_From the same to the same._
Ah! flattery!--I see I must go on with my ‘pathetic tale.’ Therefore
I may as well proceed and leave to the flatterers to keep up the
connexion. Doctor Douglass was present at the first interview between
Mr. Serge and Caroline, and even regulated it. A tender embrace, and
an assurance of her being free from pain was all that was permitted;
and the poor father satisfied with this, retreated at the doctor’s
command. Malcolm persuaded him to ride, and they returned not till
the placid features of Mr. Serge could bear our kindness. To-day I
have seen Caroline; having heard from Mrs. Allen that she was easy and
composed.
I was prepared to find her in bed, but not to see her father stretched
by her side on the outside of it, thinking he was with his wife. Oh!
how fervently do I wish that every girl whom folly and heedlessness may
tempt into the same road to ruin which Miss Leonora has taken, could
have witnessed, as I did, the pangs which rend a parent’s bosom for
the desertion of a child! Would to heaven I possessed the invisible
belt of fiction, I would reserve it for the sole purpose of making
such offenders the unseen spectators of the misery they cause! To
judge from the anguish I felt, they would be justly punished! Caroline
was supported by pillows in a sitting posture, her countenance still
wearing the impression of distress, and the languor occasioned by pain
and opiates. Her father was weeping in silence, his face covered. “You
will forgive her,” said the tender pleader, entirely unmindful of my
entrance. “You will, my dear father! Yes, I see you will receive again,
this dear, this poor deluded girl!” “I will, I will,” said he, sobbing,
“I will do any thing, rather than see you grieve, my blessed child!
my only hope.” “Consider her youth, her inexperience, her beauty,”
continued the daughter. “Ah! poor creature!” replied the afflicted
parent, “I do consider them, and my own incapacity also! These have
been her destruction! She is lost, irreparably lost!” “I hope not,”
answered Caroline: “we are all liable to error, my dear father: no age
can secure us always in the right path, without other aids than our own
feeble powers; but we may return to duty, we may recover the ground we
have lost, and if her husband love her, and what must be that man who
could, in his circumstances, fail in affection, all may yet end well.”
“It can never end well;” answered he, relapsing into agony, “I say she
is _undone_, ruined for life! She has united herself to a thief, a base
purloiner of another’s treasure; and for what? why for the pelf, which
is dross to the loser in comparison with a lost child! This rascal is
too base, even for hope. This was no boy’s trick with him: neither her
beauty nor her innocence allured him. She was the casket in which I
kept my money; and had she been the foulest thing in nature, he would
have been contented with his prize, so his purpose of wickedness had
been accomplished. He is a villain! my Caroline; and whether it had
been my wife, or my child, that had opened to him my coffers, it would
have made no difference to him. But God help me, what am I doing!”
added he, checking his vehemence and sorrow. “Grieve no more, my dear
Caroline, all shall be as you direct; only be comforted: this poor girl
shall be pitied, shall be received again into a father’s arms. She
shall not find me unrelenting. She shall be happy if I can make her so,
and that will cheer you.”
I could not remain in the room any longer: I was totally subdued by
the language of nature and affection, and again my heart bitterly
reproached the child who could abandon such a father: who had not, in
his sharpest pangs of sorrow, uttered one menace, and who, hanging over
the sick couch of a dutiful daughter, thought more of her consolation
than of his own injuries. I recalled my wish, however; for had Miss
Leonora been present, she must have died of compunction; and Caroline
has made me charitable. I hope she will live to repent; and repay in
some measure her father’s goodness.
