LETTERS OF FAREWELL.
When Thaddeus recovered from the reverie into which he fell on the
departure of Mr. Somerset, he considered how he might remove out of a
country in which he had only met with and occasioned distress.
The horrid price that Pembroke's father had set on the continuance of
his son's friendship with a powerless exile was his curse. Whatever
might have been the injury any individual of now annihilated Poland
could, in its palmy days of independence, and sometimes pride,
inflict on this implacable Englishman, of a nature that appeared to
have blinded him to even human feeling, Thaddeus felt so true an
indignation against such cruel injustice, and so much of a contrary
sentiment towards the noble son of this hard parent, that he
determined to at once relieve the warring mind of Pembroke of any
further conflict on his account by immediately quitting England.
Averse to a second interview with a friend so justly beloved, which
could only produce them new pangs, he resolved on instant
preparations--that another morn should not rise upon him in the
neighborhood of Somerset Castle. Taking up a pen, with all the
renewed loneliness of his fate brooding on his heart, he wrote two
letters.
One he addressed to Mr. Somerset, bidding him that farewell which he
confessed he could never take. As he wrote, his hand trembled, his
bosom swelled, and he hastily shut his eyelids, to withhold his tears
from showing themselves on the paper. His emotion, his grief, were
driven back, were concealed, but the tenderness of his soul flowed
over the letter. He forgave Pembroke's father for Pembroke's sake;
and in spite of their personal disunion, he vowed that no earthly
power should restrain his love from following the steps of his
friend, even into the regions of eternity. He closed his melancholy
epistle with informing Mr. Somerset that, as he should quit not only
England directly, but Europe, any search after him which his generous
nature might dictate would be in vain.
Though Thaddeus Sobieski would have disdained a life of dependence on
the greatest potentate of the world; though he rejected with the same
sincerity a similar proposal from his friend, and despised the
degrading offer of Sir Robert, yet he did not disparage his dignity,
not infringe on the disinterested nature of friendship, when he
retained the money which Pembroke had conveyed to him in prison.
Thaddeus never acted but from principle. His honorable and
penetrating mind knew exactly at what point to draw the tender thread
of delicacy--the cord of independence. But pride and independence
were with him distinct terms. Receiving assistance from a friend and
leaning on him wholly for support have different meanings. He
accepted the first with gratitude; he would have thought it
impossible to live and endure the last. Indeed Thaddeus would have
considered himself unworthy to confer a benefit if he had not known
how to receive one. But had not Pembroke told him "the whole gift was
Mary Beaufort's?" And what were his emotions then? They were full of
an ineffable sense of happiness inexplicable to himself. Mary
Beaufort was the donor, and it was bliss to have it so, and to know
it was so. With these impressions again throbbing at his heart, he
began a short letter to her, which he felt must crush that heart
forever.
"To Miss Beaufort.
"My faculties lose their power when I take up my pen to address, for
the first and the last time, Miss Beaufort. I hardly know what I
would say--what I ought to say; I dare not venture to write all that
I feel. But have you not been my benefactress? Did you not assert my
character and give me liberty when I was calumniated and in distress?
Did you not ward from me the scorn of unpitying folly? Did you not
console me with your own compassion? You have done all this; and
surely you will not despise the gratitude of a heart which you have
condescended to sooth and to comfort. At least I cannot leave England
forever without imploring blessings on the head of Miss Beaufort,
without thanking her on my knees, on which I am writing, for that
gracious and benign spirit which discovered a breaking heart under
the mask of serenity, which penetrated through the garb of poverty
and dependence, and saw that the condemned Constantine was not what
he seemed! Your smiles, Miss Beaufort, your voice speaking
commiseration, were my sweetest consolations during those heavy
months of bitterness which I endured at Dundas House. I contemplated
you as a pitying angel, sent to reconcile me to a life which had
already become a burden. These are the benefits which Miss Beaufort
has bestowed on a friendless exile; these are the benefits which she
has bestowed on me! and they are written on my soul. Not until I go
down into the grave can they be forgotten. Ah! not even then, for
when I rise again, I shall find them still registered there.
"Farewell, most respected, most dear, most honored! My passing soul
seems in those words. O, may the Father of heaven bless with his
almighty care her whose name will ever be the first and the last in
the prayer of the far distant
"THADDEUS CONSTANTINE SOBIESKI.
"HARROWBY VILLAGE, MIDNIGHT."
When he had finished this epistle, with a tremulous hand he consigned
it to the same cover that contained his letter to Somerset. Then
writing a few lines to the worthy master of the inn, (the brother-in-
law of the faithful servant of his late lamented maternal friend,)
saying that a sudden occasion had required his immediate departure at
that untimely hour, he enclosed a liberal compensation in gold for
the attentive services of both the honest man and his warm-hearted
wife. Having sealed each packet, he disposed them so on the table
that they might be the first things seen on entering the room.
