“I do not believe that it is,” she replied. “You have that in your face
and manners which authorises trust. Let us continue to be friends. You
need not fear,” she said, laughing, while she blushed a little, yet
speaking with a free and unembarrassed voice, “that friendship with us
should prove only a specious name, as the poet says, for another feeling.
I belong, in habits of thinking and acting, rather to your sex, with
which I have always been brought up, than to my own. Besides, the fatal
veil was wrapt round me in my cradle; for you may easily believe I have
never thought of the detestable condition under which I may remove it.
The time,” she added, “for expressing my final determination is not
arrived, and I would fain have the freedom of wild heath and open air
with the other commoners of nature, as long as I can be permitted to
enjoy them. And now that the passage in Dante is made so clear, pray go
and see what has become of the badger-baiters. My head aches so much that
I cannot join the party.”
I left the library, but not to join the hunters. I felt that a solitary
walk was necessary to compose my spirits before I again trusted myself in
Rashleigh's company, whose depth of calculating villany had been so
strikingly exposed to me. In Dubourg's family (as he was of the reformed
persuasion) I had heard many a tale of Romish priests who gratified, at
the expense of friendship, hospitality, and the most sacred ties of
social life, those passions, the blameless indulgence of which is denied
by the rules of their order. But the deliberate system of undertaking the
education of a deserted orphan of noble birth, and so intimately allied
to his own family, with the perfidious purpose of ultimately seducing
her, detailed as it was by the intended victim with all the glow of
virtuous resentment, seemed more atrocious to me than the worst of the
tales I had heard at Bourdeaux, and I felt it would be extremely
difficult for me to meet Rashleigh, and yet to suppress the abhorrence
with which he impressed me. Yet this was absolutely necessary, not only
on account of the mysterious charge which Diana had given me, but because
I had, in reality, no ostensible ground for quarrelling with him.
I therefore resolved, as far as possible, to meet Rashleigh's
dissimulation with equal caution on my part during our residence in the
same family; and when he should depart for London, I resolved to give
Owen at least such a hint of his character as might keep him on his guard
over my father's interests. Avarice or ambition, I thought, might have as
great, or greater charms, for a mind constituted like Rashleigh's, than
unlawful pleasure; the energy of his character, and his power of assuming
all seeming good qualities, were likely to procure him a high degree of
confidence, and it was not to be hoped that either good faith or
gratitude would prevent him from abusing it. The task was somewhat
difficult, especially in my circumstances, since the caution which I
threw out might be imputed to jealousy of my rival, or rather my
successor, in my father's favour. Yet I thought it absolutely necessary
to frame such a letter, leaving it to Owen, who, in his own line, was
wary, prudent, and circumspect, to make the necessary use of his
knowledge of Rashleigh's true character. Such a letter, therefore, I
indited, and despatched to the post-house by the first opportunity.
At my meeting with Rashleigh, he, as well as I, appeared to have taken up
distant ground, and to be disposed to avoid all pretext for collision. He
was probably conscious that Miss Vernon's communications had been
unfavourable to him, though he could not know that they extended to
discovering his meditated villany towards her. Our intercourse,
therefore, was reserved on both sides, and turned on subjects of little
interest. Indeed, his stay at Osbaldistone Hall did not exceed a few days
after this period, during which I only remarked two circumstances
respecting him. The first was the rapid and almost intuitive manner in
which his powerful and active mind seized upon and arranged the
elementary principles necessary to his new profession, which he now
studied hard, and occasionally made parade of his progress, as if to show
me how light it was for him to lift the burden which I had flung down
from very weariness and inability to carry it. The other remarkable
circumstance was, that, notwithstanding the injuries with which Miss
Vernon charged Rashleigh, they had several private interviews together of
considerable length, although their bearing towards each other in public
did not seem more cordial than usual.
When the day of Rashleigh's departure arrived, his father bade him
farewell with indifference; his brothers with the ill-concealed glee of
school-boys who see their task-master depart for a season, and feel a joy
which they dare not express; and I myself with cold politeness. When he
approached Miss Vernon, and would have saluted her she drew back with a
look of haughty disdain; but said, as she extended her hand to him,
“Farewell, Rashleigh; God reward you for the good you have done, and
forgive you for the evil you have meditated.”
“Amen, my fair cousin,” he replied, with an air of sanctity, which
belonged, I thought, to the seminary of Saint Omers; “happy is he whose
good intentions have borne fruit in deeds, and whose evil thoughts have
perished in the blossom.”
These were his parting words. “Accomplished hypocrite!” said Miss Vernon
to me, as the door closed behind him--“how nearly can what we most
despise and hate, approach in outward manner to that which we most
venerate!”
I had written to my father by Rashleigh, and also a few lines to Owen,
besides the confidential letter which I have already mentioned, and which
I thought it more proper and prudent to despatch by another conveyance.
