These incidents and reflections were speedily transmitted to me. I had
always believed the character and machinations of Ormond to be worthy of
caution and fear. His means of information I did not pretend, and
thought it useless, to investigate. We cannot hide our actions and
thoughts from one of powerful sagacity, whom the detection sufficiently
interests to make him use all the methods of detection in his power. The
study of concealment is, in all cases, fruitless or hurtful. All that
duty enjoins is to design and to execute nothing which may not be
approved by a divine and omniscient Observer. Human scrutiny is neither
to be solicited nor shunned. Human approbation or censure can never be
exempt from injustice, because our limited perceptions debar us from a
thorough knowledge of any actions and motives but our own.
On reviewing what had passed between Constantia and me, I recollected
nothing incompatible with purity and rectitude. That Ormond was apprized
of all that had passed, I by no means inferred from the tenor of his
conversation with Constantia; nor, if this had been incontestably
proved, should I have experienced any trepidation or anxiety on that
account.
His obscure and indirect menaces of evil were of more importance. His
discourse on this topic seemed susceptible only of two constructions.
Either he intended some fatal mischief, and was willing to torment her
by fears, while he concealed from her the nature of her danger, that he
might hinder her from guarding her safety by suitable precautions; or,
being hopeless of rendering her propitious to his wishes, his malice was
satisfied with leaving her a legacy of apprehension and doubt.
Constantia's unacquaintance with the doctrines of that school in which
Ormond was probably instructed led her to regard the conduct of this man
with more curiosity and wonder than fear. She saw nothing but a
disposition to sport with her ignorance and bewilder her with doubts.
I do not believe myself destitute of courage. Rightly to estimate the
danger and encounter it with firmness are worthy of a rational being;
but to place our security in thoughtlessness and blindness is only less
ignoble than cowardice. I could not forget the proofs of violence which
accompanied the death of Mr. Dudley. I could not overlook, in the recent
conversation with Constantia, Ormond's allusion to her murdered father.
It was possible that the nature of this death had been accidentally
imparted to him; but it was likewise possible that his was the knowledge
of one who performed the act.
The enormity of this deed appeared by no means incongruous with the
sentiments of Ormond. Human life is momentous or trivial in our eyes,
according to the course which our habits and opinions have taken.
Passion greedily accepts, and habit readily offers, the sacrifice of
another's life, and reason obeys the impulse of education and desire.
A youth of eighteen, a volunteer in a Russian army encamped in
Bessarabia, made prey of a Tartar girl, found in the field of a recent
battle. Conducting her to his quarters, he met a friend, who, on some
pretence, claimed the victim. From angry words they betook themselves to
swords. A combat ensued, in which the first claimant ran his antagonist
through the body. He then bore his prize unmolested away, and, having
exercised brutality of one kind upon the helpless victim, stabbed her to
the heart, as an offering to the _manes_ of Sarsefield, the friend whom
he had slain. Next morning, willing more signally to expiate his guilt,
he rushed alone upon a troop of Turkish foragers, and brought away five
heads, suspended, by their gory locks, to his horse's mane. These he
cast upon the grave of Sarsefield, and conceived himself fully to have
expiated yesterday's offence. In reward for his prowess, the general
gave him a commission in the Cossack troops. This youth was Ormond; and
such is a specimen of his exploits during a military career of eight
years, in a warfare the most savage and implacable, and, at the same
time, the most iniquitous and wanton, which history records.
With passions and habits like these, the life of another was a trifling
sacrifice to vengeance or impatience. How Mr. Dudley had excited the
resentment of Ormond, by what means the assassin had accomplished his
intention without awakening alarm or incurring suspicion, it was not for
me to discover. The inextricability of human events, the imperviousness
of cunning, and the obduracy of malice, I had frequent occasions to
remark.
I did not labour to vanquish the security of my friend. As to
precautions, they were useless. There was no fortress, guarded by
barriers of stone and iron and watched by sentinels that never slept, to
which she might retire from his stratagems. If there were such a
retreat, it would scarcely avail her against a foe circumspect and
subtle as Ormond.
I pondered on the condition of my friend. I reviewed the incidents of
her life. I compared her lot with that of others. I could not but
discover a sort of incurable malignity in her fate. I felt as if it were
denied to her to enjoy a long life or permanent tranquillity. I asked
myself what she had done, entitling her to this incessant persecution.
Impatience and murmuring took place of sorrow and fear in my heart. When
I reflected that all human agency was merely subservient to a divine
purpose, I fell into fits of accusation and impiety.