He had fixed on deep night as the securest time for commencing
unobserved his pedestrian tour. The moon was now full, and would be a
sufficient guide, he thought, on his solitary way. He had determined
to walk to London by the least public paths; meaning to see kind Mrs.
Robson, and bid her a grateful farewell before he should embark,
probably never to return, for America.
He had prepared his slender baggage before he sat down to write the
two letters which had cost him so many pangs; compressed within a
light black leather travelling-bag, he fastened it over his shoulders
by its buckled straps, in the manner of a soldier's knapsack. He then
put the memorandum-book which contained his "world's wealth," now to
be carefully husbanded, into a concealed pocket in the breast of his
waistcoat, feeling, while he pressed it down upon his heart, that his
mother's locket and Miss Beaufort's chain kept guard over it.
"Ah!" cried he, as he gently closed the low window by which he leaped
into the garden; "England, I leave thee forever, and within thee all
that on this earth had been left to me to love. Driven from thee!
Nay, driven as if I were another Cain, from the face of every spot of
earth that ever had been or would be dear to me! Oh, woe to them who
began the course. And thou, Austria, ungrateful leader in the
destruction of the country which more than once was thy preserver!--
could there be any marvel that the last of the Sobieskis should
perish with her? What accumulated sins must rest on thy head, thou
seducer of other nations into the spoliation and dismemberment of the
long-proved bulwark of Christendom? Assuredly, every hasty sigh that
rebels in the breasts of Poland's outcast sons against the mystery of
her doom will plead against thee at the judgment-seat of Heaven!"
He went on at a rapid pace through several fields, his heart and soul
full of those remembrances, and the direful echoes to them he had met
in England. Stopping a moment at the boundary-gate of the Harrowby
domains,--the property of a disgraceful owner of a name that might
have been his, had not his nobler mother preserved to him that of
Sobieski,--he stretched out his arms to the heavens, over which a
bleak north-west wind was suddenly collecting dark and spreading
clouds, and exclaimed, in earnest supplication, "Oh, righteous Power
of Mercy! in thy chastening, grant me fortitude to bear with
resignation to thy will the miseries I may yet have to encounter,
Ah!" added he, his heart melting as the images presented themselves
even as visions to his soul, "teach me to forget what I have been.
Teach me to forget that on this dreadful October night twelve months
ago I clasped the dying body of my revered grandfather in these
arms!"
He could not speak further. Leaning his pale face against the gate,
he remained for a few minutes dissolved in all a son's sorrow; then,
recovering himself by a sudden start, he proceeded with hurried steps
through the further extending meadows until they conducted him by a
short village-lane into the high road.
It was on the 10th of October, 1795, that the Count Sobieski
commenced this lonely and melancholy journey. It was the 10th of
October in the preceding year that he found the veteran palatine
bleeding to death in the midst of a heap of slain. The coincidence of
his renewed banishment and present consequent mental sufferings with
those of that fatal period powerfully affected him, recalling, in the
vivid colors of an actual existence, scenes and griefs which the
numerous successive events he had passed through had considerably
toned down into dream-like shades.
But now, when memory, by one unexpected stroke, had once conjured up
the happy past of his early life and its as early blighting, true to
her nature, she raised before his mind's eye every hope connected
with it and his present doom, till, almost distracted, he quickened
his speed. He then slackened it; he quickened it again; but nothing
could rid him of those successive images which seem to glide around
him like mournful apparitions of the long-lamented dead.
When the dawn broke and the sun rose, he found himself advanced
several miles on the south side of Ponton Hill. The spiry aisles of
Harrowby Abbey were discernible through the mist, and the towers of
Somerset Castle, from their height and situation, were as distinctly
seen as if he had been at their base. Neither of these objects were
calculated to raise the spirits of Thaddeus. The sorrows of the
countess, whose eyes he so recently had closed, and the treatment
which he afterwards received from the man to whom he owed his life,
were recollections which made him turn from the Abbey with a renewed
pang and fix his eyes on Somerset. He looked towards its ivied
battlements with all the regret and all the tenderness which can
overflow a human heart. Under that roof he believed the eyes of his
almost, indeed, worshipped Mary were sealed in sleep; and in an
instant his agitated soul addressed her as if she had been present.
"Farewell, most lovely, most beloved! The conviction that it is to
ensure the peace of my now only friend on earth, my faithful
Pembroke, that I resign the hope of ever beholding thee again in this
life, will bring me one comfort, at least, in my barren exile!"
Thus communing with his troubled spirit, he walked the whole day on
his way to London. Totally absorbed in meditation, he did not remark
the gaze of curiosity which followed his elegant yet distressed
figure as he passed through the different towns and villages. Musing
on the past, the present, and the future, he neither felt hunger nor
thirst, but, with a fixed eye and abstracted countenance, pursued his
route until night and weariness overtook him near a cross-road, far
away from any house.
