THE LETTER-BAG.
Among the many highly-valued comforts and privileges which Mr.
Cartwright's exclusive possession of the library afforded him, that of
receiving in solitary state--and privacy, the family letter-bag, was not
the one least valued.
It may, I believe, be laid down as a pretty general rule, that those
persons who conceive, or profess it to be their duty, to dive into the
hearts and consciences of their fellow-creatures, and to regulate the
very thoughts and feelings of all the unfortunate people within their
reach, are not very scrupulous as to the methods used to obtain that
_inward_ knowledge. Mr. Cartwright, according to the usual custom of
divines of his class, had his village matron, ostensibly only a merchant
of apples, gingerbread, and lollypops, but intrusted with as many secret
missions of inquiry as the most jealous pontiff ever committed to a
faithful and favoured nuncio on quitting the gates of Rome. She could
tell, and was not ill paid for that precious knowledge, how often Betty
Jackson went to buy baccy; and how many times in the day Sally Wright
looked over her shoulder at the passers-by while walking out with her
master's children; and how many pots of porter were carried to one
house, and how many times the ladies walked forth from another; besides
innumerable other facts and anecdotes, which, though apparently not of
sufficient importance to record, were nevertheless of great value to the
vicar and to his curate, as themes to lecture upon in private, and
preach upon in public.
Sources of information such as these had never been overlooked or
neglected by Mr. Cartwright at any period of his ministry; but hitherto
he had held them to be important rather to the general welfare of the
Christian world than to his own family: no sooner, however, did he find
himself placed in the responsible position of master of a large
household, than, besides taking the butler into a sort of partnership
for the discovery of petty offences, and having moreover an elected
stable-boy, who made a daily report of all that he saw and heard, and a
little more, he determined that all letters addressed to any member of
the family should pass through his hand; and in like manner, that all
those put into the letter-box in the hall, of which he kept the key
himself, should be submitted to the same species of religious
examination before they were deposited in the post-bag.
In the execution of this part of his duty Mr. Cartwright displayed, to
himself at least, considerable mechanical skill--for the letters were
excellently well re-sealed--and likewise great equanimity of temper;
for, scanty as the family correspondence proved to be, he chanced to
fall upon some few passages which might have shaken the philosophy of a
mind less admirably regulated.
In former times, if any Mowbray had wished to send a note from the Park
to the village, a groom or a groom's helper would have taken it: but
now, though the establishment was greatly increased, there was no such
privilege allowed them; and in order to escape the ceremony of asking
permission to employ a servant, they all resorted to the post-bag.
One of the letters thus sent and thus examined was from little Mary
Richards to her friend Fanny; and many more important documents had
passed through his hands without exciting an equal degree of emotion. It
ran thus:
"I cannot express to you, my dearest Fanny, how anxious I feel
to open my whole heart to you on a subject that has long
occupied us both with, I believe, equal depth and sincerity of
interest;--I mean, as I am sure you will instantly anticipate,
that inward call to especial grace and favour which Mr.
Cartwright taught us to expect would be the sure and certain
consequence of unbounded faith in _himself_; for so only can we
interpret the language he used to us. If I were to live a
thousand years, dear Fanny, I should never cease to regret the
dreadful, but, I thank Heaven brief interval, during which I
firmly believed that I had received this call. While this
frightful and most presumptuous notion had possession of me, I
looked upon my dear and excellent mother--ay, and, to my bitter
sorrow, treated her too, as a being almost unworthy of
communion with me! Is not this of itself enough to prove the
unholy tendency of the doctrine? Now that the madness is
passed, I look back upon it with as much astonishment as
sorrow; and can so clearly trace in it the workings of the most
paltry vanity and egregious self-love, that while remembering
how sincerely I believed myself _the better_ for all the
hateful crimes of impious presumption and filial ingratitude of
which I was guilty, I cannot but think that the most
contemptible follies into which vanity and fine speeches ever
plunged a girl in the ordinary routine of this world's nonsense
must be considered as innocent and respectable, when compared
to those committed (oh! fearful impiety!) in the name of
Heaven.