Mrs. Serge did not appear till the tea hour yesterday. She looked pale,
and was for a time silent and sorrowful; but at length she began on the
subject of her inquietude. The fugitive was by turns “an ungrateful
girl,” and “her poor betrayed child;” but what appeared to have made a
deep impression on the mother, was the difficulties to which Miss Nora
would be exposed in the journey for want of clothes and linen. “She
would be such a figure!” and then “for a girl like Nora to be married
in such a low life way! She, that might have married in the face of
the whole world, even a nobleman, with her fortune!” “That opinion of
yours, my dear Lydia,” observed Mr. Serge, somewhat dryly, “has, I
fear, been too often repeated before Mr. Fairly; and it has had its
effect, for it has conquered his dislike _to a brown girl_.”--His
lady coloured crimson deep at this remark.--“There is no accounting
for his behaviour,” answered she; “but if it was money he wanted, I
know that he might have had a widow with thirty thousand pounds in her
pocket by _holding_ up his hand. I must think Nora courted him: his
handsome person might, without any discredit to her’s, or any woman’s
choice, have pleased her: however, she might have done worse, Jerry;
for after all, Captain Fairly is a gentleman, and belongs to people
who can push him forwards in the world: I know he has great relations
in the East Indies.” “Are you not mistaken, Lydia, as to the place in
which this noble captain has friends and connections?” asked Mr. Serge.
“Oh no,” replied she eagerly, “I have heard him speak many times of
a cousin he has at Bombay, who married a nabob, because he would not
marry her himself: so in despair she went to the East Indies, and got
a husband in a fortnight after she arrived.” “I must still think you
are out in your geography,” replied he, “for I must believe he will
never find any friends to acknowledge him, unless at Botany Bay; and
upon condition he transport himself thither, my purse shall be open
to him.” “Lord, Jerry, how cruelly you talk!” answered the weeping
wife; “but I know you so well, that I ought not to mind what you say:
when you see your poor girl on her bended knees before you, you will
forgive and forget.” “I have forgiven her, without seeing her on her
bended knees,” replied he with emotion. “Let her reserve that humility
for her heavenly Father: she has offended him in forgetting her duty
to me; and this grieves me, Lydia, more than you think.” A big tear
rolled down his honest face: then turning to Sir Murdoch and his
lady, he expressed his concern at having given them so much trouble
and vexation; and mentioning his intention of leaving the Hall on
Tuesday morning, provided Doctor Douglas did not oppose the measure.
I omit the reply made to this declaration. “I have not the smallest
doubt,” said he, struggling to suppress his tears. “You are good and
kind-hearted people, and as such, speak as you mean; but my child
wishes to be at Putney, in order to receive and comfort her sister.”
The doctor observed, that Miss Serge’s anxiety to return home would be
more hurtful to her than the journey. It was, therefore, settled, that
our guests should depart at the time they proposed, which is, however,
postponed till Thursday.
My reverence for Mr. Serge has, my dear Lucy, risen within these
few last days to veneration. I have even neglected my bounden duty
to my dear Sir Murdoch, in order to watch Mr. Serge in his solitary
walks in the avenue. We understand each other. He talks to me of his
idol Caroline: asks me a thousand questions about Mr. Hardcastle;
and wonders that he never heard Counsellor Steadman mention so
extraordinary a man! Then he stops, looks in my face, and says with a
sigh, “What would I give to see my Caroline as healthy as you, Miss
Cowley? But she is as good as you are. If you knew the heart of my
child you would love her, and pity me.” The tone with which he calls
Caroline “his child” is so peculiarly tender, and expressive of his
affection for her, that a stranger to him and his family would conclude
that his hopes hung on the life of an _only child_: but in his conduct
to them all he appears to be governed by one leading principle of
affection and indulgence; and the preference he gives to Caroline is
the result of that confidence and esteem which his own unsophisticated
understanding has discovered to be due to her worth and talents.
He calls her sometimes his _Prop_, at another his _Pride_, and his
_Boast_; and this morning with a flood of tears, he told me that I
could never know what were the advantages he had reaped from having had
a child like his Caroline; and he concluded that my father had been
_well educated_, by the wisdom he had shown in regard to me; “whereas,”
added he, “my child has been eyes to the blind, as I may say, in her
parents’ house.”
Farewell! I am going to take an airing with Mr. Serge. Your’s, ever,