Thaddeus looked around and above. The sky was then clear and
glittering with stars; the moon, shining on a branch of the Ouse
which divides Leicestershire from Northamptonshire, lit the green
heath which skirted its banks. He wished not for a more magnificent
canopy; and placing his bag under his head, he laid himself down
beneath a hillock of furze, and slept till morning.
When he awoke from a heavy sleep, which fatigue and fasting had
rendered more oppressive than refreshing, he found that the splendors
of the night were succeeded by a heavy rain, and that he was wet
through. He arose with stiffness in his limbs, pain in his head, and
a dimness over his eyes, with a sense of weakness which almost
disabled him from moving. He readily judged that he had caught cold;
and every moment feeling himself grow worse, he thought it necessary
to seek some house where he might procure rest and assistance.
Leaning on his closed umbrella, which, in his precarious
circumstances of travelling, he used in preference to a walking-
stick, and no longer able to encumber himself with even the light
load of his bag, he cast it amongst the brambles near him. Thinking,
from the symptoms he felt, that he might not have many more hours to
endure the ills of life, he staggered a few yards further. No
habitation appeared; his eyes soon seemed totally obscured, and he
sunk down on a bank. For a minute he attempted to struggle with the
cold grasp of death, which he believed was fastening on his heart.
"And are my days to be so short?--are they to end thus?" was the
voice of his thoughts,--for he was speechless. "Oh! thou merciful
Providence, pardon my repining, and those who have brought me to
this! My only Father, hear me!"
These were the last movements of his soundless lips, while his blood
seemed freezing to insensibility. His eyelids were closed, and pale,
and without sign of animation, he lay at the foot of a tree nigh
which he had dropped.
He remained a quarter of an hour in this dead-like state before he
was observed; at length, a gentleman who was passing along that road,
on his way to his country-seat in the neighborhood, thought he
perceived a man lying amongst the high grass a little onward on the
heath. He stopped his carriage instantly, though driven by four
spirited horses, and ordering one of the outriders to alight, bade
him examine whether the object in view were living or dead.
The servant obeyed; and presently returning with an affrighted
countenance, he informed his master that "it was the body of a young
man, who, by his dress, appeared to be a gentleman; and being quite
senseless, he supposed he had been waylaid and murdered by footpads."
The features of the benevolent inquirer immediately reflected the
alarm of his informant. Ordering the chariot door to be opened, he
took in his hand a bottle of medicine, (which, from his own invalid
states was his carriage companion,) and, stepping out, hastened to
the side of the apparently lifeless Thaddeus.
By this time all the servants were collected round the spot. The
master himself, whilst he gazed with pity on the marble features of
the stranger, observed with pleasure that he saw no marks of
violence. Supposing that the present accident might have been
occasioned by a fit, and thinking it possible to recall life, he
desired that the unfortunate person's neck-cloth might be unloosened,
and removing his hat, he contrived to pour some drops into his mouth.
Their warmth renewed pulsation to the heart, for one of the men, who
was stooping, declared that it beat under his hand. When the
benevolent gentleman was satisfied of the truth of this report, he
bade his servants place the poor traveller in his carriage; having
only another mile or two to go, he said he hoped his charge might be
restored at the end of so short a drive.
Whilst the postilions drove rapidly towards the house, the cold face
of Thaddeus rested on the bosom of his benefactor, who continued to
chafe his temples with eau de Cologne until the chariot stopped
before the gates. The men carried the count into the house, and
leaving him with their master and a medical man, who resided near,
other restoratives were applied which in a short time restored him to
consciousness. When he was recalled to recollection, and able to
distinguish objects, he saw that he was supported by two gentlemen,
and in a spacious chamber.
Gratitude was an active virtue in the soul of Thaddeus. At the moment
of his awakening from that sleep which, when it fell upon him, he
believed would last until time should be lost in eternity, he pressed
the hands of those who held his own, not doubting but that they were
the good Samaritans who had preserved him from perishing.
The younger of the gentlemen, perceiving, by the animated lustre
which spread over his patient's eyes, that he was going to speak, put
his hand on his lips, and said, "Pardon me, sir! you must be mute!
Your life at present hangs on a thread; the slightest exertion might
snap it. As all you want is rest and resuscitation to supply some
great loss which the vital powers have sustained, I must require that
you neither speak nor be spoken to until I give permission.
Meanwhile, be satisfied, sir, that you are in the kindest hands. This
gentleman," added he, (pointing to his friend, who bore the noble
presence of high rank,) "saw you on the heath, and brought you to his
house, where you now are."
Thaddeus bowed his head to them both in sign of obedience and
gratitude, and the elder, with a kind bend of his mild eyes, in
silence left the room.