"Though we frequently meet, I have never yet been able fully
and clearly to state to you how completely I have made a
recantation of all my religious errors. It is singular how Mr.
Cartwright contrives, either by himself or his satellites, to
be always hovering near us. For the three last Wednesdays I
have set off for the Park with a firm determination to speak to
you on this subject; but I have each time found it impossible.
I believe that my countenance or manner must have expressed
some part of the anxiety I felt to converse with you, and that
my eagerness to obtain my object defeated it. On one occasion,
as I think you must remember, Mr. Cartwright himself, though
constantly drawn here and there to perform his gracious
hospitalities to the rest of the company, ceased not again and
again to return with his soft "Well, dear children! what are
you talking about?"--on another it was his curate and deputy
who performed the office of interrupter; and last Wednesday,
that very unaccountable person Mr. Jacob seemed determined that
no one should speak to you but himself. I have therefore,
dearest Fanny, determined to write to you. I think it likely
that I may soon leave this neighbourhood: Major Dalrymple, who
has been greatly the means of bringing me back to happiness and
common sense, will, I believe, undertake the charge of me for
the rest of my life. This, I find, has long been my dear, dear
mother's wish. Had I been quite sure of this a year ago, I
think I should have been saved this wild interlude of fanatic
raving. However, it is over; and greatly as I have been the
worse, I hope and believe that for the future I shall be the
humbler Christian and the better woman for it.
"Major Dalrymple is at present in Scotland, attending the
sick--I believe the dying hours of his cousin Lord Hilton.
After his return, it is probable we shall leave Wrexhill; and I
am therefore most anxious to make you acquainted with my
present state of mind, for I cannot but suspect that we have
run the farther into this lamentable folly because we ran
together.
"You have already said enough to make me hope that you too are
recovering from your delusion; but I cannot be easy without
telling you explicitly, that I am again the same unpretending
little Church-of-England Christian that I was in the days of
our good Mr. Wallace; that I am once more a loving and dutiful
daughter to the best of mothers, and ever and always your very
"Affectionate friend,
"MARY RICHARDS."
"P. S. Pray let me hear from you."
This letter was wormwood to Mr. Cartwright from one end to the other.
Had it rehearsed the kissing story, he would liked it infinitely better.
He was quite aware of Mary Richards's "falling off," and attributed it,
as well as that equally evident in Fanny, to jealousy--woman's jealousy,
and drew thence a species of gratification that almost atoned for their
secession; the more so perhaps as the all-important business of the will
rendered it absolutely necessary that, cost what converts it might, he
should bestow his love-making wholly and solely upon his lady.
But to find that this pretty little girl really appeared to have
forgotten the kiss altogether, and yet that she had escaped from his
net--at the very moment too when, as it seemed she was on the very verge
of becoming a viscountess, was a mortification so cutting, that he
actually ground his fine teeth together with rage at it.
His first impulse was to destroy it. But he recollected that by
suffering it to reach Fanny, he should obtain a sight of her answer; and
feeling considerable curiosity to discover how he should fare in the
hands of the little melancholy poetess who had of late evidently avoided
all tete-a-tete communication with him, he carefully re-sealed it, and
sedulously pinching its folds into unsuspicious-looking flatness, put it
aside to be delivered according to its address.
The event proved that he was quite right in believing that Fanny Mowbray
would answer this letter; but whether the perusal of her reply increased
his satisfaction in being master of Cartwright Park, may be doubted.
Fanny's reply was as follows:
"My very dear Mary,
"I am most thankful to have received your letter; for one
source of the mental misery I have endured has arisen from
believing that I first led you to fix your attention on Mr.
Cartwright, and your faith on the hateful dogmas he taught. You
are freed--you have escaped, you are restored to the mother you
love, and _you_ will be happy! I thank Heaven, Mary, that my
heart is not wholly perverted by all the unnatural struggles it
has gone through; for I do rejoice, my dear friend, at your
felicity with a pureness and freshness of joy that I have never
felt at any thing since the death of my poor father came and
blighted all our joys. Neither am I surprised at the end of
your history. May you through life be as happy as I wish you,
and you shall have no reason to complain.