This injustice was transient, and soberer views convinced me that every
scheme, comprising the whole, must be productive of partial and
temporary evil. The sufferings of Constantia were limited to a moment;
they were the unavoidable appendages of terrestrial existence; they
formed the only avenue to wisdom, and the only claim to uninterrupted
fruition and eternal repose in an after-scene.
The course of my reflections, and the issue to which they led, were
unforeseen by myself. Fondly as I doted upon this woman, methought I
could resign her to the grave without a murmur or a tear. While my
thoughts were calmed by resignation, and my fancy occupied with nothing
but the briefness of that space and evanescence of that time which
severs the living from the dead, I contemplated, almost with
complacency, a violent or untimely close to her existence.
This loftiness of mind could not always be accomplished or constantly
maintained. One effect of my fears was to hasten my departure to Europe.
There existed no impediment but the want of a suitable conveyance. In
the first packet that should leave America, it was determined to secure
a passage. Mr. Melbourne consented to take charge of Constantia's
property, and, after the sale of it, to transmit to her the money that
should thence arise.
Meanwhile, I was anxious that Constantia should leave her present abode
and join me in New York. She willingly adopted this arrangement, but
conceived it necessary to spend a few days at her house in Jersey. She
could reach the latter place without much deviation from the straight
road, and she was desirous of resurveying a spot where many of her
infantile days had been spent.
This house and domain I have already mentioned to have once belonged to
Mr. Dudley. It was selected with the judgement and adorned with the taste
of a disciple of the schools of Florence and Vicenza. In his view,
cultivation was subservient to the picturesque, and a mansion was
erected, eminent for nothing but chastity of ornaments and simplicity of
structure. The massive parts were of stone; the outer surfaces were
smooth, snow-white, and diversified by apertures and cornices, in which
a cement uncommonly tenacious was wrought into proportions the most
correct and forms the most graceful. The floors, walls, and ceilings,
consisted of a still more exquisitely-tempered substance, and were
painted by Mr. Dudley's own hand. All appendages of this building, as
seats, tables, and cabinets, were modelled by the owner's particular
direction, and in a manner scrupulously classical.
He had scarcely entered on the enjoyment of this splendid possession,
when it was ravished away. No privation was endured with more impatience
than this; but, happily, it was purchased by one who left Mr. Dudley's
arrangements unmolested, and who shortly after conveyed it entire to
Ormond. By him it was finally appropriated to the use of Helena Cleves,
and now, by a singular contexture of events, it had reverted to those
hands in which the death of the original proprietor, if no other change
had been made in his condition, would have left it. The farm still
remained in the tenure of a German emigrant, who held it partly on
condition of preserving the garden and mansion in safety and in perfect
order.
This retreat was now revisited by Constantia, after an interval of four
years. Autumn had made some progress, but the aspect of nature was, so
to speak, more significant than at any other season. She was agreeably
accommodated under the tenant's roof, and found a nameless pleasure in
traversing spaces in which every object prompted an endless train of
recollections.
Her sensations were not foreseen. They led to a state of mind
inconsistent, in some degree, with the projects adopted in obedience to
the suggestions of a friend. Every thing in this scene had been created
and modelled by the genius of her father. It was a kind of fane,
sanctified by his imaginary presence.
To consign the fruits of his industry and invention to foreign and
unsparing hands seemed a kind of sacrilege, for which she almost feared
that the dead would rise to upbraid her. Those images which bind us to
our natal soil, to the abode of our innocent and careless youth, were
recalled to her fancy by the scenes which she now beheld. These were
enforced by considerations of the dangers which attended her voyage from
storms and from enemies, and from the tendency to revolution and war
which seemed to actuate all the nations of Europe. Her native country
was by no means exempt from similar tendencies, but these evils were
less imminent, and its manners and government, in their present
modifications, were unspeakably more favourable to the dignity and
improvement of the human race than those which prevailed in any part of
the ancient world.
My solicitations and my obligation to repair to England overweighed her
objections, but her new reflections led her to form new determinations
with regard to this part of her property. She concluded to retain
possession, and hoped that some future event would allow her to return
to this favourite spot without forfeiture of my society. An abode of
some years in Europe would more eminently qualify her for the enjoyment
of retirement and safety in her native country. The time that should
elapse before her embarkation, she was desirous of passing among the
shades of this romantic retreat.
