better for me; but, whilst he was in treaty for this purpose, a fever carried him off in a few days, and left me to the world, with little more than five hundred pounds, which, however, was, by his will, immediately in my power.

"I felt too strongly the loss of this excellent parent to attend to any other consideration; and, before I was enough myself to think what I was to do for a subsistence, a friend of my own age, whom I tenderly loved, who was just returning from school to her father's, in the north of England, insisted on my accompanying her, and spending some time with her in the country.

"I found in my dear Sophia, all the consolation my grief could receive; and, at her pressing solicitation, and that of her father, who saw his daughter's happiness depended on having me with her, I continued there three years, blest in the calm delights of friends.h.i.+p, and those blameless pleasures, with which we should be too happy, if the heart could content itself, when a young baronet, whose form was as lovely as his soul was dark, came to interrupt our felicity.

"My Sophia, at a ball, had the misfortune to attract his notice; she was rather handsome, though without regular features; her form was elegant and feminine, and she had an air of youth, of softness, of sensibility, of blus.h.i.+ng innocence, which seemed intended to inspire delicate pa.s.sions alone, and which would have disarmed any mind less depraved than that of the man, who only admired to destroy.

"She was the rose-bud yet impervious to the sun.

"Her heart was tender, but had never met an object which seemed worthy of it; her sentiments were disinterested, and romantic to excess.

"Her father was, at that time, in Holland, whither the death of a relation, who had left him a small estate, had called him: we were alone, unprotected, delivered up to the unhappy inexperience of youth, mistresses of our own conduct; myself, the eldest of the two, but just eighteen, when my Sophia's ill-fate conducted Sir Charles Verville to the ball where she first saw him.

"He danced with her, and endeavored to recommend himself by all those little unmeaning, but flattering attentions, by which our credulous s.e.x are so often misled; his manner was tender, yet timid, modest, respectful; his eyes were continually fixed on her, but when he met hers, artfully cast down, as if afraid of offending.

"He asked permission to enquire after her health the next day; he came, he was enchanting; polite, lively, soft, insinuating, adorned with every outward grace which could embellish virtue, or hide vice from view, to see and to love him was almost the same thing.

"He entreated leave to continue his visits, which he found no difficulty in obtaining: during two months, not a day pa.s.sed without our seeing him; his behaviour was such as would scarce have alarmed the most suspicious heart; what then could be expected of us, young, sincere, totally ignorant of the world, and strongly prejudiced in favor of a man, whose conversation spoke his soul the abode of every virtue?

"Blus.h.i.+ng I must own, nothing but the apparent preference he gave to my lovely friend, could have saved my heart from being a prey to the same tenderness which ruined her.

"He addressed her with all the specious arts which vice could invent to seduce innocence; his respect, his esteem, seemed equal to his pa.s.sion; he talked of honor, of the delight of an union where the tender affections alone were consulted; wished for her father's return, to ask her of him in marriage; pretended to count impatiently the hours of his absence, which delayed his happiness: he even prevailed on her to write her father an account of his addresses.

"New to love, my Sophia's young heart too easily gave way to the soft impression; she loved, she idolized this most base of mankind; she would have thought it a kind of sacrilege to have had any will in opposition to his.

"After some months of unremitted a.s.siduity, her father being expected in a few days, he dropped a hint, as if by accident, that he wished his fortune less, that he might be the more certain he was loved for himself alone; he blamed himself for this delicacy, but charged it on excess of love; vowed he would rather die than injure her, yet wished to be convinced her fondness was without reserve.

"Generous, disinterested, eager to prove the excess and sincerity of her pa.s.sion, she fell into the snare; she agreed to go off with him, and live some time in a retirement where she was to see only himself, after which he engaged to marry her publicly.

"He pretended extasies at this proof of affection, yet hesitated to accept it; and, by piquing the generosity of her soul, which knew no guile, and therefore suspected none, led her to insist on devoting herself to wretchedness.

"In order, however, that this step might be as little known as possible, as he pretended the utmost concern for that honor he was contriving to destroy, it was agreed between them, that he should go immediately to London, and that she should follow him, under pretence of a visit to a relation at some distance; the greatest difficulty was, how to hide this design from me.

"She had never before concealed a thought from her beloved f.a.n.n.y; nor could he now have prevailed on her to deceive me, had he not artfully perswaded her I was myself in love with him; and that, therefore, it would be cruel, as well as imprudent, to trust me with the secret.

"Nothing shews so strongly the power of love, in absorbing every faculty of the soul, as my dear Sophia's being prevailed on to use art with the friend most dear to her on earth.

"By an unworthy piece of deceit, I was sent to a relation for some weeks; and the next day Sophia followed her infamous lover, leaving letters for me and her father, calculated to perswade us, they were privately married.

"My distress, and that of the unhappy parent, may more easily be conceived than described; severe by nature, he cast her from his heart and fortune for ever, and settled his estate on a nephew, then at the university.

"As to me, grief and tenderness were the only sensations I felt: I went to town, and took every private method to discover her retreat, but in vain; till near a year after, when, being in London, with a friend of my mother's, a servant, who had lived with my Sophia, saw me in the street, and knew me: by her means, I discovered that she was in distress, abandoned by her lover, in that moment when his tenderness was most necessary.

"I flew to her, and found her in a miserable apartment, in which nothing but an extreme neatness would have made me suppose she had ever seen happier days: the servant who brought me to her attended her.