"Of myself I know not how to speak; and yet I am sure that you
will not be easy without knowing something of the present state
of my mind.
"Yes, Mary, the mad fanaticism has passed away; but it has left
me weak as a child recovered from the delirium of a raging
fever; and I feel very doubtful if I shall ever wholly recover
it. I am thankful that you have suffered less than I have done;
indeed the mischief wrought so differently with you, that I
almost doubt my power of making you understand all I have
suffered. I cannot explain even to myself what species of
feeling it was which took possession of me when first I became
acquainted with Mr. Cartwright. Of this, however, I am quite
sure, that I believed with all the simplicity of truth and
innocence, that all I felt proceeded from the immediate
influence of the Deity working within me to secure my eternal
salvation. I could not more firmly have believed that Mr.
Cartwright was Heaven's appointed agent on earth; and every
thing he did and every thing he said appeared clothed in a sort
of holiness in my eyes which would have rendered it impious to
judge him as another would have been judged. During the first
two or three months of our acquaintance, I was happy--oh! much
more than happy; I lived in a sort of ecstasy. I believed
myself the chosen of Heaven, and that all the agitating but
delightful emotions which Mr. Cartwright's admiration and
praises excited were only so many heavenly assurances that I
was indeed one of the elected few predestined to eternal and
unspeakable happiness. He caressed me--very often he caressed
me. But even now, Mary, that I see clearly much that was then
concealed, I cannot comprehend the sort of effect this had upon
me. I think that had he asked me to marry him, I should have
been conscious of the disparity of his age; and I think, too,
that I should have been startled and shocked at discovering
that his love, always so fervently expressed, and often shown
by tender endearments, was in anyway an earthly love. And yet,
weak and inconsistent creatures that we are! when I discovered
that the object of my mother's last sudden journey to town, in
which I accompanied her--when I discovered that her purpose
was to marry Mr. Cartwright, the sick faintness that seemed to
seize upon my heart and creep over all my limbs convinced me
for a moment that I loved him ... not as I fancied I did, dear
Mary, as a lower angel might love one of higher order, but with
a love of a weak sinful woman. The tortures I endured that
night can never be obliterated from my mind; a terrified
conscience and a wounded heart seemed struggling together, as
if to try which could torment me most. But the struggle did not
last long. My heart--at least all that was tender and womanly
in it--appeared to turn to stone, and was tranquil enough as
far as any feelings connected with love for Mr. Cartwright were
concerned; but religious terrors, frightful, hideous, almost
maddening, took possession of me. I believed that the crime I
had committed in loving the man whom Heaven had ordained to be
my spiritual teacher, was a deadly sin. I now felt certain--or,
in the language of the sect, an inward assurance, that I was
pre-doomed to eternal perdition; and that the belief I had once
entertained, exactly contrary to this, was of itself a sin
never to be atoned, and only to be punished by eternal flames.
Is there another torture of the mind equal to this? I do not
think it; for true and reasonable remorse for crimes really
committed cannot approach it. Not all the sins that man ever
laid upon his soul could equal in atrocity what my guilt seemed
to me. I suppose I was mad, quite mad; for as I now recall the
hours that passed over me, and all the horrid images of the
avenging fury of an angry God which entered and rested upon my
spirit, I can call the state I was in nothing short of madness.
"This state lasted, with little variation in the amount of
suffering, during the first week after my mother's marriage;
and then its feverish violence gave place to sullen, heavy
gloom. The cure however was near, very near me, for I found it
in Mr. Cartwright himself.
"It was some trifling instance of contemptible artifice which
first drew aside the veil from my mental vision, and caused me
to see Mr. Cartwright, not as he is--oh no! that has been a
work of steady study, and some length of time,--but as
something of a very different species from that to which I had
fancied he belonged.