I was by no means reconciled to this proceeding. I loved my friend too
well to endure any needless separation without repining. In addition to
this, the image of Ormond haunted my thoughts, and gave birth to
incessant but indefinable fears. I believed that her safety would very
little depend upon the nature of her abode, or the number or
watchfulness of her companions. My nearness to her person would
frustrate no stratagem, nor promote any other end than my own
entanglement in the same fold. Still, that I was not apprized each hour
of her condition, that her state was lonely and sequestered, were
sources of disquiet, the obvious remedy to which was her coming to New
York. Preparations for departure were assigned to me, and these required
my continuance in the city.
Once a week, Laffert, her tenant, visited, for purposes of traffic, the
city. He was the medium of our correspondence. To him I intrusted a
letter, in which my dissatisfaction at her absence, and the causes which
gave it birth, were freely confessed.
The confidence of safety seldom deserted my friend. Since her mysterious
conversation with Ormond, he had utterly vanished. Previous to that
interview, his visits or his letters were incessant and punctual; but
since, no token was given that he existed. Two months had elapsed. He
gave her no reason to expect a cessation of intercourse. He had parted
from her with his usual abruptness and informality. She did not conceive
it incumbent on her to search him out, but she would not have been
displeased with an opportunity to discuss with him more fully the
motives of her conduct. This opportunity had been hitherto denied.
Her occupations in her present retreat were, for the most part, dictated
by caprice or by chance. The mildness of autumn permitted her to ramble,
during the day, from one rock and one grove to another. There was a
luxury in musing, and in the sensations which the scenery and silence
produced, which, in consequence of her long estrangement from them, were
accompanied with all the attractions of novelty, and from which she
would not consent to withdraw.
In the evening she usually retired to the mansion, and shut herself up
in that apartment which, in the original structure of the house, had
been designed for study, and no part of whose furniture had been removed
or displaced. It was a kind of closet on the second floor, illuminated
by a spacious window, through which a landscape of uncommon amplitude
and beauty was presented to the view. Here the pleasures of the day were
revived, by recalling and enumerating them in letters to her friend. She
always quitted this recess with reluctance, and seldom till the night
was half spent.
One evening she retired hither when the sun had just dipped beneath the
horizon. Her implements of writing were prepared; but, before the pen
was assumed, her eyes rested for a moment on the variegated hues which
were poured out upon the western sky and upon the scene of intermingled
waters, copses, and fields. The view comprised a part of the road which
led to this dwelling. It was partially and distantly seen, and the
passage of horses or men was betokened chiefly by the dust which was
raised by their footsteps.
A token of this kind now caught her attention. It fixed her eye chiefly
by the picturesque effect produced by interposing its obscurity between
her and the splendours which the sun had left. Presently she gained a
faint view of a man and horse. This circumstance laid no claim to
attention, and she was withdrawing her eye, when the traveller's
stopping and dismounting at the gate made her renew her scrutiny. This
was reinforced by something in the figure and movements of the horseman
which reminded her of Ormond.
She started from her seat with some degree of palpitation. Whence this
arose, whether from fear or from joy, or from intermixed emotions, it
would not be easy to ascertain. Having entered the gate, the visitant,
remounting his horse, set the animal on full speed. Every moment brought
him nearer, and added to her first belief. He stopped not till he
reached the mansion. The person of Ormond was distinctly recognised.
An interview at this dusky and lonely hour, in circumstances so abrupt
and unexpected, could not fail to surprise, and, in some degree, to
alarm. The substance of his last conversation was recalled. The evils
which were darkly and ambiguously predicted thronged to her memory. It
seemed as if the present moment was to be, in some way, decisive of her
fate. This visit she did not hesitate to suppose designed for her, but
somewhat uncommonly momentous must have prompted him to take so long a
journey.
The rooms on the lower floor were dark, the windows and doors being
fastened. She had entered the house by the principal door, and this was
the only one at present unlocked. The room in which she sat was over the
hall, and the massive door beneath could not be opened without noisy
signals. The question that occurred to her, by what means Ormond would
gain admittance to her presence, she supposed would be instantly
decided. She listened to hear his footsteps on the pavement, or the
creaking of hinges. The silence, however, continued profound as before.
After a minute's pause, she approached the window more nearly and
endeavoured to gain a view of the space before the house. She saw
nothing but the horse, whose bridle was thrown over his neck, and who
was left at liberty to pick up what scanty herbage the lawn afforded to
his hunger. The rider had disappeared.
It now occurred to her that this visit had a purpose different from that
which she at first conjectured. It was easily conceived that Ormond was
unacquainted with her residence at this spot. The knowledge could only
be imparted to him by indirect or illicit means. That these means had
been employed by him, she was by no means authorized to infer from the
silence and distance he had lately maintained. But if an interview with
her were not the purpose of his coming, how should she interpret it?