In these epistles, it would have been natural for me to have pointed out
to my father and my friend, that I was at present in a situation where I
could improve myself in no respect, unless in the mysteries of hunting
and hawking; and where I was not unlikely to forget, in the company of
rude grooms and horse-boys, any useful knowledge or elegant
accomplishments which I had hitherto acquired. It would also have been
natural that I should have expressed the disgust and tedium which I was
likely to feel among beings whose whole souls were centred in
field-sports or more degrading pastimes--that I should have complained of
the habitual intemperance of the family in which I was a guest, and the
difficulty and almost resentment with which my uncle, Sir Hildebrand,
received any apology for deserting the bottle. This last, indeed, was a
topic on which my father, himself a man of severe temperance, was likely
to be easily alarmed, and to have touched upon this spring would to a
certainty have opened the doors of my prison-house, and would either have
been the means of abridging my exile, or at least would have procured me
a change of residence during my rustication.
I say, my dear Tresham, that, considering how very unpleasant a prolonged
residence at Osbaldistone Hall must have been to a young man of my age,
and with my habits, it might have seemed very natural that I should have
pointed out all these disadvantages to my father, in order to obtain his
consent for leaving my uncle's mansion. Nothing, however, is more
certain, than that I did not say a single word to this purpose in my
letters to my father and Owen. If Osbaldistone Hall had been Athens in
all its pristine glory of learning, and inhabited by sages, heroes, and
poets, I could not have expressed less inclination to leave it.
If thou hast any of the salt of youth left in thee, Tresham, thou wilt be
at no loss to account for my silence on a topic seemingly so obvious.
Miss Vernon's extreme beauty, of which she herself seemed so little
conscious--her romantic and mysterious situation--the evils to which she
was exposed--the courage with which she seemed to face them--her manners,
more frank than belonged to her sex, yet, as it seemed to me,
exceeding in frankness only from the dauntless consciousness of her
innocence,--above all, the obvious and flattering distinction which she
made in my favour over all other persons, were at once calculated to
interest my best feelings, to excite my curiosity, awaken my
imagination, and gratify my vanity. I dared not, indeed, confess to
myself the depth of the interest with which Miss Vernon inspired me, or
the large share which she occupied in my thoughts. We read together,
walked together, rode together, and sate together. The studies which she
had broken off upon her quarrel with Rashleigh, she now resumed, under
the auspices of a tutor whose views were more sincere, though his
capacity was far more limited.
In truth, I was by no means qualified to assist her in the prosecution of
several profound studies which she had commenced with Rashleigh, and
which appeared to me more fitted for a churchman than for a beautiful
female. Neither can I conceive with what view he should have engaged
Diana in the gloomy maze of casuistry which schoolmen called philosophy,
or in the equally abstruse though more certain sciences of mathematics
and astronomy; unless it were to break down and confound in her mind the
difference and distinction between the sexes, and to habituate her to
trains of subtle reasoning, by which he might at his own time invest that
which is wrong with the colour of that which is right. It was in the same
spirit, though in the latter case the evil purpose was more obvious, that
the lessons of Rashleigh had encouraged Miss Vernon in setting at nought
and despising the forms and ceremonial limits which are drawn round
females in modern society. It is true, she was sequestrated from all
female company, and could not learn the usual rules of decorum, either
from example or precept; yet such was her innate modesty, and accurate
sense of what was right and wrong, that she would not of herself have
adopted the bold uncompromising manner which struck me with so much
surprise on our first acquaintance, had she not been led to conceive that
a contempt of ceremony indicated at once superiority of understanding and
the confidence of conscious innocence. Her wily instructor had, no doubt,
his own views in levelling those outworks which reserve and caution erect
around virtue. But for these, and for his other crimes, he has long since
answered at a higher tribunal.
Besides the progress which Miss Vernon, whose powerful mind readily
adopted every means of information offered to it, had made in more
abstract science, I found her no contemptible linguist, and well
acquainted both with ancient and modern literature. Were it not that
strong talents will often go farthest when they seem to have least
assistance, it would be almost incredible to tell the rapidity of Miss
Vernon's progress in knowledge; and it was still more extraordinary, when
her stock of mental acquisitions from books was compared with her total
ignorance of actual life. It seemed as if she saw and knew everything,
except what passed in the world around her;--and I believe it was this
very ignorance and simplicity of thinking upon ordinary subjects, so
strikingly contrasted with her fund of general knowledge and information,
which rendered her conversation so irresistibly fascinating, and rivetted
the attention to whatever she said or did; since it was absolutely
impossible to anticipate whether her next word or action was to display
the most acute perception, or the most profound simplicity. The degree of
danger which necessarily attended a youth of my age and keen feelings
from remaining in close and constant intimacy with an object so amiable,
and so peculiarly interesting, all who remember their own sentiments at
my age may easily estimate.