"One must have been under a delusion as complete as mine has
been, to conceive the sensation produced by once more seeing
things as they are. I can compare it only to walking out of a
region peopled with phantoms and shadows into a world filled
with sober, solid realities. It is the phantom world which
produces the strongest effect on the imagination; and the first
effect of the change was to make everything around me seem most
earthly dull, stale, and unprofitable. I was still, however, a
fanatic; I still deemed myself one of those foredoomed to
eternal destruction. But one blessed day, some time after I had
become convinced that Mr. Cartwright was a very pitiful
scoundrel, I chanced to hear him in sweet and solemn accents
expound his scheme of providence to one of our distant
neighbours who came here to pass the morning, and who seemed
well disposed to listen to him. I saw that every word he said,
rendered soothing and attractive by the gentle kindness of his
manner and the eloquent commentary of his eyes, was making its
way to the poor lady's soul, just as a year before the selfsame
words and looks had worked their way to mine.
"It was at that moment I felt the first doubts of the truth of
the doctrine I had imbibed from him. For himself I had long
felt the most profound contempt; but I had hitherto shrunk from
the impiety of confounding the doctrine and the teacher.
Something artificial and forced in his manner recalled by the
force of contrast the voice and look of our dear Mr. Wallace;
and then came the bold but blessed thought that the awful
dogmas by which he had kept my soul in thrall might be as false
and worthless as himself. My recovery from my mental malady may
be dated from that hour. Every day that has passed since has
led me back nearer and nearer, I hope, to the happy state (of
religious feeling at least) in which Mr. Cartwright found me.
But the more fully I recover my senses, the more fully I become
aware of the sad change he has wrought in every thing else. Not
only do we all creep like permitted slaves through the house
that we once felt to be our own, but he has stolen our mother
from us. Poor, poor mamma! how dearly did she love us! how
dearly did we love her! Where is the feeling gone? She has
never quarrelled with us; with me, particularly, she has never
expressed herself displeased in any way;--and yet her love
seems blighted and dried up, as if some poisonous breath had
blasted it;--and so it has--placid and fair as is the outward
seeming of this hateful man, I question not but every hour
brings forth some sorry trick to draw her farther from us.
Poor, poor mamma! I know this cannot last; and when she finds
him out--how dreadful will her feelings be!
"Then, too, I have another sorrow, my dear Mary, which
tarnishes, though it cannot destroy, the joy of my return to
reason. While the fit lasted, I believed it a part of my dark
duty to keep Helen and Rosalind, and our poor exiled Charles,
as much at a distance from me as possible; and now I hardly
dare to hope that this can ever be quite forgotten by them. I
have not courage to enter with them into an explanation as full
as this which I have now given you; yet, till I do this, I
cannot hope that they will either understand or forgive me.
"If Charles were at home, I think the task would be easier; but
Rosalind and Helen both seem to avoid me. I believe they are
too miserable themselves to look much at me, or they might see
that I no longer turned from them as I did some months ago. All
this, however, may some day or other come right again. But what
is to become of poor Charles? I feel convinced this hypocrite
will never rest till he has robbed him of his inheritance; and
I sometimes think that as the doing this must be the act of my
mother, it would be right in me to put her on her guard against
his machinations. But this can only be done by opening her eyes
to his real character; and though I think I could do this, I
tremble at the misery into which it would plunge her.--But this
is going beyond your request, dear Mary. You cannot be ignorant
that my unhappy mother's marriage has plunged us all in misery;
and there is little kindness in impressing this truth upon you
when your own bright prospects ought to occupy you with
pleasant thoughts of future happiness. Forgive me! and believe
me with every wish that this happiness may be as great and as
lasting as the nature of human life can permit,
"Your ever affectionate friend,
"FANNY MOWBRAY."
Some people might have found the perusal of these letters sufficient to
damp the ardour of their curiosity in the pursuit of private
information; but it had not this effect upon Mr. Cartwright. He even
doubted whether he should not suffer this letter of Fanny's to reach
its destination for the same reason that he had permitted that of her
friend to reach hers--namely, the procuring a reply. But upon a
re-perusal,--for he gave himself the gratification of reading it
twice,--he tore it into tiny atoms, and then lighted a bougie to set
fire to the fragments.
The next letter of any importance which fell into his hands by the same
means must also be given to the reader, as it contains some important
information which, as it immediately shared the same fate as that of
Fanny's, remained for a considerable time unknown to the person it most
concerned, as well as to all others.
This letter was addressed to Helen from one whom beyond all others in
the wide world it would best have pleased her to receive any token of
remembrance or attention. It came from Colonel Harrington, and contained
the following lines:
"Were Miss Mowbray placed in other circumstances--were not all
proper access to her barred by the hateful influence of an
alien and a stranger to her and to her blood, I should not thus
venture to address her. All application to your mother and
natural guardian would be, we know but too well, in vain: nay,
there is every reason to believe that any application to
yourself through her would never be permitted to reach you.
But, rascal as this Cartwright has proved himself, I presume he
does not tamper with the post; and it is therefore by this
vulgar and ordinary medium that I determine to make known to
you what it is great misery to conceal. Yet, after all, in
saying, '_Helen, I love you_,' I think I say nothing that you
do not know already. But, nevertheless, it is delightful to say
it; and were I, sweet Helen, once more within reach of being
heard by you, I might perchance weary you with the repetition
of it.
"But this is not all I have to say, though it is only in the
supposition of your listening to this without anger that I dare
proceed. I believe, Helen, I ought to say something--a great
deal perhaps about my presumption--and my fears, and I know not
what beside,--but the simple truth is, that being quite
conscious I loved you, and not feeling the least reason or wish
to conceal it, my manner and words, too, I believe, must have
let you into the secret the last time we met; and those dear
eyes, with their long eyelashes, so constantly as they are
before me, would long ago have looked me into despair if the
memory of one soft glance at parting had not permitted me to
hope. My father and mother, Helen, know that I love you, and
that all my future happiness hangs on your consenting to become
my wife, _even without your mother's consent_. Why should I
conceal from you that I know it will be refused?--Why should I
not frankly and fairly tell you at once, my beloved Helen, that
something very like an elopement must be resorted to before you
can be mine?--But what an elopement! It will only be to the
house of your godmother, who already loves you as her child;
and who not only sanctions my addressing you, but has
commissioned me to say that she shall never know any thing
approaching happiness till she can take you in her arms and
call you her real daughter and her William's wife. For my
father,--you know his oddities,--he declares that if you will
come to Oakley and frankly consent to be his daughter, it will
be the happiest moment of his life when he puts your hand in
mine, and calls you so. But he swears lustily, Helen, that no
application to your mother shall ever be made with his consent.
This is rough wooing, sweet one! But do I overrate the
generosity of your temper when I express my belief that you
will not suffer what is inevitable, to destroy hopes that smile
so sweetly on us?
"Address your answer to Oakley, Helen: write it, if you will,
to my mother. Dear and precious as one little line of kindness
would be to me, I will not ask it if your proud heart would
find it easier to open itself to her than to me. But keep me
not long in suspense; before I shall have sealed my letter, I
shall feel sick because the answer to it is not come. My
regiment is not going abroad. This change in its destination
was only known to us on Friday last.--Farewell! How wholly does
my fate hang upon your answer!
"Ever, ever yours,
"WILLIAM HARRINGTON."
The destruction of this letter was attended with a feeling of pleasure
greatly superior both in quality and extent to that which he received
from watching spark after spark die away from the fading embers of poor
Fanny's long epistle. That was merely a matter of mawkish sentiment;
this was an affair of business. "But Miss Helen shall have a lover,
nevertheless." It was thus he ended his cogitation. "My cousin Stephen
will not fail me. This evening he will be here with what will make the
young lady's hand worth just as much as I please, and no more: and if my
worthy cousin likes her, he shall have her." And as he thought these
words, a smile curled his lips, and he playfully blackened the paper,
and singed it, and finally set it in a blaze, uttering aloud as the
flame expired, "A lieutenant-colonel of dragoons _versus_ the Vicar of
Wrexhill."